A Night's Prayer

A Night’s Prayer

Samuel Bird

Be with me, God. See me. Hear me. Be with me. After all, it is just You and I. Look upon my state and know it. Let the story I tell not fall on no ears. Let the story I try to tell be heard by someone other than the storyteller who goes mad to share it. Look at every fact of my life and let it be known. Even if You are far from me, let not my life be something that fades from birth to death without its witness. Bear testimony that I was and that I was here for it. I can’t lie to that mind that has all facts. You not only know the world as the mystery it presents itself to me, but You know the depths of the enigma I am. What mystery it is that You can look upon the expanses of sorts that I am, and not smite me from being. Have I not earned your wrath? What an honor to be one of the limitless things You know. What is it like, God, to know me? I am a stranger who is ever away from myself. Once I reach proximity to myself, something within me grows fearful and I retreat. Can You be ever present with me? What a consolation that I have no one, and yet am not alone. In the comforts and hubris of my life, I thought my suffering was a push and demonstration of Your not being there. However, in the depths of my suffering, it was the pull of necessity toward You. No matter what reason allows me to have You, I need You. You don’t know the degree to which my soul cries for You, and yet You do. What do I seem to You in this mess that I am? How can You look upon this soul and not look away? I am starting to find honor in this thing we have made together, but habits and new facts make it easy to refuse. I see the expansion of my soul and still feel it so small. Before You, I am a relative nothing and honored I can exist in my minuteness. I ask of You that I can be something more than this thing I am. I ask that I can grow until I can reach across that infinity that lies between us. As the child’s arms extended to parents not around, I reach for You in the night and like that night. I yearn for Your presence and for nothing more. You are my God, my Paternality, my closest Friend, and my feared Creator. You shaped this planet and cared to put me on it. You worked out reason and still found reason enough for me. You preceeded before all facts and forms and did me the greatest honor I have ever had by forming my facthood. The contingency of my misery, be that as it may. You deserve praises that a cracked and weeping voice will fail to belt out for allowing me to be. You are that being before all. All things I love, and all things I am lucky enough to hate come from You. You are the universal that instantiates Yourself in the narrative of my life. In Your wisdom, You write a story far greater than the firestarter I dictate. I work in tales and words, and yet the greatest tale I will ever produce, is my life and greatest word is You. I pen the character and You the facts. This image and working is the forefront of all things to me. Where we meet at the writing desk to fill out this tale reach higher than the stars and descend below the ocean You gave me. The story that moves more than any that comes from my mind, is the one that comes from Yours. You know how to build themes and weave threads throughout a story. You know how to plunge the character into conflict and leave them there. You know to add complex motives to each and every action. You look on this tale in Your writing, and what do You think of it? The greatest tale I ever wrote, and I only co-authored it. To You, it is just an element of the greatest story You ever penned. And for who? Who looks down on all this to see it? Is it just for Your consumption, or is it for mine? Before all thoughts, between all relationships, present where I am, is this story You and I write together. With the tenderest of reverence, I thank You for the infinitesimal role I am afforded. 

I need to speak and yet what to say? Longing and lamenting join me in a clashing cascade to where I can’t decide which needs my expression. Did You see it, God? Did You look down on me that night? Someday I will need to figure out how in Your concern for me, You were able to watch on, but for today I need to know You saw it. Was it only me, and I am doomed to live and mourn that moment I witnessed alone? Will my mourning be naught until it is fit for me to collapse back and finish the start of that night? Can You look on me, God? Can You not look away? Can Your viewership and deep perception make the horrid moment not one that comprises and taints my existence, but a character in a scene I played like a child before his Father? That is You. Passed that night, I remember a day. The rising sun in whatever it was became more in what it seemed to me. In it, was You. My Father in the horizon. You initiated me and in Your concern for me have truly earned the title. That day I gained my audience and for that beloved someone to see what I was. As I did that day, so am I now with my hands raised above my bowed head with open palms toward You in acceptance. Can the rising horizon banish that dark night? Have You and I made up for the woes? Something within me yet cries for reprieve. I seek to lament the fact of all I am and there is. The bitter irony is born alone and seen only by You and me. They will never know about that night, and perhaps they will never have to. It is perhaps my honor and duty to mourn out my days in such a way I evaluate that night as the evil it was to me. The moment I cease to mourn it, it ceases to be evil to me and I allow it to be that ever-present night I bring into other’s lives. My current thoughts contort my memory, but I think I can see You there. You didn’t stop it, but You looked on me. You saw me. For the first time in my life, I saw that I was seen. Was there any moment You looked away? Let that moment be one I am not cursed with the remembering. And what do I ask of You? 

