To House Church - NaPoWriMo #13

I've never hated you.
I've never screamed at you in rage,
or said to you the things that I knew would make your heart break.
I've never wanted you to hurt.
In fact, I walked away because I could no longer look on
while you placed yourself in the intersection between pain and defeat.
You are victory.
You are light.
But no one knows this other than me.
None of the tear-stained bottles
or previously punctured veins can see
that underneath the pages of dead tomes are real hearts
hurting,
crying,
bleeding,
not for yourselves
but for those who go home to wash off the smell of latex and sweat.
I know that you weep for those who haven't overcome yet.

And I know you long to laugh.
But I cry because somewhere it was written,
and you believed,
that your laughter was impropriety,
that your rabbi kept his feet dirty and his eyes cast down.

Your words do not come out like love.
The word "follower" is tattooed on your skin.
The real world looks at you and misinterprets Them.
And I hate this.
And you don't understand
why you've sacrificed your education and your friends
for a life spent in service
and we still don't get it.

This world cannot read Greek.
Hebrew is too far removed from American for us to understand when you speak.
The cause you're willing to live and die for
is stifled by the yellowed pages of history.
I wish you could see
that all we're trying to do is breathe new life
into a system that could catalyze change.
The revolution is not on the page.
It just might be televised,
but the broadcast will be late,
because the movement you seek
flows through the bodies and out of the mouths
of those you can't hear over the sound
of an army holding on, crying out,
claiming they won't be moved.
Your revolt is in the way.
Evolution is fluid.

And I beat my fist at the futility of this argument.
Your passion is valid.
Your words are not undermined by the way you live.
And for this, I commend you.
For this, I drop my knees to the pavement and respect the posture you don't know you're not bound in.
And then I stand,
stretch back into the posture I am free to assume,
and I reach back to you,
begging with my eyes that you'll stand up in grace too.
You shake your head no
and I go on praying that someday you'll know
commitment doesn't have to always be painful.