I Don't Belong Here

"Here's the thing... Home or shelter I have not on this side of eternity..."

Ten years (and a few days) ago you wrote that line to me. It began a flurry of e-mails in which you planned a visit to Michigan and Indiana. And you came! And then on this day ten years ago, you drove away in the spring-like rain. How was I to know that the next time I saw you would be nearly five years later? You would be so changed. Ten years ago when you arrived, you gave me the biggest bear hug. Five years ago you wouldn't look me in the eye, wouldn't let me too near. A hug was out of the question. . .

What happened to the fellow who wrote, "I love you like my wood stove right now!"? The one you stood in front of at midnight, having awakened your dad for a conversation. . . Home and shelter you had, with a wood stove to boot. And yet, I don't think you ever really were at home in this world. I come back to this realisation again and again. No matter how much you studied the world, you weren't really comfortably at home here. No matter how much you loved your wood stove, or me, or your other friends and family, it wasn't enough to hold you in a place you didn't belong.

In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt
I was trying so hard to fit in, fit in
Until I found out

That I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong. . .

. . . I'm gonna set sight and set sail for the Kingdom come
Kingdom come

So you did. Like Reepicheep, you set sail for the Kingdom: “While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.” I think Semester was like sailing East in the Dawn Treader, with like-minded friends. Then you flew east to the 'coracle' of your family. Then you swam hard in the Air Force. . . And I believe the last nearly six years were your desperate treading water, your nose above the surface, looking toward the Utter East. 

Do you remember telling me you would be safe as long as the person you loved was? Turns out that promises are harder to keep than to make. Do you remember writing that you would be the last leaf to fall? Turns out you were the first. . .

I'll be the last leaf to fall when
The season comes to leave
Myopia owns me
Loathe to fall
Loading up on the view
Knowing I'll lose my way
When my grip gives way

You shared these lines with me and I didn't see the poetry then. . .but I did later. I do now. I thought it needed to rhyme. I wanted it to end happy. I wanted you to be happy. But life in the intervening years has taught me to appreciate the sadness-laced lyrics, the poems that end with losing grip. Not out of despair, but because reality is bittersweet. Sometimes it is a better thing to be broken and then redeemed. I have learned that 'happy' as I think of it is a curse—emptiness, devoid of the weight of glory.

Blessed is the man who's lost it all
Happy is a yuppie word. . .
I'm looking for a bridge I can't burn down
I don't believe the emptiness
I'm looking for the Kingdom coming down

There it is again: the coming Kingdom. When you've lost it all—love, sanity, the desire for companionship, hope of healing, etc—you cling to the hope of the coming King and His Kingdom. And sometimes, holding on is too hard. You lose your way and your grip. You run ahead to the King's own country—Aslan's Utter East—before it's time to go. But the King is waiting. He knows how long we can hold out and hold on. You, who swore fealty to the King, you have been welcomed in to the Kingdom, to learn its language and its ways. I think your eyes had always seen it. . .or always almost seen something, like Orual almost seeing Psyche's palace; like Reepicheep and Aslan's country. There is something there...the Kingdom is coming. Until then, none of us really have any home or shelter this side of eternity.

Let us "set sight and set sail for the kingdom come" on earth as it is in heaven.
________


— "The Beautiful Letdown" by Jon Foreman
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
— "Birch Leaves" by Aaron Hennig
— "Happy is a Yuppie Word" by Jon Foreman

Created for a Place I've Never Known

"I've got my memories

Always inside of me

But I can't go back

Back to how it was...

...Created for a place 

I've never known"

Memories—I have those, too. But they are intangible. A stack of letters, smooth under my fingers, they are tangible. They hold your ruminations, a hundred quotations, illustrations, and aspirations. But letters cannot give me a bear hug. So I have your blue plaid flannel shirt wrapped around me. But where are your strong arms, my friend?

I can't wander back to the Lodge and find you there. Can't find you perched atop a woodpile at my parents' house...or at your parents' house, either. Believe me, I've looked. I've seen your bookshelf, the beautiful things you crafted, your writing desk, the footprints you left in the closet, your handwriting on the mirror. But you have gone on without me—beyond the veil to a place I've never known. A place I yearn for in the beautiful, aching moments. You've run ahead to a place I long for more earnestly now than I ever have.

