And I don't want to promise, because I don't want to lie.

So I’m sitting here listening to If God Will Send His Angels, by U2 in Dunkin Donuts, after taking the written portion of my driver’s test. I can’t work on the novel I’m supposed to have done by December. I can’t think. I’m running over things in my mind, restless, upset, not understanding things. That’s how I roll. I worry, and I fret, and I think, and I pick things apart in my mind and analyze the pieces, and then I sit down and write about them. That’s why I want to be a journalist. That’s what makes sense to me. But that’s not what I wanted to say. That was this morning.

I deleted that little bit, this morning, because I wound up wandering off on life careening out of my control, of not understanding my own destiny.

My dad and I had this huge political argument. This time, it started with me telling him what my older sister, who had been in the Army, said about Fort Hood – that it reflected the state of the United States Military. My dad said it had to do with political correctness. I disagreed. We proceeded to argue from there about everything currently on the political plate; I scored a few points, he scored most of them, because he is good at verbal arguments, and I am not. I can write. I’m not good at talking. Anyway. The whole thing culminated with me saying something about universal health care, and him laying a pretty hefty guilt trip on me and then giving me a lecture about using analytical thought instead of following your heart, your emotions.

I cannot accept that. I cannot. I cannot sit here, at my desk at my laptop in this house in America, the United States of, and make imperious analytical judgments without conscience.

I have derided my conscience as neurotic. Maybe it is. But it’s still there. There is still a voice telling me that what I am doing with my life, most of the time, is wrong. I am doing almost nothing to improve the lot of the poor, the sick, the needy in this world. What am I doing to feed the fatherless, the widows? I cannot vote without my conscience. I cannot vote without my emotions. The two are tied, the two are more me than I am, and there’s a logic bomb for you. That is who I am supposed to be. Not who I am, no – I’m not happy with that person. I get angry when people talk about me being a kind or a conscientious person. If I was the person – half the person – who I should be, I would be vegan. I would be working my ass off, and then sending most of my paychecks off to Save Darfur or to pay for cures for malaria, or to combat the AIDS crisis. I don’t hold up to the standards. That’s fucked up. I am not a kind or conscientious person.

My dad gets angry when I talk about this stuff. I don’t phrase it like that – that would be trawling for pity. (I phrase it like that here because I don’t have anywhere else to talk about it. I have to get this off my chest somewhere, and this is the only blog nobody connects with me.) But when I talk about ONE, (Red), Save Darfur, Fair Trade, hell, if I mention the word ‘hybrid,’ I get a death stare. Those, you see, are causes Liberals use to make themselves feel good about themselves. (Sometimes I wonder if he knows that is almost exactly the same thing anarchists say about them.) Those Damn Liberals, they’re so smug about what they’re doing to help the world. That Bono, he’s so smug about trying to fix the world. Don’t they realize that they’re being led around by the nose because they listen to their emotions instead of their minds?

Fuck. That.

After he left, I sat here thinking, wondering, trying to make sense of it all. I have a conscience, you see. It’s neurotic, probably from not being listened to, but it’s there. And, thanks to Slacktivist, I’m starting to see more about the world, viewed through a Christian’s eyes. An evangelical, no less! And someone who’s disgusted by the evangelical scene today, someone who hasn’t forgotten that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord thy God, and the second commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself. And someone who is consistently calling evangelicals out on it. But I bring any of these points up to my dad, and I get called out as a Liberal, smug in my own false sense of conscience.

I listened to If God Will Send His Angels, and I cried, and I shook my fist at the sky and begged for a sign, and I knelt and pleaded for a sign, and I despaired of there being any hope in this world, any true way to live for a Christian, anything to cling to. And I walked out and sat in the woods, and cried and stared at the sky and was accused by my conscience of praying to Bono, and defended my Not-A-Prayer by saying “at least he’s here, in this world, tangible and real,” and then had to admit that God is more real than anything tangible BUT ANYWAY. I don’t need a sign. I want a sign. I saw a cross, white and lit up, that I’d never seen before, on a hill, just visible behind some houses in the trees. Struck me as odd – I thought I knew that neighborhood backwards – but I desperately went to where it looked to be, and it turned out to be a flagpole.

