I write to understand.
Yet as I begin to try,
the brush shakes in my hand,
and the ink begins to dry.
While clarity remains,
My mind prepares to fight.
So study I my stains:
to understand, I'll write.

There comes a time in the lives of many that an attachment both deep and profound is severed by the scythe of the collector. It is grueling. Wave after wave of fresh agony is sparked and spurred on by a myriad of unexpected and otherwise benign stimuli. A picture of someone smiling, or a kind remark made by passersby beget a fresh gash in the soul, and the eyes bleed their saline to vent the cortisol spike for which one would undoubtedly have been ill prepared.

"He's gone."

These two words have more power than I know how to express. Should I regret typing them? Should I regret them in other contexts? If I should be in a room at a common meeting place and get asked for the whereabouts of a friend of mine, should I regret using those words in reply? No, but I do. To say them, to hear them, or to think them is an invitation to revisit the grave and the recognition of finality.

To acknowledge that finality is to remember mortality's biting edge. Yet, it was never my death I feared. I could die at any moment, but it wouldn't hurt me. It would hurt others. Similarly, the death of others is the thing I've learned to fear. It's reasonable. Anyone that's humored the darker side of thinking for any length of time knows that to hurt someone, you get stronger, longer lasting results by doing so indirectly. Physical pain can be tolerated. Psychological pain can be eternal if it goes untreated by the rare few medical professionals of the world that actually understand parts of it. Psychological pain induced by the psychological suffering of those closest to us is particularly virulent.

Shouldn't it be a relief, then, to know that the suffering of that attachment is ended by death? It should be. Yet, my memories torment me. You see, they are rarely available to me, and their absence on the edge of accessibility is torture. I can almost remember moments throughout my life with him. I can almost remember parts of conversations, looks, expressions, goals, conversations, stories, ambitions, successes, failures, fights, reconciliations, but not one of them dares manifest fully save for when I know the words:

"He's gone."

Then, and only then it seems, I can see his face. I can hear his laugh. I can know that my promises to him were unfulfilled on his deathbed, but that they still have by the skin of their teeth the possibility, however small, of being realized. Should I show his grave the signs that I've achieved what it is that I've achieved? It would be symbolic, but it would show him nothing. I would have the gratification of presenting to a stone a piece of paper, perhaps several, to the sound of a gentle breeze brushing through trees at best. How could he hope to see it? Weren't the words true?

"He's gone."

Absent is the wrong word. He left the world on his own terms by the signature left in ink on the page for the hundredth time demanding that the doctors finally let him die alongside the signature of his wife left behind in a request not to be resuscitated. For months, he has sold off the difficult to sell possessions. For months, he has filed the paperwork. His widow had nothing to do but find a place for his clothes, and begin to adjust to a life without him for he had done the rest before he gave himself to death.

"He's gone."

She must know worse pain than mine. She is alone, removed from all of her family in a wilderness of strange faces, surrounded by the deaths of all of her friends and the one she held closest. Her faith and a dream demand her keep her eyes on her life and the lives of those that remain. Her faith tells her that there will be a reunion. Her faith tells her that there's life after death. Her faith tells her that death is only the end of the suffering of the world for the faithful, and she has no room in her mind for doubt for his work was of the faith and has been for over seven of the eight decades he lived. She spent the same studying her scriptures and lessons

"He's gone."

I don't share her faith. He asked us all in the words he left behind to reflect on it. Here is the beginning of my reflection. I started young in the hands of the church. I was raised in part by the many, many services and mid-week meetings that being involved in every conceivable youth initiative permitted. I've been on mission trips, summer retreats, camps, vacation bible schools, church-related sports trips, and I became a leader in most of those areas at different points in my life. I can't count the bible studies. I can't count the conversations with teachers, guides, mentors, coaches, or pastors. At one point, I knew my faith very, very well.

