"Can you tell that I hurt?
It's critical,
All I can smell is the burn
of chemicals..." -"Chemicals," Love and Death
The wail of sirens...
The blast of bombs...
The crack of rifles from above...
The cold grip of fear...
The choking fist of smoke and fire...
These are just some of the images I saw as I visited Dubrovnik's War Museum, a stunningly-picturesque memorial to sacrifice and fortitude in the face of overwhelming odds during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. For ten months, the Pearl of the Adriatic was subjected to a kind of siege that its medieval walls were never built to stand against and offered the only defense for the city itself. As the walls and Old City weathered a terrifying barrage from Serbian/Montenegrin forces on the heights overlooking the town from the south, the city's small garrison fought desperately from the Napoleonic Imperial Fort overlooking the town directly above to keep the city from being encircled completely. I can't in my darkest nightmares imagine for a moment what that must have been like, for either the poor civilians in the town or the soldiers forced to fight for their lives...
The War Museum experience has only added to the increasing clouds of my mind. It began with my discovery of the song "Chemicals" by the band Love and Death, headed by former-Korn leadman and born-again Christian Brian "Head" Welch. The song is Welch's story of his years-long fight with substance abuse and the haunting undercurrents and disturbing imagery (both in the song and in the music video) leave me tossing and turning, wanting, nay, craving a strong drink to kill the empty, hollow feeling that creeps into my subconscious...
Now let me be clear: I'm not a drug-addict, nor will I ever be one. But I couldn't help but reflect about the concept of what Welch sings: the things we put into our bodies. In a way like Welch, I can't help but look deeper, beyond the superficial changes that affect us from what we take in and am left standing at a precipice above my inner dark. I look down and see a deranged, disfigured beast that otherwise lives in the corners of my soul. He stares up at me and lays my sin bare before me. It's terrifying: one look and I stare into Hell. And not the cliche of Hell that we all know, but that kind of Hell that only our minds can construct. Considering how wide-ranging my mind can be, this kind of Hell is a nightmare that haunts my subconscious and leaves me crippled in grief and near-depression when I glimpse it because it is the Hell that I construct. What I feed my soul affects it in a near-molecular level that, when positive, molds and gives form and order. But if it be negative, it twists, distorts, and otherwise renders ugly what God made in his Image.
Perhaps it is this that leaves me most despondent: as a Human Being, I am made in the Image of God, and yet all I do is corrupt this Image and continually feed the monster with the chemicals of this fallen world. When my Hell is laid bare before me I am forced to see what I would be were I not redeemed by Grace: burning in sin's chemicals, a freak, a monster driven mad by pain and rage. My visits to St. Blais' Church and Dubrovnik Cathedral only accentuated my dark cloud feelings. How can I walk into a House of Christ, twisted as I am? Who am I to beseech Mercy when I have done nothing to merit it, indeed reveling in the chemical cocktail of depravity, eschewing Virtue and Grace? I am no better than those who spat on Christ as He struggled to carry His cross, hearing but neither understanding nor caring for longer than was necessary...such a revelation, as I stare at my anti-soul, is crushing.
Forgive me for publishing such a dark post. I felt moved to post it as I needed an outlet for my feelings of late as I pore into theology, politics, philosophy, and ethics. I promise that this, too, shall pass. I will overcome it, as the One from Whom I draw strength and in Whom I find my help has "...Overcome the world."
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