The Spaces Between the Letters

 The Spaces Between the Letters

(“For it was by God’s grace that he experienced death’s bitterness on behalf of everyone!” Hebrews 2:9b TPT)

How could I let them do all the thinking for me,
how could I take so long to use my mind again?
I pulled up to the first sign of life, the first certainty,
the elemental arguments that proved the doubters wrong;
and I parked there like a big rig overnight where
night can last a lifetime.
I left it in neutral, let the engine run,
let the heater keep me from the cold and frozen landscape
I thought I understood.
I left it in neutral because
I had let the ink speak for me,
think for me. The flat black and white
was cemented like a shrine; never mind it was
thousands of years before my time.

So, every time you sought me, every time
you needed help,
I searched the documents like dispensing prescriptions
and wrote them for your life.
“Don’t divorce” (though he hit you)
“Be in church” (though it caused you pain)
“Get a job” (there were none)
“Just abstain” (addiction bites)
“Pray some more” (mine was saccharine)
“Read this book” (parts made me cry)
“Bible study” (genealogies too)
“Plead the blood” (on my honor)
“Use the Name” (nothing stronger)
“Take more walks” (depression’s cure)
And I never told you that
the prescriptions I wrote
did nothing for me at all.

I know so much less now, yes, nearly agnostic.
I know the minus and the plus now, and how unforgiving
pen and paper become.
I know you better now, with my faith somewhat rarer;
I would learn the silence, I would learn the pauses,
I would memorize every tear on your face.
I would empty out my own doubts
(if you would receive them)
and simply walk beside you though
the world has gotten larger than either of us
imagined.
The spaces between the letters on the page,
scribbled on the yellow lines of my legal pad,
are greater than the sounds of the alphabet.
There is more air in the molecules,
more space in the universe,
more doubt in the certainty,
more quiet between hello and goodbye.

He tasted our pain. He let the bitterness that
brings us up short cover him like a veil.
I cannot explain it, but he wrapped himself in darkness,
and inhabited the spaces between our doubts and
our faith.
And still I am hollow, and still he dwells in
the echoes we wish would fade away.

Answers no longer satisfy me; I would be a traitor
to give them to you.
But, this open space where souls meet, and eyes,
is the only place I have felt alive.