And then there is love for the enemy

--love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.

from Frederick Buechner's The Magnificent Defeat

Unfortunately, I just witnessed my youngest sister being punished. Leather belt style.

I'm at my parents' house for the next few days, which is always a nervous situation for me. There's a risk to coming here. But still, I keep coming.

Growing up, I, too, received the belt treatment. I don't think there's anything wrong with that traditional southern discipline. I only know that a tool like that would be dangerous in my hands, that my kids will never receive that kind of discipline from me. For their sake, and for mine, I can never employ that. But in my parents' house, my mother enacted the policy that we would receive the belt for every transgression. There was no set number of lashes; the whipping stopped once you cried. My other younger sister, closer to me in age, learned the lesson early on: the sooner you cry, the quicker your punishment ends. But I was a prideful girl, more stubborn than I am today, and I refused to cry. Needless to say, my punishment only ended when the welts were criss-crossed and my dad's arm grew tired. Dad would even whisper to me "just cry, Nik, fake it, your mom will never know. Don't be bull-headed". I pity my dad in all this. He's a good man. But my mom has always used him as her tool. He hated enforcing the belt. But I remember the sting of the belt, my teeth scraping as I grit them against the pain, and the heat of unshed tears behind my eyes. Yett those punishments were nothing compared to the un-prompted, outright abuse that my mom poured out on me.

So tonight, when my littlest sister was punished, I couldn't help but pity her. She gave my parents horrible lip, had an attitude when she argued, and completely disrespected them. So I can't deny that she needed to be disciplined. But as my dad went to fetch the belt, I could feel my stomach twisting in knots; I didn't want to witness what was about to happen. Yet, as my dad hit my sister, he barely grazed her. My sister never winced, didn't cry out, never shed a tear, and when it was over she merely stormed away. It didn't even hurt her.

And a part of me got angry. It's so unfair that my siblings are treated better. That things are always easier for them when I was twice as well behaved as they are when I was their age. For the smallest second I grew very bitter and my heart hardened. Some people would call this righteous anger. But then, once my mom sent my littlest sister to bed after her punishment, mom turns to me and jokingly says "don't you remember when that was you". And I laughed it off but, yes, I remember all too well. And that comment made me realize, that my siblings are blessed to have gone through only a measure of what I endured. That I have always been glad to know things aren't as rough for them as they were for me. How could I, in one tiny moment, forget that relief I've come to know? I am ashamed of myself.

So, at times, it's weird for me to be here at my parents'. There are memories ingrained in these cement walls that I would rather forget. And I'm always on edge, tip-toeing around tempers. And I come back home to school a nervous, jumpy shadow. Because, occasionally, things still happen here. But I keep coming to my parents' house. Because I love my family. All of them. And no amount of physical pain could ever stop me from loving.

I have always said that my huge capacity to love is my one redeeming quality, Mayhap, it is my curse also.

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things,
out of the dust

from Gungor's "Beautiful Things"

I cannot explain to you, in mere words, the pulchritude of all to be felt around me: The slight giddiness as I stand at a dizzying height, looking down at the precipice of a new, yet unread, novel to be delved and mined. The strange sigh of regret, inaudible, loosed from my lungs at the finish of a good read; that bittersweet sound of reverberation as the book snaps shut, echoing in my head. The genteel fingers of the wind, threading through the tresses of my hair, as it pulls tendrils tenderly from my forehead and cheeks. The caress of a summer sun, alighting upon the tender spot of the neck and thrilling every nerve and sinew in the body until the knees grow weak. The drum roll of the sea, my heart beat catching cadence from the incoming waves. The security of a warm body curled into mine; a kitten, a child, a lover. The intoxicating smell of fire as it insinuates an unattainable passion to the other senses, save sight. The simplicity of melody interwoven with the complexity of harmony. The intricacy of life, of every living thing entwined with the lives of each other, unwittingly denying the idea that we, that life, is randomly made and exists. These sensations, these everyday quotidian feelings that rarely give the average person pause; they are the beauty of God. They are my joys.

Therefore since the world has still

much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
and train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of the stem that scored the hand
i wrung it with a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
the better for the embittered hour;
It would do good to heart and head
when your soul is in my soul's stead;
And i will friend you, if i may,
in the dark and cloudy day.

A. E. Housman's Terence This Is Stupid Stuff

I wonder sometimes if I have become desensitised. It seems near impossible to faze me. You can tell me good news, bad news, anything, or even tell me something in the way of changing my life, changing my current lifestyle, and I come to terms with being wrong so far in something I've done. But I have no reaction. I can agree  with what you say, I can accept the thought as truth: make it my own, believe in it, give it life. But i do not react to it. It causes no emotional reaction in me. I feel nothing.

And I wonder whence came this numbness? A product of my past habit of repressing emotion in order to survive a life of abuse? Or maybe a result of learning the hard way --that life can have more bad than good in store for me-- and preparing for such? This latter possibility is the thought that evokes Housman just now. And the poet describes his writing as the escape from the ills the world lays upon him. And it seems to me that getting those words out --"wrung" in his words-- implies a feat. A sort of work. A labor of gleaning, of prying and squeezing, those words and emotions from the things that have happened. I can understand that sort of forced writing; when it's all you can do to figure out what you feel, and you write because you're are compelled to do so --no matter that you don't have the words! WRITE! You must!-- and you put the harsh truth on paper, the raw emotion leaking from your hand, but numbness still in your heart. And why? Because, in putting the emotion on paper, even though you can't feel it, you hope some wretched soul that comes along and reads it --some poor soul that DOES feel-- finds empathy and solace in your words, and makes that effort you made to glean emotion from your empty heart somehow worth it.

In writing all this, I had maintained the hope that I would be able to glean some sort of emotion in reaction to the conversation I had not an hour ago. But I don't. I still feel no reaction. Should I not feel relieved?