Exile and Madness: Some Thoughts On Being Cursed / Joshua Alan Sturgill
A friend asked me, what does it mean to be cursed?
In the Bible are lists of curses.
Does God curse us?
Is God waiting for the dance to take us too close to the edge?
Does He care that the thorns in the ditch by the dancefloor
are also His creation?
This conversation with my friend goes on for a long time.
We’ve been talking for years, maybe centuries
about Abraham and Arjuna and Beowulf and Odysseus
and suddenly we see a common theme come into view, like
footlights flooding a darkened stage:
There’s a House with a fire at its center, and we
are meant to be gathered around the hearth (my friend directs me
to Hearth and Heart as near-homonyms).
At the center is the fire; the outer rooms of the house are cold.
To lose the center or to be banished from it…?
So the curse is exile.
Yes, says my friend, but there are two kinds of exile:
exile from home, but exile from self.
The universe is a house. The self is a house.
And the outer rooms of the self are joylessly rigid.
To lose the center or to be banished from it:
So the curse is madness, too.
At the heart is the fire; life at the soul’s extremes
is a kind of hypothermia.
Blessed is the one in whose heart are the pathways
says the Psalmist; and, May I dwell in Thy House forever.
The dance is bounded by rites of lifts, swings and steps.
The dance is grounded by rhythms and melodies of a science
more ancient than science can know.
If God is Himself the hearth and heart, He cannot curse.
A parable tells us His is always looking and waiting and calling
and going into exile on our behalf.
Pray this, says my friend:
Bring me to my center, out from the outer darkness.
Bring me to my center, to the house of water and light.
Lead me in the steps of the dance.
I have known the madness of wild panic,
I have known the exile of lonely cold
— they’ve prepared me
to love the warmth of sanity.
Let me be immune to death; let me never be cursed again.
All poetry and supplementary material: copyright 2024 by Joshua Alan Sturgill. All rights reserved.
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