The Hair Net of Violence

Don't ask me why this set of words grabbed me while I was making brownies for a 15-year old's special celebration Saturday afternoon.  I forget the name of the poet, but as she read, voice low and clear, on the radio on our stove, I was sucked into her vortex of potent words and descriptions.  "The hairnet of violence"...something so simple and ordinary, a delicate web of thread worn by grandmas, or McDonald workers flipping burgers.  Contrast with the word violence, harsh, exacting, terrorizing.

The 'hairnet' descends quickly, almost without warning.  Emotional violence, like physical pain, can be searing and unrelenting.  Secrets, screaming eyes, desperate prayers, thudding hearts, breaking, shaking, shattering, a drowning, "where's bottom?  where is up?  Is this really happening to me?".  Plunging into this violence of the heart with oneself, with others, can be devestating.  Who asks for this in life?  In our sons and daughters, our marriages, our neighbors?  Shattered dreams, a waking nightmare, when will I wake up?  Or a decision to die quietly, "it's better this way".  Maybe I'm too sensitive, maybe I need to be a little more calloused to pain, mine and others...show a brave front, draw up an inspirational line for my laptop on my desktop, and move foward.  Can I ignore the hairnet, it pulls my hair up out of the way, perhaps it hides something.  The way us humans flail and grab, then say I'm ok, your ok (while thinking murderous thoughts), and we draw menacing pictures and take too many pills and we are alone again with tortured minds and thoughts and annoying looks and smiles. 

The lady in the interview was asked, is this world bearable for you?  No, she replied, it's quite unbearable.  Me too, sometimes.  This morning my sons and I had a great chat on the days of creation and what sustains life.  The first noticable thing that God did was to create light.  There was no sun, nothing to cause it, except Himself.  Light, the energy that all life is based on but where does it come from?  What is its essence?  I asked my youngest, how can light exist without anything to produce it?  He said, God just did it that's all!  God is the source of light and in him there is no darkness at all.  In our grief and violent ways, our hearts are dark, chaotic, hypnotic and deceitful.  We cannot find hope in ourselves or our grand "ok-ness", our pride and vanity has created a whirlwind of shame.  His Light penetrates, dispells acidic darkness and brings the seeds of hope, life, healing, freedom.  I will grab hold of this truth, even when the Hairnet threatens to suffocate me with its violence, hate and darkness.  In sorrow and celebration we will wait for the revealing of His essence..... Light.