Instead

I know now—

I don’t want “to pattern my life in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to all peoples.”

Instead, I want Christ to unpattern me in accordance with the broken and betrayed truth that defeated death for all time, and left all mortal flesh stunned into holy silence.

I want to be one who is chosen to ride the rough hairy pooka of metaphor until I fall off, lost and exhausted, on some lonely moor far from home.

I want to be one who blows in out of Christ’s wild wet storm, bringing the unsettling sound of distant thunder and the scent of black leaf-mold with me through the door.

I don’t want to be given the Holy Spirit, filled with Grace and Power, to “make me a priest in G*d’s church.”

Instead, I want G*d to fill me with Holy Breath and make me one able to usher some hint of the ineffable into words.

I want to be one who invites anyone into the wilderness who dares to come along, with no guarantee that we’ll ever come back.

I want to be one who peers deep, with fear and trembling, into dangerous pools once stirred by angels.

I want to be one who finds holy monsters and hidden chapels in the forest, and loses them again.

I don’t want to be vested with the “authority given to you to preach the word of G*d and to administer  G*d’s holy sacraments.”

Instead I want to be one whom G*d has entrusted, utterly without authority, to walk this holy world without a map, looking both high and low, wandering into the loneliest of distant deserts, scrambling up the highest of heavenward peaks— picking up a feather here, a stone there— bringing back nothing but sand in my shoes and rain on my eyelashes.

I want to be one whom G*d has delegated to go peering into the empty, grimy tombs of highway overpasses where Christ might have slept overnight; where in a damp corner I might find a worn, discarded cardboard sign marked with faded gospel fragments that no-one has ever read until now, and, if I find such a thing, to know how to translate its greasy, wrinkled words aloud.

I want to be one who needs no permission to dash recklessly through all those designated ‘safe spaces’ —with toilet paper stuck to my shoe and my shirt buttoned wrong— shouting “Wake Up and Smell Your Neighbor!”

               I don’t want G*d to make me a “faithful pastor, patient teacher, and wise counselor.”

Instead, I want G*d to unmake me; to touch my mouth with a burning coal; to let me sow the wind and reap the whirlwind; to give me the strength to grab hold of contrary angels and not let go until they drop a blessing.

Instead, I promise this: 

No matter how broken and hopeless a truth has become, I will offer it my voice.