The Weight

I need to feel the weight of things.

I can remember when, as a child, I wrestled with my father and brothers in the hallway of our house and the structure of arms and hands and legs we'd made would eventually and inevitably fall; sometimes it all fell on me. Underneath all the yelling and fluster and tears that a boy might have at such a moment is a much more necessary feeling, one that there might not be a good word for. But boys need the pressing, the weight, the crushing of their brothers and father. We need the tangle of arms and sweat and the suffocating embracing. We need to be wrapped up so tightly that we cannot move, to feel the strain on our limbs and the gasping for breath, as much as we hate the feeling in that moment.

Perhaps it's the same for women, though in a very different way. My fiance needs my embrace, and she needs hugs from our friends and family. As a child, I've heard her recall, she relished the all-surrounding sensation of her mother's hugs, or her father's, or her grandparents'. Even though we, as children, hated in a way the claustrophobia of our parents' long embraces, there is something inside us that makes them necessary.

I've thought a long time about this sort of sensation- it's difficult to pin down. Between my house and work there's a section of sidewalk that traverses under a train bridge. The first time I heard a train suddenly rumble by overhead as I walked to work, I jumped. I felt it more than I heard it. The loudness of the sound was uncomfortable, but I quickly came to love such instances. I feel fully surrounded, held, and connected with the substantive thunder of the sound. I can feel it physically wrapping around and through my body, smoothing every other sensation over with its total immensity.

A close comparison is something I heard about the philosophy of light. When we as people are in total darkness, we feel alienated and suspended, floating alone in the empty expanse. I think so many people find outer space a frightening and unsettling concept for this reason- it's a bunch of nothingness. But we are something. We have weight and mass and space and dimension; so does light. When we are in the light, we feel warm and comfortable, 'bathed' in light's substance. We feel surrounded, connected to some thing, like ourselves. I believe this has particular philosophical and spiritual consequence in view of the Bible's continued motif of light.

But I say all this merely to explain my basic precept of weight. I need to feel the weight, the substance, of things. I need it in physical ways, to feel my blood pumping and every nerve feeling- to feel alive. I need it in mental ways as well, to find that there's more beyond my own limits, pressing me forward and onward, that there are reasons and truths that control me- reasons that I am alive.

And I must admit this- I need to more greatly feel the weight of some very important things.

I need to feel the weight of God's call on me as a man. Jesus loves us without condition, regardless of our failings, and continually through all our rebellion and willful lack of submission to Him. When we were wrong, He chose to take responsibility for us. He put Himself fully between us and the complete destruction we were bringing down on our own heads. He provides for our every need. And He calls us men to do the same for a woman, as no less than a visible emblem and shining beacon of His own goodness to us. I need to feel the weight of that- what was done for me and what I am to do in response.

I need to feel the weight of God's love and compassion. In view of hundreds of thousands of families destroyed in Haiti, of millions killed in African genocides, of thousands of children taken and abused and tormented and sold, of parents losing their children to disease and accident, or carelessly abandoning them physically or emotionally, of my fiance's mentor and fill-in grandfather dying of cancer a world away- in full view of these, God died for the perpetrators and victims alike, and calls us to be His hands, His emissaries of hope and salvation and redemption. I need to feel the weight of that- how much He loves and what He's called us to to show that love.

I need to feel the weight of others' lives. There are hurting people, encouraging people, needy people, admirable people, all around me. People whose troubles, pains, victories, and needs are no less than my own, and in most cases more. As much as we might need light to feel connected to other things, we need to be connected to the lives of others. I need to put others before myself, and help them meet their needs, celebrate their victories, and mourn their losses. I need it to be able to do those things myself.

I am sure there's much more I need. I think that we are made to be pressed in on, crushed by the weight of important things. And I think we need to see how much of the weight we sinfully take on is exactly not that- not important. As uncomfortable as it can be to be crushed, it's meaningful in the very deepest of ways; we resonate at our core with the prospect of being surrounded and continually squeezed by love and purpose and meaning. I need the thundering call of God to drown out every other lesser thing and press in on me until I cannot breathe for the weight of it.

I need this. And I think you do too.