Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Thirteen Crucifixions, 111


Dear Matthew:

            I suppose that it’s time that I explained to you my absence from the Place of the Transfiguration.  It isn’t that I feel obligated to explain to you, and I don’t believe for a minute that you would hold me to such an obligation.  But I have been gone for three days.  I did say something to Chris, who gives me his blessing.  I do not believe that I’ll be returning.  I thought that this would be a hard decision for me to make.  It appalls me how easy it is.  Quite simply, I woke up Saturday morning with the knowledge that my time was up.  I’m in a hotel in Victoria right now, a cheap bed and breakfast near Beacon Hill Park and I expect that I’ll be getting work here soon at a homeless shelter.

            I should tell you now, that I am not experiencing a crisis of faith.  Whatever I was feeling at the community, I seem to have carried with me.  Or it seems to carry me.  Never has my path in life felt so clear to me.  I know now that what I have undergone is conversion.  There is something to what the fundamentalists say about being born again, and what a shame that such idiots should feel that they would have exclusive rights over something so beautiful and universal.  Literally my eyes have been opened, and I see as though for the first time.  Please give my warmest love to everyone, by the way, especially to my mother, to Glen and Lazarus, all of them the most excellent candidates for Transfiguration Place.  And, especially give my love to Adam, whom I particularly miss.  I do plan to visit soon, but first I need to get established here, find a more permanent place to live, etc.

            I am actually happy. I never thought this could be possible.  It seemed, while I was staying with you guys, to be almost, but never quite entirely within my grasp.  And now, I’m beginning to see why.  I was having to get away from you, Matthew.  Please, you know that I don’t mean any of this personally, I will always love you, with the clean, burnished love of Christ.  But this is what’s happened—As long as I were to stay with you and Mom in the Place of the Transfiguration, it would be tantamount to resisting growth.  I have always relied heavily upon you both as my caretakers, and have consequently remained stranded in a state of perpetual adolescence.  I have never really lived on my own, having always been dependent on you both for everything.  I can’t do this any longer.

            Norman, who runs the shelter where I’ll be working, has networked for years with Transfiguration Place, since he has often sent people to you guys to recuperate from trauma of being homeless.  He speaks highly of this work and sends all of you his warmest regards.

            I have given up journalism, for the time being anyway.  I have come to see this getting blacklisted as a gift from God, the closing of a door that opens to nowhere.  Now I can have direct experience of the homeless and destitute, instead of merely writing about them from a position of false security and superiority.  This for me will be a much truer experience of Christ.  The Place of the Transfiguration makes a sublimely beautiful environment, but now I need to know Christ in the gritty reality of His suffering humanity.  Forgive me.

 

Michael

 

 

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