Looking back over your letters has become something of a yearly tradition around our almost-shared birthdays. Ever since the day I first met you, I have known you were different than other people. Sometimes that difference was frustrating, as I just wanted an answer about your favourite food or your week's adventures. But more often, your different-ness was perceptive and inspiring. You once sent me a heart-full poem, asking for my advice, only to have me mutilate it—blind until years later to the depth of sorrow and beauty commingled therein.

I should have known that the soul of an artisan-poet, so well-versed in the language and habits of the King's world, wasn't long for this fragmented, still-fallen one. Perhaps part of your restless wanderlust stemmed from never quite feeling like you belonged here. There seemed no corner of the earth that could quite be your very own, my elven-friend. So you chose to step out of this world to find the place you had never known, but longed for all your life.

"This is home

Now I'm finally where I belong

Where I Belong

Yeah, this is home

I've been searching for a place of my own

Now I've found it

Maybe this is home

This is home"

Like Jewel says in The Last Battle, 'I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.' But there you are; you've gone further up and further in, without me. I envy you. So. Much. And I look forward to the day when I will get into Narnia and you can teach me the ways and words of the Kingdom. Who knows how long that will be, life is too dear to leave it without Aslan deliberately calling me away. But when He does—O friend!—come meet me. Show me sylvan glades where the dryads play. Teach me all the colours I haven't seen before. Tutor me in the names of the trees and the contours of the Kingdom. And help my trembling, tied tongue to learn to lisp the language of Heaven, until it becomes familiar to taste the words.

You have always shown me the world through different eyes. You have shown me beauty and wonder—ever my guide into Faerie Land. You have asked the questions I didn't even think to question. You have valiantly lived, trying to reconcile confusion and the constant hurricane of thoughts and fears. 

"And now after all my searching

After all my questions

I'm gonna call it home

I've got a brand new mindset

I can finally see the sunset

I'm gonna call it home"

Do you remember the time that you told me that your family went to the beach on or around Christmas, and that you saw a wall of water rising up and the sun behind it? Those lines from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  sounded so naturally like something that would actually happen to you. And now you're in Aslan's own Country, the Utter East. Perhaps you sailed so far West from the Grey Havens as to arrive in the East. But you left me here without you, friend. In many ways, you left me for another world years ago. I always hoped you would find your way back far enough to reach out your hand to me once again. But we can't go back to how it was. And maybe that is for the best. I don't know if I could have borne the changes in you since that last visit. They were already apparent then...and they hurt to see. But know that I never stopped loving you and being your friend, even from a distance.

Perhaps it is better that what I do remember is you running to ring the unringable church bell in Pagosa. You, sitting on the floor, reading The Silmarillion aloud to me. The vast amount of ham you could eat! 'Phoners' and enthusiastic letters. The artistry of your hands and the music you played. The enthusiasm you had for music and lyrics and poetry. 

You were hard for me to understand, my friend. But not hard to love. You were hard for me to know how to help in fits of depression. But it seemed to be a joy for you to help me—even when I didn't always know it was your hand reaching out to me. You visited me when I was lonely. You gave me one of the greatest adventures I've ever taken, and were an integral part of my other grand adventure. You gave me the gift of your friendship, even though it cost you dearly to be open to loving another living thing. When you withdrew that gift, I felt abandoned, betrayed, unwanted. But now I know it was not because you didn't care, you cared more than you knew how. A part of me ceased all those years ago, and now part of me has died with you, friend. There are things that will never heal this side of Aslan's Country.

Missing you hurts like Hell, Aaron. Because it is Hell that stole you from me, from your dear family, and from a world that needs to see through your eyes. 

'This is worse than Mordor!' said Sam. 'Much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say; because it is home and you remember it before it was all ruined.' I remember you before the enemy set about to ruin you, to try to take you. But though you have gone further up and in, while I am left in the Shadowlands, neither has the enemy succeeded. You are now safe forever from confusion and heartache. You get to know how fully loved you are. You belong. 

Your seed has fallen into the ground in order to bear much fruit. In so many ways, the Lord has already borne good fruit through you, my friend, but the harvest continues. I can't thank you enough for being you. I love you. So. Much.

