Apex Exile

I don’t know what came over me. Oddly, I can’t say everything. Seeing that everything knows me. You laugh with that look that you get with every failed joke.

But I’m not kidding. We need to deal. Except that now I’m at a loss for words because if I truly know everything, there shouldn’t be a problem.

It all began. How do you think I should say this? Yesterday? No, long ago. Both the other day and long ago, like time doesn’t matter. But why is there an obsession everyone has with beginnings? Something you have always been doesn’t have a beginning or an end.

Apex, a concept I once understood before I lost her, is a figure of speech. Lost her in what sense? Physically, sure. I could call out to her, but she wouldn’t answer. That is sure. But there is this place she made in me so close and near that there couldn’t be a way to escape her, so full of my thoughts.

The Apex, that moment when everything in life seems to make sense, is what people dream of. It's that moment when you are convinced that life is everything you ever hoped it could be. A moment framed in a forever canvas that tragically usually dies as a figment of our imagining, like an unspoken word. We mistake it for the Word that exists before anything is spoken.

But I’m off track, lost as usual. The infinite inner me, grappling with uncertainty, yet knowing more than can be seen or understood. Catch that moment when no one can see? How is that done? It's the trope wheeled out to explain the unexplainable, the “of course, it’s just you being you! What a laugh! You sure had me going with that one!”

And I feel embarrassed, like that was the whole point of everything. Which I do not fully know and never will. Failure, you deserve me!

Apex, then, is just a feeling? She never did exist? How quaint! I’m lost from something that was never allowed to exist. Such useless passions, railing on and on until meaning is lost and I forget the purpose of anything?

Isn’t atheism so handy at times like this? Everything is instantaneously explained. Suffering from unexplainable desires for infinite happiness? The infinite inner you can find comfort in a death by a thousand cuts. Can’t be young again? Grow old. Can’t be healthy? End it. Explain the unexplainable by a thousand concessions to that dark angel who waits, thrumming fingers on your soul, impatient to lurch on to the next spiritual lobotomy, the next person for whom everything must be finite and endlessly explained.

My mistake! One atheist heart to another: I’m always more this than that. More what I never can be than what I truly am. Which is always my fault.

Nevertheless, I stumble forward, faithful only to the apex within, searching for that answering Word, the uncreated, the ultimately unexplainable.

I sit and wait. In a hospital for the soul. Broken up over what seems more than just a building, a table, a chalice, thin wafers, a priest extolling? You say I’m delusional. I’ve lost it again, the waiting, you see? But then you don’t say anything, and I’m lost again.

Another Apex moment would never be enough when hide and seek is the game. Hide and seek. How can you win when what is hidden is not sought and what you hope for is not hidden? Not that we ever would know in any case. So used to cutting up, and making do.

But what if we listened to ourselves? Our infinite selves might point the way to the obstacle, the unfordable river. Of ourselves? Is the cutting of life from our finite perspective finally resolved? Always judging, never seeing what only the Infinite sees? What if our final word was not immutable, the gift of ourselves to the Apex not as exiles? But instead, a new beginning?

What would we look like? Not all-knowing. Not endlessly unsatisfied? Looking for what isn’t lacking, we would not lack anything.

Invisible, indivisible, perfect, and profound.

Profoundly moving, endlessly challenging, marvelously formed?

More incredible than we imagined, closer than our closest friend?

Our better than better self?

Oh, if only I could dream!

(as I choke on myself)

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What if the Apex reached out? Not a figment of our longing, but as longing itself? What if even as we choke and splutter on finite diversions, infinite understanding simply was?

No more infinite me. Or you. Is this life only a beginning?

We cannot save ourselves. Our words contradict, lack substance, and are snuffed out.

There is one Word who holds all things together:

Jesus Christ, our Lord.