An Interrogation
L
My eyes tripped over this line, they got up and attempted to run over it again; then stopped with the period and dashed back to the beginning to try one more time. Visions of bright lights and chain-smoking inspectors rattling off angry questions, pictures of suavely confident secret agents gently probing, before suddenly turning angry and spewing forth horrible threats, filled my mind. But the author was ready for these interpretations, these attacks based on one-dimensional preconceptions. Every apex has its nadir, and oft times the nadir is mistaken for the apex.
The more I thought about the idea of Love as an Interrogation, the better I was captivated by it. I imagine God as this incredibly curious Divinity; naturally all-knowing, yet at the same time consistently pursuing–eager for every tidbit of knowledge and understanding about my heart, my desires, my fears, and my shortcomings. After all, He’s numbered every hair on my head–and with a detail oriented approach like that, one can easily see how God would be gently, perhaps fiercely at times, compassionate and loving in His ongoing Interrogation of us.
Of course, if God’s love is Interrogatory, mine should be too. And, perhaps like you, I had an idea of what this might look like–but it wasn’t good. I imagined a distrustful, domineering husband, always demanding to know where his wife had been or what she was doing–forcing his way into every corner of surfacy facts, asserting his power, demanding to know. But that conception is the Nadir, and I had been warned not to mistake it for the real thing. Instead, the loving interrogation that I should aspire to is that of deeply desiring to know and understand my wife’s heart, to seek it out, not maliciously or suspiciously, but interestedly and curiously. Love wants to know everything. Love wants to find out about pain and joy, sorrow and happiness, dreams and failures; it wants to know these things and it wants to come along side and live in the midst of this delicately vibrant reality. Love truly is a constant Interrogation.
i’ve thought about that before…nice elocution…
I’m in another silly mood:
I couldn’t get past the metaphor of eyes “getting up” and “attempting to run.” See, my son has had a bad eyeball incident with my mother-in-law recently and I can’t even draw attention to my own eyes by widening them expressively–it makes him gag.
I hope I never annoy you too badly with my flippancey . . .
“He’s numbered every hair on my head—and with a detail oriented approach like that, one can easily see how God would be gently, perhaps fiercely at times, compassionate and loving in His ongoing Interrogation of us.”
I like that sentence very much. You do a good job elucidating the beauty of interrogation.
Hey, what hack are you using for tags? And have you really found a way to add trackback to Blogger?
SquirrleyMojo: Your flippancy is generally much appreciated. You have the wonderful quality of adding a good dose of levity to things. I read your latest story about the “Intriguing” student…I think its kind of funny you’re being more aware of your “flippancy.” : )
Ariel: my tag “hack” is none other than the TTG (Technorati Tag Generator) Widget designed exclusively for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Trackback has been added to Blogger by the big boys themselves. It’s called “links to this post” and you can get the code from the Blogger help page.
This Mac issue has been dogging my heels, laughing at me, all week. Totally unfair.
I hooked up the Blogger backlink function a couple weeks ago, but it hasn’t worked so far. I was curious if you’d found a way around it. Let me guess…maybe if I was using a Mac…
there’s no “e”–I see that today. ah, you are so forgiving.
i spoke with the student on wednesday after the exam and told him about how much i enjoy his input–he seemed authentically relieved and happy. he further said that he is enjoying the class and loves having me as an instructor . . . ehem, of course, he did just turn in his exam! ha!
btw:
i can’t believe you posted about cows and udders–fantastic. i knew you had a dark, cryptic side.