"A truer, nobler, trustier heart 

never beat within a human breast" 

—Lord Byron

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

—C S Lewis, The Last Battle

___________

Song lyrics: This is Home by Switchfoot
Quotation 1: The Last Battle, by C S Lewis

Quotation 2: The Return of the the King, by J R R Tolkien

Do Not be Afraid

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."¹

—Frederick Buechner

These were the words that marked a house fire and the death of a beloved dog for some folks that I met earlier this year. They are the words I wrote under a dark sky and a full moon, a picture I painted for my friend whose dear mom died on Easter morning. They are the words embodied in the juxtaposition of nature’s beauty and nature’s brutality when I was out hiking and found a freshly killed bird on my quiet trail. They are the words I am still clinging to, in hopes of making sense of a friend’s surreal situation. They are the words attempting to hold back my own fears of losing my family. They are the words seeking to reconcile a disappointed hope of healing—a wife and child, parents and a sister, all bereft of a man who was only thirty-four.

But they are only so many words. They don’t stop the darkness from coming. They don’t staunch the wound that death rips through so many whom I know—the wound that I feel, too. That I fear, too. At some point I have to face the reality of death and the loneliness—the isolation—it brings. And words do not fill the hollowed out people we become when death invades our lives. Those true words lie flat on the page, not shedding a bit of light or colour into our greyness. They lie flat, unable to lend us a hand, to pull us out of the mire of the Fall and its effects.

Words can kill and words can heal; but sometimes words are superfluous—flat-lined rather than life-lines. Brokenness doesn’t fit in neat packages or true-but-trite sayings. Brokenness doesn’t fit well anywhere with all its jagged edges lacerating those who get too close. When I can, I hug my friend who lost her mom this year. I try to just listen. I paint or sing to let the pain out. I cry with my friends—and for them, too. I pray the Kyrie often: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

But how do I face my family’s mortality—or my own—when I am reminded of the brevity of life? I need to learn to take a page from Wendell Berry’s book:

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my [parents’] lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.2

“Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” I can grieve alongside. I can grieve during. I can grieve after. And being a human rather than an animal, I can have a forethought of grief. I can “pre-grieve,” as I’ve taken to calling it—but should I? Or can I really even pre-grieve? I don’t know what certain losses will be like until they arrive. I won’t know what I miss until I miss it. Why try to grieve now, when I am called to live now? Why let grieving spoil being with my family and my friends, or the beauty all around me? And let me remind you, you who are in the darkness and that infernal greyness of numbed emotions—there are still candles and stars and beacons of beauty. How do I know? I have seen them. Beauty does not stop the ache, nor does it flip a switch, turning on one’s ability to feel. Yet, beauty creeps in—like a flame along a paper-edge, like ever-rising waters, like the grey light of dawn about to to turn golden and crimson—and somehow it lights a beacon of hope. Hope that one day this topsy-turvy brokenness will be made right.

How do I know? Well, Buechner said it better than I could: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.” That part tends to get left off the quotation, but how are we not to be afraid—in reverent fear of the beauty and in fear of the terror of the world? We do not fear, because the One who made all things good, who made us, who loves us, walks with us. Why would we fear the darkness if the Light of the World is present with us? It isn’t that we aren’t walking in the darkness, its very fingers clawing at us—but, it cannot overpower us or leave us forever in grey-life. The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it—cannot understand the Light, nor overcome it.

When words won’t stem the gushing wounds death opens in the heart, I go for a long hike. It doesn’t fix things or bring people back. It doesn’t change the realities that my family and friends experience due to loss. Yet, sometimes along the way, I am changed by the Maker of the wild things. He is the ever-present Healer. He is with us in the darkness, in the flat grey feeling, in the hollow emptiness, in the moments of meaninglessness. Though we may not feel His presence—and though we may forget, “we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him.”3

Sometimes the Word is wordlessly present. Always He walks alongside us—He is with us—even when we can’t feel His presence. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.”

________

1. Buechner, Frederick; Beyond Words (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 2004) 139

2. Berry, Wendell; "The Peace of Wild Things" retrieved from Poem Hunter

3. Lewis, C. S., Letters to Malcolm (London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd. 1964) 100-101

Glory Be to God for Dappled Things (Photo Update)

Typed words have been slow in coming this summer. Conversations have been far more prevalent this summer. My typed thoughts sit in a nice pile of drafts, unfinished. My conversations seem to simply go on and grow as the summer progresses. Poems have given way to painting. I have been thinking about life and Godliness through the lens of Harry Potter and a couple of thought-provoking films; through lots of conversations and the reading of a few CS Lewis pieces.

As it has been a while since I've actually published something here, I thought I would post a few photos from the summer to mark its progress.

