untitled (6.24.08)

It feels like one of those things that would inevitably come--death and sickness. One of the great injustices we're suppose to face when we're old--death and sickness, but more and more I begin to notice that age plays no part in this journey.
Sickness doesn't wait, it is chronic, and in my family it appears too common. We are sick in ways we couldn't imagine--brokenness, estrangement, trust and communication, abuse and those are the things that doctors can't diagnose. For that there is bi-polar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, HIV, alcoholism, a frightening pregnancy, and now cancer.
It seems to be yet another attempt to make a life in despair. The screams of the saints and the silence of my cloistered mind, can not comprehend the enormity of the crisis
Theologically we are all in a state of crisis, disconnect, and it seems all to often that we seek it out--the depraved.
I struggle to know where to turn. When feelings have emptied, all that remains is the confused longing for touch--a word, a hand. It's a struggle for an abused mind to grasp. It is the crux of the soul, a problem with circumstance. It is terror that pulsates through me. Anger. A confusion that is immeasurable and makes you wonder where it is headed, where it will end. It is the abyss of the human experience. Devoid of form it seems gravely unbalanced, stacked against us in our battle to overcome--to give-in to the force that drowns from inside, from outside.
The rhyme and reason suggest an extreme absence of One who shall protect. Has protection passed over us, has it sank beneath our mantles and smote our love. It all seems uncertain, fragile and easily destroyed. Will a phoenix be awoken in my soul? Can it rise from the ashes and soar, or will it sink and drown in life's next sickness, it's next death.