Clean, Strong, and Covered in Mud

I had a pretty big “ah-ha” moment today.  Because of the way writing works, I have been forced to weaponize both my imagination and my intellectual curiosity.  It’s a powerful combination of things, and while I enjoy Defcon Level 2 day dreams, they can be a bit distracting.

Occasionally, a nugget of pure wisdom rolls through the mental doors, and this morning was such an occasion.

I wrote last week about abandoning glory and embracing the muck that is writing.  I have a pretty heavily religious upbringing from my early teens to my mid twenties, and a lot of it has stuck with me all these years.  Simile and metaphor about dirty and clean and constant thoughts about what it means to be just and kind are inescapable influences in all aspects of my life.

Today’s realization wasn’t so much an earth-shattering new bit of information, but simply a change in perspective which made things come into sharper focus.  I’d always carried an image in my head of a supremely clean being (usually Christ) who is able to interact with the mud and the horror that human existence causes without it sticking to him.  The wars, revenges, and abuses too numerous to count can all be too ugly and too horrifying to truly understand.  I had hoped, dreamed really, that there was a being out there strong enough to stronger than such things, greater than the nightmares we perpetuate against one another.

While I am not attempting to diminish the power of such images, this line of thinking has been hampering my own understanding and limiting my own growth.

It gave me the wrong idea of strength and an incorrect image of clean.  Clean has especially taken new light with the string of Me Too sexual assault allegations and the men accused who have taken every measure to lead lives of esteem and reputation only to use the pedestal that they have lifted onto as a barrier from the consequences of preying upon their victims.  Kavanaugh is but the most recent example of this toxic frame of mind, and the response to his accuser and women in general has been nothing short of profane.

Clean isn’t freedom from the stains of our mistakes.  Clean isn’t being washed free of regret or being immune to criticism.  Clean is to be willing to let our past shape and guide us without giving in to it.  To move in the muck and the mire of our own volition without being permanently tarnished by it.  My perfect being, my beacon of cleanliness and virtue, isn’t standing above that nonsense trying to direct traffic, unwilling to see himself stained.  He is down in the mud with us, guiding and lending strength to those failing and to those doing all they can to help others.  He is in that mess every single day, every single hour, doing all that is within his considerable power to save everyone he can reach, giving strength and courage to both rescuer and rescued.  Because at the end of the day, after all that can be done has been done that perfect being is able to wash away the horror coating them and still be clean.  He is not untarnished because he is above the fray or above us or anything even remotely like that.   He is clean because he has given all that he is able to give, left all that there is to leave in his daily labors.  He has worked, and loved, and laughed, and comforted to the best of his ability.

This realization lead to a second, equally powerful one.  Strength is having the courage to struggle and suffer to save the soul before you, without caring how you look to others.  Without caring what they will do for you in return or how they will think of you after you’re gone.  Strength is the desire, the need, to save as many souls as you can, because more than anyone you know their pain.  You know their pain because you have lived their pain.  You, better than anyone, know the constant ache and terror they live with as they do everything they can to keep their head out of the mess that life makes.  To see their suffering, to have overcome it yourself, and to sit back and do nothing to aide them is more than you could ever bear.

That is strength.  Not to stay “above the fray”, to “keep your hands clean”, but to set aside any sense of pride or ego, roll your sleeves up, and give all that you have and are to saving as many flagging souls as you can.  Not because you must, not because a god or God tells you to, but because you realize that we are all of us in this together.  That we are alone in a vast universe full of cold, calculating indifference, and that you and you alone may be the only thing standing between another soul and the yawning abyss which threatens to swallow them.

And all that ‘supremely clean’ being asks is that we go and do as he does.  That we be there with him, trying to be stronger, trying to be better, trying to see more, to feel more, to empathize more, to love more.  Not because we are horrible and imperfect beings, not because we are this terrible thing in need of ‘fixing’, but because we are suffering each in our own way and to sit by and do nothing would be more than this being could stand.  By asking us to go forth and be strong for others, by asking us to grow and learn to be there for one another, we are being made stronger than our own pain and suffering.  We are being cleansed, right here in the dirt and the grime, and until now I hadn’t even noticed.

Perspective can make all the difference in the world.