Really, I should’ve seen that coming. I don’t need a sign. That, I guess, would make things too easy. But God, oh God do I want one. Something – anything – to make it just a little bit easier to believe that there IS a right way, always a right thing to do. I walked home. I sat down. I watched Jon Stewart, I listened to If God Will Send His Angels again, I cried a little more, and then I glanced at Twitter, saw Bono had just tweeted a few seconds ago (if it’s him; not a verified account, but I can be pretty naïve in my desperate hopes sometimes, and I’m willing to believe), and told him in a message he’ll probably never see that he’s a hero. My hero, anyway. Someone who actually gives a damn about this world, someone who’s working to do something about it, and someone who wrote a song pleading for a sign. A modern-day psalm. God, I want that sign. And it’s never given, you know?

There are all these stories, they tell them in Baptist churches, about the diver who’s been an atheist all his life, and one night he’s late at the pool, and he spreads his arms, about to dive into this pool, and perceives that the shape is like a cross, and he gets this spiritual moment of just… I don’t know what, and he walks down into the pool and discovers that there’s no water in it and he would’ve died, and he repents his sins and gives his life to God. It’s one of those posters you see in foyers, like the footprints poster… oh, the footprints poster. A friend of mine wrote on that:

“I guess what irks me about this, and other sentiments, which try to make life's hurts "better" is the implicit message hidden in them. They say, no matter what, there's comfort in knowing God is with you. No matter what, face life with the eternal hope and optimism of Christian life. God will protect you. God will make things better. Your life before Jesus: :-(. Your life after Jesus: :-).
…
So not only did I have issues, I suddenly had a religion that was smacking me across the face with, if you believe in God, it won't be as bad.

So it was bad, so what did that mean? It obviously meant I didn't believe in God enough.

A Good ChristianTM lives in the Grace of God. The reflect the Peace of Christ in everything they do. They walk with the joy of the Lord. They're happy and live happy lives. This was the positive side of religion presented me as a convert. I felt like, simply by being depressed, I was failing at being Christian. My unhappiness and troubles and self-hatred were because I just wasn't good enough.
…
Most importantly what happened was, by slow degrees, by example and prodding and (most important) just figuring it out for myself, I left the world of platitudes and inspirational posters and beaches at sunset and turned to the Cross.

Which, in most churches I frequent, features an emaciated man dying in agony. At some point in the process he, God and most beloved of God, looks up and says, "O God, O God! Why have you forsaken me?"

A man in abject helplessness, incapable of optimism (because optimism is thinking things will turn out okay) but still, in the depths of his despair, with the hope that this suffering will accomplish something. A man who carried his cross though in agony, but who--still--didn't soldier on, ignoring the pain; he fell, grew weak, needed help.

This, I recognized. This was me.

I think, sometimes, we are a little too afraid of pain. We are a little too anxious for everything to be over. We are a little too addicted to neat, clean, pat answers. I'm not advocating drawing things out unnecessarily, but honestly. Can we stop saying, "It's okay," when it isn't?”

So I guess that’s my point, after much rambling and whining and whatnot. It’s not okay. I’m not going to get a magical vision that shows me a clear path, gives me the willpower to follow it, and makes it impossible for me to fall from that path, whether into self-flagellation or apathy or wallowing or whatever the case may be. All I can do is follow what I perceive to be the right path, do what I think His plan for me is to do, and pray that if and when I delve into self-flagellation, apathy, or wallowing, He sends either a friend or a musician or a hero to slap me upside the head and put me back on track.

And that I always remember to write when things stop making sense, and maybe the words will bring me back to where I need to be.
…Amen.