Spilt Wine

Today was uncommonly cool and windy. Cumulus clouds drifted across the sky while thunderstorm clouds stayed breached atop of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Within the first thirty minutes of work, I was told that a supervisor within our department had passed away this morning. An uncharacteristic announcement on an uncharacteristic day. He had been diagnosis with stage-four lung cancer about six weeks ago and today he expired. I really liked him and looked up to him. As the day progressed, I found myself listening to the voice of life. Death awakens that sense within you. I broke up a fight during the high school lunch hour and a red bloodstain on my shirt screamed “I am hateful”. During the extraction of a suicidal teen with a gun, I watched a life placed in jeopardy as a shotgun and two handguns were pointed at his head. As I helped him to his feet, I physically felt his pain bleed unto me through his self-inflected cuts. They cried “I hurt”. And at the end of the day, after the junior high graduation ceremony, a student asked if I could take a picture with him while he was dressed in his cap and gown. No blood this time, but I did hear his life proclaim “ I am happy”.

It’s been just about a year since Audrey and I have stopped going to church. You would think that it would be hard to meet other Christians outside of church, but to my surprise I have met lots of people over the year that are believers and more surprisingly, they have no desire to be apart of a corporate church either. Everyone has their reasons, which could be argued as selfish and undisciplined, but are they really? I was having this conversation with a co-worker last week, who is also a Deacon for his church. He said to me “lots of people call themselves Christians but are nowhere to be found on Sundays”. Then he quoted a bible passage something along the lines of "they called Lord, Lord, but He did not know them".

Wow. Was that a dig at all non-church going Christians? When I told Russ about this conversation, he put it best when he said “ as if the only way to know God is within a building”.

I remember when we were sick
I watched The Wall
my fever was all I need to hallucinate.
Chills came and went.
You were still there.
Then you got sick
And you wrote some incredible lyrics
We played it until our fingers bled
Blood on the strings-rhythm in the air
Singing about memories that wont die
We will not die- we will not die
Because fever strikes mid-summer memories