I thought they were marble monoliths. Undeniable and obvious.
And so they were, to me. But now I wonder if they are only monolith mirages: towers of glorified ideas, refracted off of passionate minds and hearts gone cold, erected on the horizon of my history, my heritage. They defined my freedom and humanity, marked my boundaries. And yes, within those buttresses of thought, I also discovered my own unacceptable inhumanity.
Unstable now, and questioning, I watch as the fortresses quiver and blink in and out of reality like some sort of witch-water mocking my frustrated earnesty. Are they real, or are they not? What is real, and what is not? Am I doubting God in my questioning, or Satan in his shrouded tyranny?
Seek and ye shall find... But how is one seeking if one is not searching? I’ve been stuck staring at these lovely marble monoliths, my security, stability, but now they are scaring me. They seemed safe, but now they hulk over me, threatening.
I entered those towers to find, what seemed might be my own impossibility, and followed stairs going down into the ground. There, in halls of black wood and moldy rock, pulsed entombed hearts, embalmed in bitterness, wrapped in fear and locked away in darkness. The tombs lie beneath the monoliths, vast empty chambers but for the little wrapped hearts. As I journeyed through their thoughts and detailed explanations, I heard murmuring and deep wails beneath the rotting floor. But the voices in the room chanted, “stop your ears and close your thoughts! Those sounds you hear aren’t real.” And like Sirens of the dead, their chanting lulled my senses for a time and time again. Those ever watching hearts and minds, cold, untouchable, and eternally deaf to the supplications and implorations of millions of untold stories and undocumented realities, for a time and time again, hung over me. The stench of decay grew all around me, and I couldn’t tell where it came from. For miles I wandered and tripped around in that vast place, head filled with rattling, nose burning as the ever-increasing smell of death seemed to waft all around me and within me, no longer hidden down beneath me.
Finally, open eyed and wavering, I stumbled across a door in the floor, and fell. On dusty bones scattered aimlessly, and blood-stained tomes unheeded by people who undeniably and carefully stayed safe. Stories, unneeded, unwanted. Innumerable closed portfolios, buried beneath towers of other people’s monopoly on acceptable humanity.
Weeping bitterly for the dead above and the dead below, this groping through mortification led me eventually to a narrow staircase leading up out of the tombs into soft light. Soft like acknowledged unsurety, light like dawning integrity, upwards like expanding understanding.
I exited the catacombs and turned to reconsider my monoliths, only to find myself surrounded by rubble. A new reality- not easy or familiar, not menacing. Just lots of stones and dust.
Before I start rebuilding, I will read the unseen tomes and salvage still sound stones,
I will embrace shame’s sorrow over fear, and love’s pain over safety. The cornerstone is already laid: a bulwark for the perishing as societies scoff in slandering greed or wail in the desolation of poverty. No system or structure ever withstands the winds of insatiable humanity, but people lingering at the foot of their strongholds, hopeful in idolatry, won’t leave their monoliths until they, in bitter, angry despair are devoured by the crumbling of their own creations. Or, by spiritual enlightening are supplanted and replanted, a death that leads to life.
In my underground wandering, like an early purgatory, God spared my soul, bringing down the monstrous idols that, unbeknownst to me, were crumbling. Now I do not hope in myself, nor in my history, and I am unsure but listening. My horizons are low, but the rock under my feet is unshifting.
“Okay,” you may think. “This is strange. I wonder what has gotten into this girl.” I’ll speak plainly: Try to hear and understand realities that may seem to you like fantasies or mysteries. Look around and see. It may be that the absurd and ridiculous or more articulate and serious then you previously allowed, that the perspectives you’ve left unheeded are vitally needed, that the monoliths of your own construction may, if left unmended, become your own destruction.
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