Gog and MaGog with Tosha, Michael, and Ben (early June) 6mi

Some painting inspired by hard conversations, sad things happening to friends, and by the moon

Ditto

4th of July with my family!

Some reflections whilst listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Shrine Ridge wildflower hike with Tosha (late July) 6mi

Butler Gulch hike with Tosha (early August) 4?mi

Hiking Mt Sherman (14,036ft) 5.25mi

With these fellows (Aaron and Ben)

The end of the Mt Sherman hike, back by the truck. . .

Somewhere along the way I spent time with a couple of Oxford friends (Kasey June and both Kevin J and Kevin B); hyperventilated with laughter with Lyndi and Katie; watched Harry Potter 1-4 (so far) with the neighbours; watched Cinderella Man with a few other neighbours; had long phone calls or chats on the stairs by my house with various folks; got to see sweet AnnaClaire and talk (over dinner and cheese); sat on my porch and read Lewis while my sweet Brooke-friend journalled; have had a few interesting conversations with our bookstore intern; sat and listened to a local bluegrass band downtown; went to a lecture on Harry Potter and the Way of Power by Kyle Strobel; have had the opportunity to listen to Kevin Bywater speak; and have enjoyed hearing a lot of rain on the roof and the crickets—because maintenance replaced the pool motor with one that is much quieter!

All in all, it has been a very good summer and a growing summer. I am learning to lay down expectations and receive life as God hands it to me. I am learning to put up wiser boundaries with people and work (very much a practise and a process). I am learning to be faithful where I am. I am striving to not violate my conscience in the small matters that add up. I am more alive to Beauty and Hope. The Holy Spirit is breathing His life-giving breath on and in me—turning me from cold stone into living flesh and rippling hair. There is light and high Beauty beyond the shadow—weakness that is power that the darkness cannot fathom. There is life in sacrificial death. Loyalty and friendship have been embodied in stories, in the people I get the priviledge of knowing. Life is full—full of the glory of God.

All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be made well.

Unbreak My Heart New

Normal life and my normal self died a few years ago. The problem is, I keep expecting my normal self to resurrect—to look out at me from the mirror again, to take up residency in my heart and home. I keep expecting to be who I was. . .and I keep getting surprised when I'm not that person anymore. The carefree, wide-eyed, faithful-to-have-quiet-time, thoughtful person I used to be sustained wounds so deep that she died. That person is buried under a pile of ashes. Cancer. Death. Divorce. Things that weren't supposed to touch my family torched us. Many of my own hopes and dreams have burnt out, adding their ash to the grave of the person I used to be.

i am desperate, 

if nothing else, 

in a holding pattern 

to find myself.

i talk in circles, 

i talk in circles, 

i watch for signals, 

for a clue.

how to feel different. 

how to feel new. 

How do I get out of this dichotomy? I so often behave in a way that I despise. I know the right thing to do, yet shrink from doing it. I want to go back to who I was or forward to feeling—to being—new. . . anything but this horrible stuck feeling, this stagnant 'living' I've been attempting. The holding pattern never becomes a flight plan and I'm getting desperate. Desperation can push us over the edge, can push us to depression, can push us into a rut, can push us into despising who we've become. In my desperation I've made rash decisions—hoping that a change in life-circumstances would change the dull ache, the incessant indifference into incandescent joy. Hoping I could go back to who  was.

[But,] no one can unring this bell, 

unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart new. 

God knows, i am dissonance 

waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune.

The echoes of the Fall reverberate in my heart, my thoughts, my whole life. . .and it can't be unrung. Carefree me has become careworn and careful—careful not to get hurt anymore. The more I try to gather up all the pieces, to hold them and order my own steps, the less disciplined, purposeful, and joy-filled I am. The more I grasp at control, the less of it I have. Life spins at a crazy pace with no stillness. 

I am all dissonance, the wrong sounds at the wrong times. Saying 'no' when I want to say 'yes,' and 'yes' when I should say 'no' has emptied me. I keep running away from the open arms of Jesus, looking for acceptance from just about everyone else. It's never enough from anyone else, though. The more I look for acceptance from others, the less satisfied I am. Their acceptance rings hollow. All I want is for God to pull me into tune, into step with Him. But running my own way, singing my own song, makes it impossible to walk in step with, or be in tune with, God. My life feels like a cacophony in unconnected, chaotic bursts. 

i know the further i go, 

the harder i try, only keeps my eyes closed. 

and somehow i’ve fallen in love 

with this middle ground at the cost of my soul.

