Saddling an Iron Horse

As I slide each arm into the sleeve, the leather creaks and groans. Each elbow and shoulder slide perfectly into the armored joint. I grab each lapel and and pop the collar out as it inevitably gets rolled over in the process. I zip the jacket up and feel the back plate secure my spine. Each sleeve is then zipped and snugs up to each wrist.

Helmet donned, I stradle an engine and two wheels and make my way north. Across Dallas Highway, then to Barrett and finally 575, leaving the city behind. As I pass Sixes Road, I throttle down hard and leave all I know behind. The wind and roar, they comfort me. They allow me to hide in their lullaby. They take me to meet a friend.

I've known this friend since I was in college. We've kept in touch since then. He's very special to me. His name is Norman. He lives with some other guys in an apartment. He is sweet and never in a foul disposition. He loves because he can and because he enjoys it. He is all that can be defined as good and right and happy in the world. He is also retarded.

I spend about two or so hours with him everynight and I am the one who learns...about a peace born of forced ignorance...about a love born of childish joy...and about pain at the loss of stability. It's fun spending time with Norman and the boys. It's joy and light and, best of all, rest...for I am never without a doughnut and a place to sit.

"Hello, my name is Norman Bulansky. Welcome to my home. Won't you take a seat?

Aspersions... cast or otherwise...

Professional wrestling is fake.

Greco-Roman wrestling was brutual.

Spiritual wrestling will forever be the hardest.

I thought, and perhaps that was my first mistake, that I wanted nothing more than to do what was asked of me. I thought, in haste, that humility and submission to authority would come easy, as they always had. I thought, out of pride, that I would be able to work on my own merit, founded in my own strength. I thought, with hope, that I could swallow my pride and slog through the mundane. I thought...in error.

Having thought in the wrong, I am now attempting to think rightly.

I suppose the penultimate problem for me is that I am not often wrong...and I say that in the most profound humility, forged out of understanding that all I am, I am because Abba-Yahweh gave it to me. If I am right, I am right because God has shown me the way. If I am wrong, it is because I misread the instructions. Righteousness begets Right. Humanity begets error.

The conundrum exists because others around me are not often right...

So I flounder in the mire of a self-imposed castigation leveraging itself down upon me using the fulcrum of my own theological bearings and the long arm of much wisdom...causing much sorrow...which has its own weight.

It is here that I remain... under the load of my own theology... pressed down by the weight of my pride and sense of justice...pulled by my need for rest....and spurred on by others need of me.