The Psalms of lament

I know there's always something
We have to go through
That has some deeper meaning but
Right now I just can't say
I know there's gonna be a lesson somewhere
I'm gonna think a lot about it later
But right now I'm miles away
---Marc Cohn, "Miles Away"

______________________________

There is something incredibly wrong here. When retarded girls like Gretel have heart problems and die; when Hannah dies at four years old after open heart surgery; when a decent, nice guy like Randy gets cancer- he has it in his lungs and I'm sure the outlook isn't good... and Lutheran ministers rape their daughters and Catholic priests rape little boys... was Christ present during the Mass these men celebrated?... good people die, little children die, evil people live to use the word "n****r" one more day... people are hurting, women are suffering from the years of sexual abuse at the hands of men who violate the sacred trust of fatherhood, and you expect me to get excited over a discussion of whether a Catholic sins by going to a Protestant worship service... where are some people's heads at? And where is the justice in all this?

---journal entry, August 4, 1992

______________________________

Before weblogs became all the rage I kept a journal. At least I tried. I kept a journal from 1982 through 1988, and in those pages I was as honest as honest could be- from the excitement of new life in Christ to the depression of being rejected to the rage of love spurned. I destroyed those pages in 1988, and I'm sorry I did. I tried again after college, and quite a few of those pages survive. Occasionally I will present some of those entries. I warn anyone who might be reading (assuming anyone is there) that the language often got raw, and I don't plan on cleaning it up, save for a few well-placed asterisks. In the passage of time I've grown to detest the masks people wear and the fronts people put up; I won't be doing that.

I crawl to you
With ten fingers smoking
From turning the pages of sin
With my spirit choking
From earning the wages of sin
A bridge away from justified
A step away from whole
Restore my soul
---The Choir, "Restore My Soul"