My patron saint Judas

I used to be most afraid, out of all possible fears, of self-betrayal.

I worried. I worried conspicuously, my brow permanently furrowed -- the fine lines beginning long before they should have -- and eyes narrowed (squinting as though they could see the future), through high school. I worried, ostensibly, about many, many things, most of which seemed practical: what grade I would get on a test; what my mother would say to ruin my day; whether I'd be allowed to go to youth group this week or be grounded for some minor offense; how often I needed to emerge from my room, and for how long, on Saturdays and Sundays, to prove that I wasn't depressed (-- I was).

What I worried about in the dark, though, or when I allowed myself to drop down to the roots of my hypervigilance -- when I allowed myself to be terrified -- was that when Mom said "you'll understand when you're older," she was right.

It was all the same fear: turning into her, growing up to realize I had been wrong all along, the panicked sense that I would turn away from God, the cold certainty that I would succumb to my own malicious, self-destructive impulses -- that vicious, masochistic part of me that would have delighted (that did delight) in torture.

I prayed against them all, with a different kind of fervor than I prayed for friends, or for Vietnam, or for straight-out salvation. I prayed with a half-hearted, faltering desperation. I prayed knowing it was no use, that I would be overtaken. I prayed against myself. Like a slow-running medieval villager being chased down by wolves, or a prisoner not quite remorseful enough to hope for heaven, stepping up to the gallows: desperate, half-resigned, fatally flawed.

I prayed knowing the time would come when I would not pray.

It was my Gethsemane. I imagined Jesus praying, crying, breaking apart his resistance, rearranging his psyche to accommodate his fate. I imagined Jesus' work -- the moving, mysteriously, spirit-parts of himself to line up with the divine will. I imagined his slow disintegration, the sand-like drift of his thoughts and emotion toward inevitable acceptance. I saw Jesus relax, ready to be kissed.

I imagined Satan, praying, crying, hurling himself against internal walls, demanding stronger tools to destroy what plagued him, what kept him from God. The more he fought, the weaker he became (fighting against himself); the more he struggled, the deeper he realized the bad veins went, down, possibly, to the bedrock of who he was: created to be the antithetical, outcast, unwanted, unwantable lack of God. This idea began slowly but filtered in -- sand-like -- to every crevice, dark and oily, gradually heated him from within. He rose from the stone as stone and would never kneel or rise again.

I could not understand which one I was.

My betrayal began gradually, happened intermittently, confused me. My great struggles have been epic-feeling; the thorns in my side have been obvious. I did not want to be my Mom. (I have not become her.) I did not want to be crazy. (I have not gone insane.) I did not want to betray myself, fail myself, lose myself.

The betrayer, though, the secret self-betrayer, did not want to be me.

Judas crept in as a friend, as a benign and silly man -- like all the disciples -- and must have believed it, himself. He must have believed that Jesus was something. He could not have walked with the son of God for three years and covered over a lie for that long, unless the lie deceived him, too. His deal with the men who took Jesus, the agreement, the handshake and nodding head, the suggestion of a kiss, must have seemed like a dream to him. He must have woken the morning of the betrayal and wondered if it had happened.

Judas' awakening came after the betraying kiss and the word "teacher." He saw what he had done. He bought a field, he hanged himself, he fell headlong and his body burst open, he died physically, he died metaphorically, he died in all senses. (The accounts are unclear.) He tried to return his thirty pieces of silver. He was rejected -- the priests would not accept blood money --Peter raised his sword -- Judas could not accept his choices.

Felix pecatum: Judas was necessary. Creation ex nihilo: God created him for this. Deus ex machina: No one had a choice.

The worry left me, simply and without explanation. I rose from the rock one day and realized I was fine, realized all my parts made sense, realized that everything was in focus. A suprise jolted me into place, and I was myself.

It was startling.

I attended to Judas, his wounded sense of self-betrayal, his interminable inner conflict. I held him in my mind as Mary holds Jesus in the Pieta. I soothed him, cooed meaningless words, viewed his death again and again with witness and pity in my heart.

I have stopped praying, or everything has become a prayer. Jesus would know which; Satan would know. I am not looking for answers.

I attend to Judas.