C S Lewis once made the observation that “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road, and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” Indeed, I know that the more I run away, the more I 'try harder,' only plunges me further into the darkness of trying to control what only God can. I've fallen in love with mediocrity, inadequacy, and complacency at the cost of my soul. I've chosen indifference so many times that I can no longer feel. . .and I'm terrified of remaining thus.

yet i know, if i stepped aside, 

released the controls, you would open my eyes. 

that somehow, all of this mess 

is just an attempt to know the worth of my life…

I want to reach back in time and unmake the mess my life and my soul have become. The more I try to experience meaning and depth, the less I can feel. My desire for control—so I can be free, so nothing else can hurt me—has spilled acid-like onto other people, burning them, hurting them, haunting me. I can't feel pain and empathy to much depth anymore—I've burnt myself out. I'm left with hands full of ashes. The ashes of relationships, the ashes of my emotions—a grey film between me and real life. Is this what being a leper feels like? To not feel. . .to not know I'm being burnt when I'm on fire? 

The more I grasp at life, the more I try to hold onto meaning, the more I want to experience feelings, the more they flee and the less I have. Jesus was right, of course: Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it, but whoever insists on keeping his life will lose it... I keep insisting on life as I think I need it or want it. The more I do, the more enslaved I become. Rather than being satisfied, I am insatiable. Rather than being disciplined I am reckless. Rather than really loving God and others, I run from them and shut them out. Rather than being hurt, I wound—and am insensible to the pain I cause. The more I want to feel, the more indifferent I am. Must I remain enslaved to this dichotomy? Where does change come from? Because it certainly does not come from me or from trying harder. 

Change comes like a breath of fresh air into a musty room—it comes from the hovering, order-bringing, healing Holy Spirit Himself. Change – renewal – can only ever come from God. The more I surrender control, the less chaotic life might be. When I submit myself to God, the enemy has to flee from me, and so I am free. This is the the true paradox: that I must submit to be made free, that surrender leads to life. 

I cannot go back to my normal, carefree self. The quivering of the Fall has shaken my life. I have been rent, broken, and buried. But the Resurrection and the Life is at work in me. He has fallen into the ground and died, bearing much fruit—and He calls me, calls us, to do the same. The breath of life will not fill my lungs the same way it did. . .but perhaps the Breath is a person who will expand my breathing, who will give me deeper life—life etched by sorrow and shaped into something more Beautiful than carefree me could have been. 

I'm desperate for new life. To be a string tightened into tune, no longer wanton but free to be in harmony. No. . . Not desperate. I am confident that there is Hope for new life, for retuning and renewal. That Hope is the Anchor for my soul, to keep me from spinning in the circles of a holding pattern. He holds me steady in the storm—and when the time is right, the Anchor is drawn up and the Wind is given full reign to guide the ship. All things have their times and seasons, their proper channels and right order. When the sail submits to the Anchor even in the storm, or to the Wind under the hand of the Captain, it is then the ship is most free.

______

1. Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neil), Mercury

2. C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

3. Luke 9:24 TLB (The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation)

Knowing Home Now. . .and for the First Time

"What do you want to do with your life?" someone asked me recently. Without hesitation I replied that I wanted to do what I am doing. Living life, loving God and people, liking my job, writing, and hiking. Perhaps I should have said more accurately—and succinctly—that I wanted to do with my life whatever God calls me to each day. That doesn't mean I'll stay in this house or this job forever and always. It doesn't mean that I will get to have the same friends all of my life. It means that I will seek to live each day to the full, to "suck the marrow out of life"¹ as Thoreau says.

My answer may sound transitory, thoughtless, or hopelessly mangled—wanting the now without thought for the future. But I have a few things in place for the future, and I see no reason to worry about something I don't have when I could enjoy what I do have. We aren't called to always quest after what may or may not be on the horizon. We are called to live where we are—and who we are—now.

I was once told that I have the pioneer spirit of a first-born—which is rather interesting, considering I'm a youngest. However, the comment was, in part, true. I want more out of life than the homeland of my youth could offer. I longed to go West and live amongst mountains. I had not yet figured out what it meant to live fully wherever I was. I still haven't. Wanderlust plagues my blood sometimes and I must fly down the two-lane highway to chase the wild geese, to breathe in mountain air, to get away from my little cabin, so that I can experience the joy of coming home again.

