Tuesday, March 30, 2010

heaven working backwards

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing...
Mere Christianity, on "Hope"

I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven,to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
Preface of The Great Divorce

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Twig Adventure

I finally satisfied my curiosity about those sticks that covered the sidewalk last night. Sticks--you know, the thin, gnarly things scattered and clumped along the path as far as the eye can see. They appeared with the leaf-buds and the flowers that were torn from the trees by the hail and rain.

Let's say that you are walking down the sidewalk (or rather, running) in pouring rain, treading sticks and buds with your shoes. Out of the corner of your eye you see a stick begin to vaguely move and before you can stop yourself the same stick squishes under your shoe. You come to a halt right under the thickest part of the downpour and gradually realize that all the sticks and clumps of sticks on the sidewalk are in motion. They weren't going anywhere in particular until you sent them to stick heaven by trampling them underfoot. You curse the moment of insanity when you decided to wear your good running shoes for the entire day.

When an inanimate stick begins to move there are two (and only two) explanations:

(1) this is a new kind of stick that you've never seen on the sidewalk, in Audubon, or even on reality tv, and you are incredibly behind the times;
or (2) (most likely) you are crazy.

For most of us, regardless of the truth, (1) is the way to go. We simply have never encountered these delightful little things before. I've decided to call them rainworms because they magically disappear when the sun comes out.

Don't get your hopes up. There's little hope for sunshine any time soon. I have heard, however, that fish find rainworms incredibly tasty. Let's get some fishing line and head down to the river...

..On second thought, maybe we can just release some fish on the sidewalk instead.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Flowers in the Wind

I sat down at my desktop on a cold chilly morning, searching for immortality on a burgeoning sea of loneliness. Myself and a blank document. Life was, for the moment, quite empty. But my heart was full--full as an ancient bucket dipped in the lake, threatening to spill over or give way at any moment, a floodgate readily unleashed by the slightest jarring motion.

I started to write--every story I could ever remember, every feeling I called my own, every problem that had ever racked my brain. My fingers darted over the keys. They called into being mountains of suffering unsurpassed, wells of joy known to no one but myself, and glories untold. A swelling world emerged--a world more real than all else I knew. It grew and grew. A thousand pages. Five thousand. A hundred thousand. Still the mountains swelled; the wells deepened. Shadows and sunshine gathered over the landscape in sharpening points.

Presently the stories and feelings gave way to a greater consciousness: every poem I could remember, every verse of Scripture I learned as a child, every song I ever sung. I wrote them down--sometimes only three or four lines--the authentic cadence, the tune of my soul.
The words no longer flowed easily--I was grasping at any untold, unshared remnant of myself. I dutifully drilled out the dull statistics of my years, filling in the gaping chasms where my memory had nothing to offer. Academics. Work. Health, height and weight. Eyesight. Awards. Close calls and failures.

There the bucket emptied its last in an inglorious slow drip. The overflowing spring had at last run dry. My life was poured out in entirety. Every story I ever heard, every scene I remembered seeing, every deed I ever did, everything I believed, and every principle that I thought to make me who I was, now no more than a hundred thousand pages--a handful of dissonant themes sown again and again in careless haste until they could be sown no longer.

The Void returned--the great loneliness. I found that I had no desire to read what I had written. It was mere chaff; shed easily as straw in a south wind. I sat still, waiting for the change, the revelation of glory and purpose that I looked for within myself. Instead there was only silence.

Then the voice came, like a whispered poem on a breeze--like the shadow of a great rock under the scorching sun.

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.