There's a small problem. If biblical truth is truth verbatim, unchanged by the new testament in that no letter of the law was changed in the coming of the messiah, then why was I created? I am bisexual. I am related to a woman that leads spiritual discourse and teachings. I am born in a world of mixed fabrics. I am dissatisfied with platitudes and apologetics for the fallacies and inconsistencies that they fail to entirely address. I am medically compromised in a number of ways. I was raised on foods Leviticus forbids. Acts 10 tells us that the unclean was cleansed through conversion and crucifixion, but the words of the crucified in Matthew 5:17-20 tells me that the letters of Leviticus are unchanged for the work is not done, or should we overlook the work done in and by the church following crucifixion as detailed in the remainder of the new testament as being post-completion? How could we ask? He's gone.

Would you ask me to pray on it, and to meditate? I've tried. How should I distinguish the "Voice of God" from hallucination? How should I distinguish vision from delusion? I'm told that I will simply know. I guess the fact that I don't means that every instance in memory is not legitimate. Or is that my skepticism? How should I know the difference between skepticism and the devil's tongue? It's simple. I can't. Oh, but there is scripture: 1 John 4:1-6. Perhaps I should turn again to scripture, the scripture written in a hundred ways by a hundred hands over hundreds of years, curated by councils, governments, and denominations - divided deeply by philosophical interpretations and weighing of evidences. Is the Calvanist interpretation better than the Arminian? Should we pick and choose pieces to become Evangelists? It depends on which mostly-consistent subset of the scripture you wish to choose, but the divisions exist because the whole of the work contains enough room to be interpreted so wildly differently.

It shouldn't be taken literally. 2 Peter 1:20-21 tells us that prophets' interpretations of their prophecies are independent of their truth. Allegories and metaphors abound throughout the work, hinting at morals and ideals which set up some semblance of nuanced morality that eats itself alive in edge cases, but what would I know of such things? Hebrews 5:11-6:12 make abundantly clear the consequences of being immersed and falling away, do they not? I was told again and again that there was but one correct interpretation of the whole. 2 Peter chapter 2 is the warning. Jude 1:3-16 describes again the pain and vitriol faced by false teachers, relates those that have fallen from the path to irrational animals, and grumbling malcontents. Perhaps I am. 2 Timothy 2:16 - "But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness," yet here I am, irreverent and babbling. The faithful have faith. What is it that my babbling destroys?

It is in 2 Timothy chapter 3 that more is found of worth to this reflection: Verse 16 declares even my babbling capable of profit for those pursuing the scriptures referenced in spite of my vivid resemblance to the first 9 verses of the same chapter. Titus 2 comes again, and I must know: What is 'sound' from the perspective of theologians? From the perspective of logicians, it is a type of deductive argument. When an argument should be valid and have all true premises, it is sound. It is valid if the conclusion is true under the assumption that all of the premises are as well. What are the premises of a sound Christian doctrine? How have we shown their validity? How have we shown each premise is true? These questions are bold and difficult to answer. One premise is that there exists a being called God with all of the properties ascribed to him by the text. His existence is totally unknowable by description, but partially knowable by experience. His existence is by its very nature unfalsifiable.

Hume gives us remarkable tools to use in examining the reasoning of others. Among them is his fork, separating clearly relations of ideas from matters of fact. The existence of a thing is a matter of fact by class, and should be independently determinable from relations of ideas through experience. This seems at first perfectly amicable to the existence of a god that can be partially knowable by experience, but what of those that only have the hearsay of their peers? How can they know the ways of Christianity are true in light of a world of religions and ideologies that vastly differ from it claiming likewise that they are true? How can they know that one denomination of Christianity is true, and how can they know which one is? If it is by experience, why are so many led to different conclusions by their experience?

Hebrews 2:1-4 begins to attempt an answer by starting with the observations of others. The testaments are the works of the witnesses to wonders and miracles, as are the books of other faiths likewise. Why this one?

Reflecting on the scripture will take more time than I have. There are projects coming due - large ones that make or break my degree - that determine the validity of my next steps in academia or the work force - that decide the course of my life on Earth, whether or not there is one after it. There once was a child with my name that grew up believing for 12 or 13 years the truths taught to him by his grandparents and parents, by his peers and teachers, and by his church. Like my grandfather: He is gone.

I write to understand.
Yet as I begin to try,
the brush shakes in my hand,
and the ink begins to dry.
While clarity remains,
My mind prepares to fight.
So study I my stains:
to understand, I'll write.