Desperately Avoiding Desperation

a poem from April 2020 — the early COVID days

To have Christ
is to be desperate
like a blind man stumbling in the streets,
like a poor man tasting pig slop,
like a prostitute caught in the act
with wails of admittance
that she has nothing left.

But such a state
I so desperately avoid
for it is the unraveling
of my life's work.
Who wants to be broke?
Who finds comfort in emptiness?
Who volunteers to be naked?

No one chooses Christ.
And while "Blessed are they
who are poor, who mourn, who hunger . . .",
who seeks to be like that?

Rather, 
I patch up my selfishness with a stringent regime.
I forget my neediness by seeking out yours.
I hide my anxiety behind a facade of glowing accomplishments.
I escape my ordinariness by acquiring your envy.
I rectify my ignorance by endlessly mulling.
I stuff my fears with circular distrust.
I ignore my sorrows with activity's flurry.
I deny my fragility with a flux of power.
I avoid making waves by sinking beneath
and drowning inside.

But to have Christ
is first
to be made desperate
by chaos or trick,
treatment foul or sick,
isolation, agitation
conflagration.
All we considered lamentable
may bring us now to this.

So in these prayers,
may I ask not for deliverance
from what reveals this desperation,
but rather,
may I welcome it
for it draws me again and again
to you.