A New Season of Invasion

A miracle of sunset set the buildings ablaze in bright pink. I watched the sky bleed out from the parking lot of the Cathedral, and as the candle burned, the wick shortened, the wax softened and thawed. I was watching the finale, the denouement of the day, if you will. This is the season of denouements; the sun dies an earthly death each day only to rise again tomorrow, and in a February nearly expired, I discovered an expiration of my own on the horizon. Call it a personal curtain call, life in the season of death, death in the season of life. It was back in September, Mary’s intercession, the wave of humility like a warm wind in the scablands, blowing away debris and finally setting my record straight. The burden then placed on my soul was response rather than reaction, acknowledgment rather than deception, truth against the worst kind of lie a person can muster. However, heavy is the burden, 33 years of a denier’s weight finally lifted, but now the responsibility of action glares from the corner of every misaligned decision: the renunciation of the past while dragging it through to the present, with the future always in question until it is not.

I can feel it all coming to a close, almost against my will, but not quite. The old of me clings to the new, begging for a sort of integration. An occupation of two wholes, but there is only space for one to fill; someone must go, and go for good, as the battle is for blood, for life; the consequence of defeat is death. I made the decision to die for it, but life does not snuff out so easily. The old is there, trying to drag me back to hell, trying to prevent the change, as the threat is real this time. I can feel the old digging in, refusing to give up his place, fighting hard to retain the territory staked out and once conquered against all my attempts at conversion. The tyrant has never known a worthy competitor, but now he cowers when confronted, a coward before the face of God.

My ecosystem teems with foliage planted in the era of adolescence, and oh, how it has spread! The old life, indigenous but now under threat from a new species, there is a new season of invasion as the old learns of his displacement by root and branch. The new life, young and fragile, grows ever wider and firm, growing further only by grace I grant myself and others. I have only written of myself producing fruits of arrogance and pride, of minimal culpability, like life happens to me rather than for me. And only now have I seen the error. Still, I show the old his due compassion, poor kid, a little boy held back from the light; he meant no harm. Evil for evil’s sake was never his intention, as it rarely is for those who find new life.

You see, people do change, just not when we want and least of all when we need them to.