The words echo back to me in an unending chorus. Eighteen months, do we have to do it again? I ask why and I ask why and I ask why and you shrug your shoulders and answer with silence. Damn the silence. They don’t teach that in Sunday School. They teach love your neighbors and your enemies, too, they teach about Jonah and the toppling wall. But they don’t say anything about death or pain or silence or unanswered questions. It’s been a drunken bus ride and I just want it to stop. I’ve gritted my teeth and smiled and tried to slosh my way through the messiness but it’s been dragging for so long. When will it end? Should it even end? Do we pick up the pieces and cut ourselves in the process, or do we just sweep them into the trash and wipe our hands? I don’t know which way to go, I don’t know what to ask for, and I don’t know what to say. And it’s probably a good thing because you’re not saying anything. Or I’m just not listening, which is probably the case. All I can do is ask for a little light in the darkness. This little light of mine, oh if you’d just let it shine. I’m so sick and tired of bad news on the telephone. I just can’t handle long distance calamity. Love doesn’t come through the phone lines because I can’t see that tender smile and I’m glad we never had a relationship like that. What are you talking about, you ask, and I sympathize. But sometimes you need to talk. I’m so tired of hanging up the phone and nearly crying out with the pain of a thousand wounds. The receiver clicks and the dial tone drones and it sucks the feeling from your soul. You feel hollow and empty and oh would you make up your mind? How am I supposed to tell you what to do?
And then there’s you. You sit so comfortably in your pew and it makes me sick. The pew’s so padded it’s dulled your senses and you don’t even realize there’s pain all around you. Why won’t you share that little light of yours, why don’t you let it shine?
I don’t have the answers. I don’t pretend to. But sometimes I wish I did. I wish I did.
If you had a second chance, would you do it again?