Chesterton talks about sailing away from Christianity to figure out what he believed, only to find that his beliefs lined up with orthodoxy. In The Everlasting Man he explains it as leaving one's homeland to fight giants and seek adventure, only to realise one's home rested atop a slumbering giant the whole time. He says, "There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.  The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place. . .”² Much like Lewis's, John, in Pilgrim's Regress, learned. He left his home at the foot of the mountains to seek the pull of Joy (an elusive island in that book) and found that he had circumnavigated the world and returned to his mountain home, where the island/Joy had been all along. Or as Eliot so adeptly explains it,

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."³

These men all knew and wrote about the experience of leaving home to find it. It was not easy, the road was long, but in the end, they arrived home—knowing its value for the first time. The hearts of men long for our true home—the New Heavens and the New Earth, yes—but more specifically, we long for God. Augustine was right to confess that, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him." 

So, how do we live where we are now, while our hearts long for completion in God? How do we live in the present? How do we walk the balance of wanting to be complete now, but living in the not yet? Part of the answer—because I certainly do not have the full answer—is simply to be present. For me, this means I need to not plan one event after the other. I want to be present where I am with the people there, not be thinking about the next event in the back of my mind, hurrying myself along. Part of being present—counter-intuitive to this being written and viewed on a screen—means being face-to-face with people or the world around us, not being at the beck and call of technology. 

Perhaps the biggest part of being present, living in the now but not for the now, is savouring things. Swallow slowly—both food and the world. I love cooking. I enjoy chopping all of the ingredients, serving things as fresh as possible. It takes time and effort to make a meal. I want to savour what took me thirty minutes or more to make. But I want to savour the time it took to make the meal, too. I don't want a dozen labour-saving devices. One or two are sufficient (mostly, a garlic press is sufficient, so my fingers don't reek of garlic for days on end). I want to spend the time chopping, arranging, mixing, letting every flavour meld within my cast-iron skillet. There is deep satisfaction in the process of making a meal from scratch, and at my own pace. Confessedly, I do love my slow cooker for winter evenings of stew or tenderised meat—but I still put all the ingredients in as slowly and deliberately as ever (most of the time).

With the changes made to things like cooking or farming or travel, I wonder what we modern folks do with all of our saved time. Do we dance more and read more? Do we spend more time in conversation or in contemplation? Though e-mails save time and cutting and pasting is helpful, there is nothing like the joy of a real letter—handwritten, not typed—in our mailbox, and the feel of it in our hands and under our eyes. 

What do we do with all of that time we have saved?

"Good morning," said the little prince."

Good morning," said the merchant. This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink.

"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.

"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."

"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"

"Anything you like . . ."

"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."⁴

What do you want to do with your life? The question hangs in the air. I want to use my time saved to cook slowly, to hike long, to be with friends and family, to sit on my porch and watch the twilight fall, to smell the seasons' scents, to dance in the snow. . .In these things, I am learning to love God and enjoy Him forever—because He is Home.

_________

1. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden (New York: Penguin Group), 72

2. Chesterton, G. K., The Everlasting Man (Garden City: New York, Doubleday and Company 1955) 11
3. Eliot, T. S., Collected Poems (New York: New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. 1971) 208

4. de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, The Little Prince, translated by Katherine Woods (New York: New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. 1971) 73-74

What is Your Grave?

About an hour into a conversation with a friend, we began discussing the death of Lazarus and Jesus weeping with Mary. Jesus had purposely waited to come to His friends that He might glorify the Father through the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus said to Martha, "I myself am the resurrection and the life." He knew he was about to push death right out of a man, to make him what he should be: fully alive. He knew, and still, when Mary ran to meet Him, trailing mourners and friends and tears, His anger was roused and He wept.

Everyone who saw Jesus weep said, "Look how much He loved him"—but Jesus was about to return Lazarus to life, He was not distraught because He would not see Lazarus again. No, He was angry when He saw how upset and sorrowed Mary and the others were. He was angry because death was not part of the world He had formed. Death had come to steal life, joy, and fellowship away. Death was hurting His belovéd friends—and so He wept at the brokenness, at the pain suffered by His friends. And then He stood there and called Lazarus to come forth, to live and breathe as he was made to.

At this point, my friend asked me: "What grave are you standing next to?" The question struck a chord that is still vibrating within me, as some weeks before, another friend had asked something similar, "What in us needs to die so that God can bring His life into us?" Perhaps having thought on that question already prepared me a bit for the second conversation. I confess that it takes God bringing something to my attention quite a few times before I really give it the thought it deserves. 

