8 march

Hallelujah. the sun raises its ungodly head to silence with unvirtue the cold chastity of winter. I don't think i could have taken the celibacy much longer. the world wakes up and rubs blood back through its limbs.

The evermore's played at first pres today, sunday. that church is so frustrating-- the youth are fun, yes; but the adults seem to have the religious zeal of a refrigerator. it's like singing to a sanctuary full of refrigerators. but i can live with that; what bothers me is that i can't feel God in their faces, they're clean as a slate. i feel like a sham, singing to a sanctuary full of blank-faced shams. they won't allow themselves to feel and be felt. how can one by overwhelmed by the bigness of God if one is cut cold and sealed shut?

this is what i am learning: says God: "learn to love me more than anything else; and that you really do not need anything else." He makes me learn these things by strangling me with that blackness of being tired and very alone, "like the eye of a tornado, moving dully along in the midst of the surrounding hullaballoo"; the grabbing vainly for hands which vaporize as soon as one ceases to be novel. says God: "everyone else will always disappoint you. I will never disappoint you. learn to love me and come to me when you are happy or angry or drowning; when you cease to be lovable I still want you. I'm on your side."

i make no claims to knowing what love is. i am not in love and i have never been in love. i can only think of about five people that i really, really love; not with that vague vaporous love that blankets humanity and acquaintences, but that loyal reciprocated love that roots so deep in you that you can't shake it off. sometimes that is healthy and bouyant, thank you Mother, thank you Emily; sometimes it mutates into something horrible. sometimes the Deepness of the love changes into hate of the same great depth; a three-inch-deep papercut that constantly infects and swells and swells. those roots aren't easily extracted. but me, i can't hate like he hates, like she hates, i don't know how-- so i just keep on loving. painfully, scarfully loving.

what a terrible, terrible thing; to love and love and love.