Late Night Reflections: The Barbarian Inside Me

Here I am, pacing like a lion anxious for the kill.  Passion, fury, anxiety…they engulf me.  Consume my thoughts.  I long for days of warriors again.  We have soldiers, but the day of the warrior is dead.  Where did they go?  It seems like the only place left to look for the brave soul of a warrior is backwards into the halls of history.  What about today?  What about the fighting spirit that beats against the cage of my heart threatening to break loose?

Here I am, my hands finding every weapon within sight.  The broadsword feels strong in my hands.  Its weight not a barrier, but an addition to the strength I feel growing in my veins.  My Roman sword, light and strong, I whip it around with flashes of speed, seeking a target.  The Katana has a familiar weight, I swing it with precision and comfort, having trained in its arts for years.

I wield my weapons like a madman ready for war.  My heart refuses to stop pounding in my ears and my blood boils.   I feel my strength grow in intensity and my yearning to leap and run about digs deep.  There is a gleam in my eye and a fire in my soul that I do not know what to do with.  It runs deep, an intimate part of my very being.

The consuming need to fight.  To throw myself at another to test my skills and my heart.  I yearn for it in a way I have not yearned in a long time.  Long has my discipline held, my resilience to the call to arms.  And yet now I feel as though my heart was caught by surprise as I arm myself to the teeth, my flesh has become steel and my heart burns for conflict.

Simply, I am a man.  Worst still, I am human.   A complex web of emotions, passions, and desires that drive me forward until my days end and I rejoin the dust of the earth.  I do not pretend to understand my nature, only that I must be myself.  I cannot resist my own soul.  And my soul desires to be tested, for my body to be made war upon. 

Is this the Barbarian Way I have so long pondered?  To not just endure fear, but to seek it?  Only a madman pursues his doom and yet every fiber of my being seeks to be confronted and overcome.  Only that I might face the odds and conqueror.  Or die.  Neither outcome frightens me.  And yet both frighten me. 

I look around in my life for the warriors of my generation.  I seek and search and I see domesticated men.  I see passive souls.  I see fear and unwillingness.  I see selfishness and cowardliness. I do not see honor in my generation.  I do not see brave, untamable souls set on fire for a road of purpose and passion. 

I wish I could live my whole life within this spark of vigor.  Even now I feel it dwindling.  Seeping out of the pores of my skin like water in my hand.  There is no containing it.  I cannot even begin to grasp it.  Where does my passion so earnestly flee to?  And how might I take it captive?  I need my soul back.  Not this hollow shell of domestic living.  I was created as a man.  As a warrior with a burning soul.  A soul burning with the spirit and passion of God almighty. 

I see what I could become.  And yet I see where I still remain.  Am I unmovable in my weakness?  In my love for being passive and small?  Lord, set fire to my bones and let them never cease to burn.  Let my passion never be quenched and the warrior inside me never sleep.