After all the years of unburdening and reverse engineering and truth seeking, I am here at the beginning. And yet, everything is different. Truth may not change, but context does, and perception does, and I am a product of time, standing on the other side of my certainty, perplexed by its dissonance. I am back in the sanctuary like there’s something I missed. I have exhausted this space; flipped the pews, and read the books cover to cover, gnawing on the poetry, the anecdotes, the prophecies, the histories, the stories.
I was never against it. Coming back, I mean. Those who resolve to chase truth are committed to the actuality of it; meaning they assent to finding the ecstasy of the divine or the bleakness of the void, or any permutation between the two; also meaning, I was leaving and the only way to really leave a place is to know you are never coming back.
But I did.
And it’s not the way it was.
And I’m not the way I was.
I believe, help my unbelief.
I have concluded this circling back has something to do with the misalignment of kingdoms and kings and the incongruity of power. This disrupted cohesion is evidence to me. This disagreement satisfies the questions like why does everything here have a tilt to it, like we’re not quite on axis (we’re not) and everything is sliding, slipping off; gravity threatening to loosen its grip just like every other promise. The incompatibility of what is and what should be is my Polaris and is the answer to disorientation in a place that is supposedly my home.
Certainty is a compromise of nominal faith, a luxury of assumption, and true believers (in anything) have to acknowledge the absence of absolutes. This conflict has a peace about it once we untether ourselves from our desperation for clarity. It took shoving off from shore into the wild open waters for me to willingly return to land, otherwise I would have lived in animus toward the familiar, having never tried for more than the shallows where my feet could still touch bottom.
I believe, help my unbelief. I am certain only of my uncertainty. My unbelief contours the belief that was, is, and will be. I am at peace in pursuing truth rather than weaponizing what I want truth to be. My assurance is incomplete, my nature is pliable in the way most things bend and writhe across the fabric of forever, my convictions are always wandering away from expectations.
There is no place for those like us here, but then again, there was no place for the son of man to lay his head and that, too, is a comfort.