the Cry

The Cry – A plea to God from the Journal of the Kirk (1987)

Today I think of myself as Adam. What would he look like? For some reason I have always thought of him looking like me – but a whole lot better. Or something like what I will look like in the New WORLD. He, or I – Look like a kind of Robin Hood or Viking Lord. We are muscled and stand tall with rounded chest and washboard abs, and when we laugh the cedars shake. My face is ruddy with sun and my beard big-red. I saunter with hair all over and look like some Viking Lord apart from clothes and wild with sun and sand and salt. I behold my bride. Does she look something like the woman that I should marry? I see her with my minds eye. I don’t see her so much as Anglo. After all, we should in time need to spin out skin as dark as midnight tar, or skin white like porcelain. I see her somewhat olive, eyes leaning brown and hair a redded-black, kinked a bit but flowing. Maybe she has a nose that is sharp and thin like some of the women from India, or maybe it is broad and Polynesian. Maybe she looks like a black Mariah Carey! Her eyes are big like cows eyes – How is that for a description? It reminds me of the time at Booker T. (my Tulsa High School) when we closed out our senior year with a description of the perfect woman. She would parts of all the different popular girls at school… She had Natasha’s nose or Heather’s eyes, or Yo-Yo’s legs. Of course by the time we mixed all the parts, not to mention hues, the thing created would be quite peculiar.

So I consider my Eve. Her breasts are full of life and she has more weight on her than our gaunt models. Her hips are wide … but Dear, I pay my respect to those Victorian vices; Her waist is small—or maybe not. Perhaps her belly pours like a belly dancer or the woman of the Song of Songs, all round like a goblet. It still think those Old World painters and folks in India have something on us. She laughs and grins and looks like she should pull out of the water with dripping …

Oh when, WHEN will I have a bride?

She doesn't need to look like this thing. That woman has vanished and filtered out. And maybe even faded in her force with the Fall.

On one level I am amazed that we continue on any level to be handsome or beautiful at all. The Fall has marred us, not only in our souls, but I imagine in our genetic profile. Even so, I marvel at Eve – poured out in Irish queens with pale milk skin and red hair and long with freckle … Or I consider skin as dark as night with teeth that shine like the new moon. A shadow waiting to infold me.. So – What will it be? Will I marry a woman who looks like me, or stands against my skin with another kind of loveliness. Will her hair fan up and out like coral, or cascade down like a cataract? Will the grace of her skin and form be fragile and oriental, or will her stature be firm and heavy, even Germanic. What is this thing in me that is continually moved by Beauty? I want to poses it. I don’t always want to live in these dreams of holding. When will I hold real flesh, or feel her curl with her warmth into me.

Dear God… You know this longing of my soul. I so want to be married. I’ve given You so much latitude. HA! Call her from any race or culture. But then, where do I belong? I can’t even figure to what world I belong. So, will my bride where a covering, or will I myself where the jacket and the hat?


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Addendum:  During my twenties I was much taken by (or unsettled by) the teachings of the Old Order Mennonites, a Christian sect known for their radical simplicity.  I wrested with "renouncing all" and joining them.   Hence the reference to the "jacket and the hat."

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