The moment of despair
Is the time of great hope
Somewhere I described my experience of God in terms of emptiness, darkness, and loneliness. The only God that made sense to me was the God who is nowhere to be found. Sometimes in the past I was angry to find myself all alone. Often I was sad that the burning zeal of my boyhood, for which I mistakenly believed that I had sacrificed much, seemed nothing more than a delusion.
But last night I beheld in a dream the endlessness of the dark place and boundlessness of the empty place. For the first time in my life, terror seized me. In that moment, I could not deny the hopelessness I felt and I could not outrun the consuming terror before me. I could not pretend that I was a titan or divine being, mighty and invincible.
And so I cried out to the Absent One, the God of the Endless Abyss:
Behold, I am a man! Let titans and divine beings triumph over suffering. I will fall beneath it. Let it crush me! The moment of hopelessness reveals to every man his true nature. May terror annihilate me, and death wipe my memory from the Earth! I will not submit, even as fear devours me.
When I woke, it was morning and I was not alone. The bright-shining Sun, unconquered from its nightly battle with darkness, looked down with kindness as Dante and I ate our breakfast and took our morning walk through Highbridge Park.
We live in a world that makes of dreams vain idols. But a dream cannot change the world, though a human being who wakes from dreaming can change the entire Universe. And when we wake from our dreams, all we need do is look to our left and to our right to understand: We’re not alone.
I am not alone. And neither are you.
~BT Waldbillig
June 28, 2017
FRIENDS OF THE LITTLE MAN 