Terror

A meditation on what lies beyond fear

Fear Quieted

Terror pulses through society here. It became normal long ago. Forgetful folk rage against it, but wasn’t it always so?

Before the bombings, there was the terror of war; The terror of settlement dwarfed by the terror of Europe, the small terrors there cowering in the shadow of the Great Terror.

But those too were just the children of terror, of blood libels and expulsions, of all that came in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, which was built on the most sacred of sites and knocked down; the one that recalled the first knife held to the throat of the first son, the oldest terror of them all.

Terror is my new normal. I stared into her eyes as a young woman, stepped just to her right one summer when she came to claim my friends. And, since then, we’ve made peace, terror and I.

She gives me many gifts.

She is a piercing light revealing all in her path. She shows me good and evil, selfishness and kindness. She christens heroes daily, who rush in, fight for, stand against her.

She is a purifying fire, scrubbing my soul clean.

My friend terror is the enemy of fear. Stand near her long enough and feel fright grow weary. Its shuddering and trembling can only go on for so long. Soon, all gives way to silence. To peace. To breath and beauty.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever lived without her.

Was she not lurking somewhere in the shadows of my old peaceful life by the sea? There we were safe, we told one another. “Terror does not live here,” we said. “Here we live in peace.” “Here we live forever.” “Free of pain, free of disease. “Free of sadness and dark days.”

Here, terror stands out in the open, for all to see her. She is a limited thing, sometimes here, sometimes there. Here, we say to her, “This too shall pass.”

Not so there.

Her sister who rules there is far more ferocious. She stews in her cave and grows strong. There, she is everywhere.

She is killing them all. She is death panels and life-support. She is “do no harm”and “there is a pill for that.” She is denial. She is death.

So I say to you, who live in the shadow of terror crouched in her cave, who endlessly tremble as she growls and grows. Join me here in the land of the living, the paradise of the present.

Here we cherish life because we know it is fleeting. Here, we embrace death, each of us having kissed it on the mouth, screamed into its depths as we bid our love goodbye. The glistening, the tears, the precious longing of connection. Yearning, her child, and blessing too.

Terror is a knife, It rips my heart open. It keeps me sharp. Awake. Alive.