Leszli Kalli’s Honest Appraisal

Last updated on: July 8, 2007 at 7:11 am by David Hayward

Leszli Kalli’s Honest Appraisal 2007-07-08T07:11:17-04:00 David Hayward

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Please excuse the long entry here, but I have to quote this entire passage from Leszli Kalli’s book, Kidnapped. This is a precious nugget of truth, and this is what I’m passionate about. She says it like it is. And because what she says applies to much of my experience and other’s experience of the church, I listen! The way I do church and the way our community is, is because of what Leszli says here:

Dear God, I hope I will soon feel the peace I described in that story so that I can finally stop worrying, and most of all so that I can finally stop punishing myself. Lots of times I try to make light of this situation, but there is really no humorous side to any of this, and that is one of my greatest battles. And the absence everyone feels back at home is nowhere near as overwhelming as the void I feel inside of me. I can see it already, an avalanche of anguish that is about to crush meâ€”I know that I must find my reserves of inner strength, butâ€¦ where? How? I analyze this situation from every angle, searching for the place where I will find this valor and strength, but it is unrealistic to think that I have either. I fall into the abyss. No, itâ€™s worse than that; I let myself fall.

I am crying. I canâ€™t decide whether it is from the loneliness or the impotence I feel. What a phony society I live in, what phony people I live among, what a phony world I was born into. Fine. But now my question is this: am I phony, too, for living in this phony world? I hope not. Every day I grow more and more convinced that God really screwed up, a few things at least: for one, bringing me into this earth was a mistake, because I feel like an outsider here. People kill for the sake of killing in this world, people chop down trees just for the pleasure of watching them fall, they kill little animals, there are people out there who live to wreak havoc on others, even in the most insignificant wayâ€”whether itâ€™s making someone feel bad or attacking someone where it hurts the most. I donâ€™t see love anywhere here on this planet: nobody really loves anyoneâ€”this is just a great big theater where everyone is putting on a big show, and those of us who speak the truth are pushed to the side and banned from taking part in the show. But I guess thatâ€™s better than being part of the farce.

What is the point of loving someone or something with sincerity, when we love in a world where true, sincere love is too great a thing for most people? Thatâ€™s why people go crazy searching for things that are fake and phony, because fake and phony are all they know. In this world, people like me get left out of the mix, they never really understand a damn thing. When that happens, I think, thatâ€™s when we realize that to be â€˜happyâ€™ we have to live a life of deceit and lies, we have to sink into this hypocritical society, because otherwise there is no way to live, or survive. Itâ€™s so sadâ€¦ but thatâ€™s why we are the way we are. Society makes me sick. Everyone makes me sick. Life makes me sick. My life in this horrible world makes me sick, sick!

I wish I could say everything I feel to everyone I know in the world, just to see who would support me, to see if maybe Iâ€™m not the only person in the world who feels this way, to feel a little less alone. I hope to God that there are other people who feel the way I do, just so that I can find a reason to say that not absolutely everything is bad. But why, why are we made to endure so much suffering that we cannot understand, why is the world like this?

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