Keep Crashing This Car, Over and Over

Why are we still so afraid?
The things we do deserve their rightful names.

Swing with all you have.
Stop me if you can.

-be sensible, jimmy eat world


I think that, in a way, we all bought into the hype.

It's the trial. At last. The trial.

And of course there's so much to be said about that. Justice. A reckoning. Punishment. Confrontation. Something.

Whatever we thought it would mean, if we ever really thought about it at all, we were not prepared for what it actually was. In poetry you can never say "I love you." In life it is never enough to say "good and hard." How to describe that week? Imagine Jesus descending into hell. Grace personified. But in hell.

The trial was, both literally and metaphorically, a destination. Something that we could look forward to. Something that we could place our stock in. Something that was, I don't know, tangible. But it was also an unwanted guest, still in the house far after we tired of its company. It was the emergency surgery.

And it's understandable really. We needed this. Some of us more than others. Several of us much more than me. We all needed this. But none of us wanted it to be necessary. All we've ever really wanted was escape.

When I try to think of the last time that I sat down with a bunch of other people from Central Presbyterian to discuss Peter, for any reason, I picture his welcome party. The rest of it has sort of slipped by. I've never really talked to my parents about it. I've never gotten a card in the mail saying "we're having a meeting at the church, why don't you come join us." I've never had someone even suggest that maybe we should sit down and talk this out. What in the world would we talk about? How would we possibly begin?

Looking back, these events (the Peter years, the post-Peter years, the Peter's back!?! trial years) have all transpired with surprisingly little fanfare. Look back again and you'll be forced to realize that he has never really left us alone. A constant presence that everyone is ashamed to talk about. Scared to talk about. Confused about. The 600 pound gorilla in no uncertain terms.

I got a phone call this morning saying that Peter has been arrested. Again.

I couldn't move on even if I wanted to.

When the stone first hit the water, the disruption of our lives was just too much. Surface tension destroyed. The rotting muck underneath revealed. And when the water returned to glass, no one could intentionally throw another stone. But the wake remains, bouncing off the shore and ricocheting around us. The ripples lapping against our collars remind us that we are up to our necks. The temperature drops slowly. We alternate between bouts of confused panic and treacherous sleep.

Look out the window. The green bleeds away, leaving a sickly, jaundiced yellow in its place. The lazy breeze speeds up, and then its temperament sours. The wind grows teeth and tears at the flesh of the trees. And then one day you realize that the cover from your shade tree is gone. You look up to see a weathered oak standing naked in the sun.

At some point I realized that all of this was choking me. This recurring sliding feeling wasn't going away.

So the trial, this public spectacle, became the chance to say that the emperor has no clothes. It was a chance to come out. All is not well. Something terrible has happened here.

Something terrible has happened here.

Late in the week I was listening to an expert witness testify about trauma and its impact on adolescents. Suddenly I became alert, conscious of myself in a room full of strangers. I was nodding along, picturing my life in the scenes of escapism and guilt.

Here's a test:

Do you often assume that people in the church are full of shit? Clearly guilty of something, definite skeletons in the closet?

Do you look for cracks in the corners, sagging rafters, proof that the foundation is slipping? Are you convinced that the building will collapse? It's only a matter of time. Save yourself.

Do you feel caught between the past and the present, as if some blunt instrument has struck your history and shattered its continuum? Endangered your future?

Do pieces of your life feel fragile? At any moment a wave will come and sweep them away, like great walls of ice abandoning the glacier and drowning themselves in the sea.

Do you search desperately for something that looks like Jesus and feels like love?

The trial unlocked the hard drives and knocked over the file cabinets. Information everywhere. Bits and pieces of fear and hate and betrayal just littering the floor. Millions of pixels all distorted. An image I had not forgotten, but had very clearly lost.

The trial turned out to be a chance for the world around us to crash the party, to reach the epicenter and look for survivors in the wreckage.

Ultimately, it didn't quite go our way.

Mistrial.

A miscarriage is when you lose the baby. We didn't lose the trial. We had a trial.

In some way it was validating. It was good to hear eight voices say that was has happened was wrong. That what has happened was criminal.

Why did I need to go? Why did I feel so compelled? A physical draw, my headlights pointed towards the one thing I wanted most to avoid. Was it to support my friend? Clearly. But what does that even look like? Was it to, in some way, confront Peter. Possibly. I confess that I always stayed out of the men's room when he was at the urinal.

Mostly I think it was because someone finally gave me the chance to show up, to walk into a room. To say with my presence, "this was wrong."

I have been living my life like a sprint since the moment Peter left. Or maybe since the moment I left Peter. I've been running. From myself. From him. From the guilt. But sprints don't last. You can't live a sprint.

I've been running because the temple where I worshiped, the place where I Am dwells, burned to the ground. All that cedar and bronze. Poof.

But we've found that life goes on without the temple that Solomon built. Instead of the altar, we've had the Nicoletti's table. Instead of the burnt offerings, we've had the Wicklund's fire pit. Understanding in a car crash.

Transformation just takes so much time.

If I could make it better for the people around me. The friends and the family. Oh God. I would. But I'm not God.

And God is. God Is.

I'd be lying if I said that I don't still try to offer myself up as the ram caught in the thicket. I'd be lying if I said that I was alone in that.