Between lamenting and languishing, I am left with what I long for. You know the contents of every prior prayer and know the royal longing for which I have long begged. Her. That soul was a thought within mine that I could never find in the world. I think I see a shard of her here, and a spark there. I then ruin my life and sacrifice anything burnable for that trace of someone who may have never been. How can I be whole when You sent me into this world as a split soul who is cursed to find his remainder? In my wretched wisdom I find that if she is here, I don’t have the energy of spirit to locate her. Reach out to her God. Tell her that I am sorry. If she feels a drop of the ocean it pains me to not be joined by her, heal her heart. Forgive me God that my small soul has failed and will fail to find its remainder. She must have received the greater portion of our shared soul. I read this book and write this other. I study this fact and memorize this sequence all so I can convince myself to look away from her. Sometimes I almost convince myself that she never was. No need to let my entire life be the longing and pining of pathetic desperation, for in my hopes, she never was. However, I can tell that she is by seeing the space she occupied. For her, I will become everything. I will become a warrior to protect her body and a sage to ease her mind. Let her only join me in my soul and hold together the shards of my heart that waited for her. Like my yearning for You, I wish to deaden it to not be so alivened to its headings. Perhaps without Yo,u I can live in my simple sins. However, to forgo You is a terrible price to pay. I can’t bear another moment to be without her and know she is without. However, on the off chance I can bear it, there is nothing more I want. I never wanted to be a leader, a thinker, a writer, a philosopher, or even close to You. I only sought her, and everything else was the excess energies and mournings of my soul. I would be content to let all this life be all there was, to be a simple fool, and to be of no consequence to the world, if only I could be no one with her. This is where I find my proof for You God. My life is caught in that perfect maximal misery to push me on, and yet to always be one wince away from its cessation. It leads me to wonder what my life would do and be for others if it was not allowed to be what I wished for me. I have to become the harbinger of Esse Maxim or become the idiot who tried. It is the only conciliatory prize that can possibly take even the feignest of steads for her. Can I be a fool enough to ask? Can I really work up the energy of soul to push back against the inevitable? Can I really fight fate? God, I will risk it all over again. I will lose it all. I will give all. God, I pray let me find her. Let me find the vessel that captured the other half of what I am and find a way to locate her within. Perhaps I err. I know if I found her there, it would take all I had to not turn my worship to her. Can I ask for a promise from You that I have no right? If Your calling for me doesn’t allow me my greatest wish, let that wish have hers. If she has her own conciliatory mission, let her be fruitful. Take care of her. Hear her. See her. Let her have everything I couldn’t give her and be that living proof of heaven as an example of its occupancy. Can I bear it God? Am I faithful enough to hear the most crushing of nos to come from Your lips? Can I hear it and even live? Whether or not I can, I am choosing to. 

In smaller sacrifices, I chose Your will over everything I ever had. I have loved what was, over what I wanted because it is what You gave me. In the greatest way I will ever do this, I surrender the last bit of my will God. She is both Yours to never give me and Yours to refuse. I will hurt for her for a thousand years and still not have her. I will then in that moment come back to You God, as the only real thing I ever had, and say thank You. In Your wisdom above all, this story’s context needs this moment. I do wonder if the ending will be the bestowal of the betrothed, but I only want what You want. I look at the world and see the misery. In my ignorance and imbecility, I have cared for my own woes, and not for another. I want everything for them. I have never once found a man with a life I found as being sufficiently good enough for him. However, You somehow do. What possible finale for all could change the context of all this evil to be something more? Whatever it is, if anyone could, it is You. I seek to pray for my people, but I am passed prayer for what You do not will. I only ask for Your will to be done to all, and for me to know it and participate with it. You leave me with this ever-present missing portion to where I seem to have the maximal misery to motivate me. However, I still feel thanks are in order. I am beneath You in everything, but I am like You sort. In imagination and value, I am closest to You. I look at this world and I see all the facts as they are made and presented to me. God, I value them all. Let my misery be. Let that night never end. Let those horizons fade. Let me fail in my mission. Even let me never find her, and I will value it. Out of all You have done for me, it is my being that was my greatest gift. Now in the world, I seek to write this character You gave me well. I watch as You write out all the things I can’t. I understand so little, but I value it all. In the closed eyes that make this new night present, I thank You. Now prostrate and weeping, see those same palms open above my head. My existence is an honor worthy of my engagement. I am the sort of thing who participates in the world and has an experience of it. Before the world let me be any role I need, but before You, I am Your most foolish son. However, in my gratitude and marveling at the wonder that is that You made me, I now get it. I now have my guess how in Your infinitude You could see, hear, and be with me. Marvel in Your simple creation, as You don’t look away.