Into the Clearing
Digital Photography 2048 x 1532 pxls
Mallory Evangelista is an Midwestern alum, and this piece of hers first appeared inVoicesin 2016.
Woe, Woe, and a Third Woe
Carroll Susco
I didn’t listen to the sermon. I listened to the little ones downstairs in the drafty old, wood church sing “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!” I was 12, ready for the big sermon. Somewhere along the way I did hear it—how we would have to run into the woods at the end of the world according to Ellen White, how the world would turn dark and lies would destroy the planet before Christ came and took us to heaven. I believed it as a teenager, wanted it. But as I strayed, I found goodness in everyone. I loved people who weren’t religious. I wanted to live, on earth, a long time. Eat chocolate. I don’t know what to believe now. Nothing sticks. I tell the voices every night, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. The three I don’t knows. “This little light of mine!” I want to sing it now, so many years later, but I can’t get my mouth to form the words. My heart has shoved my lungs closed so a stray note won’t come out. My heart, it says, I cannot beat if you continue. For me, stop. It will settle for something that comforts, like a warm hand placed on mine. I wonder, What if Christ does come and kills all the sinners, the animals, the fish, the birds and plant life? And then I cry. “I’m going to let it shine.” I live 6.2 miles from the White House. It changes a person to live in the metropolitan area. I was raised on news. By the time I was of voting age, I watched all three news broadcasts, the local news and read the newspaper, especially the Sunday edition. Then came computers. Delicious. More news. In the middle of the night, I pick up my phone and start to Google, still, scouring the headlines for more information until I begrudgingly go to bed. I watch the news. We are being led somewhere dark, and I recall the teachings of my church, what to expect at the end, how the end is near, even at the door, and we will be persecuted, like He was, at the end. And who shall be able to stand? Revelation 6:17 I fear I’m on the wrong team or no team at all. “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!” Revelation 8:13 My mouth forms the word w-o-e. The lip purses and curls, the tongue, w-o-e. The third woe I take in as my own. The voices say I should tell them when the end of the world is, and I have no proof to offer. I have no light to shine. They want to know who makes it to heaven so they can torture them, and I remember the Bible verse that says, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” I tell them, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t. But they are already spinning new conspiracies to get me damned. I pet the cat, pull the covers up and pray for insight. “This little light” The fight for sustained happiness is lost before it begins. Somehow I missed something important. There is only waiting for the next woe to descend on me, the woe that has always been coming, the woe that is softly knocking on my bedroom door. Cruelly, it whispers, “Shine.”
