A Garden of Gesthemane moment

A lot of things have happened to me recently that I won't go into but to say that my perspective on the world and on myself has been changed. I have been faced with an impossible choice and have had to come to grips with an unreasonable situation, knowing that the decision impacts not just yourself, but also those around you who you care most about.

There is a feeling of enforced isolation, of perceived abandonment and the solitude which comes from within, not from without. A pall of dread surrounding the recognition and realization that you will harm those you love and that there is no middle path, no escape or Deus ex Machina which will swoop in and save the day. Like an auto accident, all of these things are playing out in slow motion in front of you, powerless to do anything but watch.

Nobody could possibly understand how that feels.

Oh, wait. "My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death." Ok. At least one person does.

I think I understand now. With all the sums and numbers, things look black and white. But being human, being human is much more than the calculus of things. It is feeling and knowing, striving and growing. It is the pain and joy, the pleasure and grief.

The scene of the Garden of Gesthemane is Yeshua bin Yosef at his most human. Knowing what lay ahead, the cold math said to quit the Garden, to do what is reasonable and expected. The authorites would track them down and, through artifice, kill him. More than that, by doing this, he would condemn all but one of the twelve to a violent end and there would be blood shed over and over in his name. His name. By leaving the Garden, he could save them all, save them from torture and cruel death.

By leaving, by avoiding the situation, he could help them all at the expense of doing the will of his Father. By doing that, he would do what his head said is the right thing, but his heart said was wrong. To do so would be to the short-term benefit of his neighbors, but would dishonour the love of the Father and make a sham of all that had come before. He did not leave, and by embracing that destiny became more than human. By choice he transformed into the avatar known as the Christ.

I think I get it. I am so quickly inclined to think about things, to cogitate and analyze, that my heart becomes obscured. When surrounded by the whirling maelstrom, too often I fail to remain unmoved, too often I act without the synchronicity of both heart and mind. It is not the mind which makes a man, but his heart.

My heart aches. It aches for those who have been harmed and those will be harmed. Most of all, it aches knowing when I needed to hear the most, it was not silence that replied, but that I was not listening.

Forgive me...for I have missed the mark.