The Short Run, a Requiem

"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" -- St. Matthew 9:11

Love's Divine

Performed by Seal

LISTEN HERE

Then the rainstorm came, over me
And I felt my spirit break
I had lost all of my belief, you see
And realize my mistake
But time through a prayer, to me
And all around me, became still

I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Through the rainstorm came, sanctuary
And I felt my spirit fly
I had felt, all of my, reality
I realize what it takes

Cause I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Oh, I don't bend, don't break,
Show me how to live and promise me you won't forsake
Cause love can help me know my name

Well, I try to say there's nothing wrong
But inside, I felt it lying all along
But the message here was plain to see
Believe in me
Cause I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Oh I, don't bend, don't break,
Show me how to live and promise me you won't forsake
Cause love can help me know my name

Love can help me know my name.

 Love indeed helps us to know our name; it was ultimately an untimely end. The beginning seemed like any other -- the birth, the growing, the troubles, the training, and the boy became a man. For one young man, he was born and died in exactly the same place, almost 30 years apart. His end a shock, so utterly unexpected.

There is no dress rehearsal for life, no practice sessions; just a lot of chances for "do-overs" when we screw up. Reckoning the mistake(s) from the first attempt, often we conclude it's worth a second try to do it better, to do it right. So we try again, and many times it is better, and so right. Finally we succeed and recognize our successes and accomplishments; death is the exception, always final, a result.

Like all lives, there is little in the way of 'perfect' and many, like he did, suffer from less than perfect families, less than perfect parents. Parents often negligent or indulgent, sometimes so simply pre-occupied with their own life, they hardly notice the life of their child unfolding beneath their own noses. 

The child grows up restless, wild; in grade school the police enter the picture. They call parents down to the station to pick up this child. Again and again it happens. He learns to smoke and drink, becoming now a 'wild child.'

 As he enters high school, his often pre-occupied parents, become entangled with the police due to problems of their own. They're convicted, both for the same offense. A child with the merest conscience feels embarrassed. His family is in the newspaper; what do the neighbors, his school, his friends think? 
He cares for them all and hopes, needs their acknowledgement, their friendship. Yet these events drive him to secretiveness. He wants to hold his head, to maintain others' esteem.

...your teacher eats with tax collectors and sinners-- is written in the bible in the way of explanation for who was the person of the Christ.  He was, as it's written, one who endeavored to love his neighbor as himself, to forgo absolute judgement and to forgive those who trespass against us and others. 

With disappointments and betrayal come bitter anger, a desire to harm another. Most of us think, we could never do that... never do another bodily harm. When some one we know, care for or love comes under violent attack, even death, it's easy to think that the perpetrator is somehow so very different from ones' self. 
And yet we're human, each and every one of us. It's one of life's challenges to come to grips with this fact.

Secretiveness however, very often becomes a poison, eating away at ones' youth and early manhood. This young man continues to try and still doesn't often succeed. There are to be more contacts with the police; a wild child is trying but not winning the very thing he most wants: to know who he is and what is to be his purpose in life. With high school graduation behind him the world waits... and waits... He's not ready, doesn't know what to do.

Some how, some way he finds a path to further education, to people who support him, to the positive teacher who will inspire him; he begins little by little to believe, to unfold his protective shell. 
To believe that he can succeed, he believes more and more in himself, his natural talents and the will to gain more skills. Acquiring more companions on the way, a community to claim for his own, this young man is now moving forward with some answers to the questions that nag us all. 
A 'eureka' moment gives him the drive to try a business on his own. Wonderful.

But life, whether long or short, has its ups and downs, and tragedy. So sad-- this tragedy, a life so full, so young, so hopeful; a family destroyed now, each and every one of them. The culprit waits for his day, in jail. We mourn a young man's death. Our grief is apparent.