A few weeks after these conversations, John eleven was my morning reading. I'm not sure I had ever noticed before that Jesus wept out of sorrow for Mary but also out of anger. Death is not the way it is supposed to be—and Jesus knew that, knew that one day death would be swallowed up by life, like you swallow a poppy seed. You are so much bigger than a seed, more complex in your biological life, and greater than it in every way. Life is like that when it swallows death. Death only exists as the privation of life, of something God made good. Any sin or evil is only ever a twisting of something God made good. 

When I thought about Jesus standing next to Lazarus's grave and calling him to come forth, I realised that Jesus was calling Lazarus back to what was good: life. Much like the man in The Great Divorce with the lizard of lust upon his shoulder. Again and again the solid person asked if he could kill the lizard and the man whined, promised his pet sin would be very good now, even begged not to have it killed because that would kill him. But in the end, when he cried out that yes, the solid person could kill the lizard, he did not die. The lizard itself was restored, or reformed into something good, a stallion. It was such a warping of the good thing God had made that it seemed impossible that such a magnificent creature could have ever been shrivelled and degraded into a lizard.

At the grave, Jesus turned death into life. He unbroke the Fall and its consequences. He remade the fragmented, and He continues to do so in our lives. When I think about what needs to die in me I find that the grave must be my own. I need Jesus to be standing next to the grave of me and my selfishness. It is always myself at the root of my sin—whether it is lack of compassion or sacrifice; or if it is self-righteousness and self-consciousness; or even if it is my "good" efforts. I need to die so that I can be raised to new, abundant life in and from Jesus. He made me to be fully alive, fully—unfallen—human. I need the resurrection, the resuscitation, the breath of the Spirit animating me and keeping me alive.

What grave are you standing beside?

Have You Noticed Beauty?

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. 

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have notice that many folks claim that humans are animals. After all, we are mammals and are classified as Homo sapiens in the scientific realm. But that is a mere classification. God tells is from the very beginning that humans are different than animals. We are made in the image and likeness of God. While the animals may also have been formed from the dust of the earth, it was only into man that God Himself breathed the breath of life. 

I have noticed something else: all animals eat food, but only human beings arrange food on their plates and take photos of it. Only humans stop to watch the sunrise or the moonrise for the sheer beauty of it. Only human beings write poetry or draw and paint—even from the dawn of time. When Adam first speaks of Eve, it is recorded in a couplet. When Eve is tempted by the serpent, she sees that the tree is pleasant to the eye. Perhaps it is a few readings too many of Lewis and Tolkien for me to hope that God formed and filled the world by singing the words of creation. Even if He did not, two books of His word brim with poetry and songs. 

I have noticed that on my most exhausting days of travel or work what I long for is Beauty. To watch the sun set and the stars creep into the sky, one by one and then in clusters. To read a story or a poem. To listen to an album straight through while I eat my dinner. To dance in my kitchen. To make food, yes, but also to group it by colour on my plate. To sit down—feet free of shoes—listening to the evensong of birds give way to cricket choruses. To listen to an audio book because I'm too tired to read anything beyond five lines. 

I have noticed that when I'm not reading much or stopping to enter into the Beauty I see in creation, it is then that I have no words. I cannot write. I make a poor conversant. I feel too tired for friends. I run and run, but it is more like a crawling car on petrol fumes. In short, I get crabby and withdrawn when I am not able to be immersed in Beauty in some form. Goethe explains why: there is a sense of the Beautiful which God has twined into the human soul. We are different from the animals...and the angels, and from God Himself. Yet neither animals nor angels are made in God's image, only man is. We are distinct—imaging God in our very being, in our capacity to know and appreciate Beauty, in our cultivating and stewarding whatever things God gives to us, from children and gardens, to art and music. 

I have noticed that Beauty is a gift that we get to enjoy. That we are allowed to savour the words of a poem on our tongues. That our eyes burn with the glory of a sunset or a sky on fire with meteors. That our hearts nearly burst in the highest swell of a song, either poignant or joy-filled. It is a gift to know that Beauty itself is a gift. It is a gift to know God and to be known by Him. It is Beauty that leads us to praise. Beauty is our companion to draw us into worship. It is Beauty that beckons us to enter into itself and find that we are in the courts of God. Beauty it is that leads us further up and further in.

Have you noticed?