I sit beside the fire and think of times there were before. . .

Dear Aaron,  

Today is Labour Day. The end of summer in some ways. And the start of Semester all those years ago. I remember riding down in a Summit van with you and Elizabeth, and Noelle... All of us carefree and loving life.

Today the September breeze is rustling through the trees, the nuthatches are calling their repetitive little sound, and there are Colorado peaches and homegrown zucchini on my kitchen counter. The weather is autumnal, reminding me the seasons are starting to shift (so thankful!), yet there is much life bursting out in flavours and sounds and colours. The persistent scrub oak saplings out the kitchen window are nearly bleached yellow with the sun shining through them. There are strawberries waiting for me to make them into preserves, to go alongside the fried apple preserves I made last night.

Today is Labour Day, mellow with sunshine and life—and full of memories. Seven years ago on Labour Day it was your last day under the sunshine. And though time and marriage have shifted many things in me, it does not mean I don't grieve. That I don't think of you every day. Especially today. 

This year I started the Hobbit journey a little early and am nearly to "The Breaking of the Fellowship," though it is only the beginning of September... Though I'm familiar with Bilbo's poem from the Fellowship, I didn't realise how fitting it would be for today until I reread it this morning: 

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
 
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
 
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
 
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
 
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
 
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

"I think . . . Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were," in so many ways sums up much of our time at Semester. Though there were also "still so many things [we had] never seen," we got to see so many amazing things together. And for that, I'm grateful. 

The Lord is kind, my friend. I wish you had been able to fight the good fight and continue in the Land of the living, knowing His goodness through your own eyes. I wonder what songs and stories and poems you would have dreamed up... I hope you're saving all of those you're working on now to share with us when we get to the Kingdom.

"I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door."

You Have Come to Journey's End

 Dear Aaron,

I didn't know how this day would go; but I've known it was coming. . . I've known it for nearly a year now. Today is September 3rd, you see. A year ago today you thought your final mortal thought. Breathed your last breath. Faced your final fear. Was your parting thought a Switchfoot line? Was it a prayer? Were you afraid? Determined? Relieved? I don't know—and on this side of the Kingdom coming, I can't know. 

What I do know, is that for the last twelve years, I have thought of you as my elf-friend. How could you be anything but kin of Legolas, with your tousled blond hair and impish grin? With your skill in music and lyric-verse? With your love for the stars and the sea? You, a tree-lover and earth-wanderer, you must be of elven blood. So what song is more fitting in memory of three hundred and sixty-five days ago than this one?


INTO THE WEST

Lay down

Your sweet and weary head

The night is falling

You have come to journey's end

Sleep now

And dream of the ones who came before

They are calling

From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping

How desperately I wish you were only sleeping. Sleeping—to awake at any minute and laugh with mirth over simple joys. . . Sunsets, snowflakes, songs strummed on the roof. I want you to be safe in my arms, no more clamouring fears, no longer weeping over your lost Love. But, oh! You sleep a different sleep. The unwaking-on-this-side sort of sleep, where you no longer dream of those who came before—you have crossed to the distant shore.

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All Souls pass


You, who spent so many years along the edges of the water, you know the mournful, lilting—haunting—cry of the gulls. Their voices break my heart and comfort me, all at once. Can you hear their calls? Perhaps for the rest of my life, whenever their voices reach my ears, I will think of you. You, battling the noise and wheeling confusion in your own mind. You, with a whoop of delight, rushing to ring a solitary church bell. You, taking a wounded gull to the bird lady, even though it cost you your job. You, your soul home at last.

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say
We have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping
And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West

The last year has felt like one hell of a dark night. Like hope fading and shadows falling. So many memories have crowded in on me—or eluded me. For months (and even still), I wanted someone who knew you to talk with me about you. I just wanted to hear a new story, an old memory—something tangible to remind me of you. My grief is different than the ragged storm it was in those first weeks and months. But different doesn't mean absent. Sometimes the storm redoubles and leaves me gasping for breath. Sometimes, just beneath the calm surface, grief runs hard like a riptide. 

Don't tell me we have come now to the end. It can't be the end already. It's too soon. Too soon, can't you see? I don't want you to be across the waters, I don't want you to have answered the call of those gleaming, distant shores. I don't want you to be there without me. So many years ago you set sail, away from me and from unmoving earth. You sailed out into the pitching waves. Did you ever look back? Or did you set your face, unyielding, toward the sunset? 

A lithe grey ship has passed into the West. Yet you and I will meet again. You better be ready for a bear hug, O Westward One. Do you remember quoting Wordsworth to me, years ago? Let me return the gift, as tears of rain pour blessed relief upon this night. . .

‘What, you are stepping westward?'—'Yea.’

—'Twould be a wildish destiny. . .

The dewy ground was dark and cold;

Behind, all gloomy to behold;

And stepping westward seemed to be

A kind of heavenly destiny. . .

— William Wordsworth, Stepping Westward

       

  

"Into the West" Songwriters: Howard Shore / Philippa Boyens / Annie Lennox

This you taught me beyond the grave...

Dear Aaron,

The wind is sweeping through the pines tonight,
rattling my windows, whispering 'round the trees
The sky is weeping rain tonight,
Pouring out its pain upon the needles and the leaves

Always, always these are the nights I want to write
a letter to you, but where would I send it to?
Instead, I find your old letters,
weeping o'er their leaves, seeing your words anew

Tonight you reminded me that Despair makes a
show of his strength—or of our flaws—
Yet all the while he's trembling,
Fearing his bluff is up, but if we pause

And listen to his terms, with bowed heads
and hopeless hearts, saying
"These we will take!"
He confidently assumes we are paying

Paying the price of defeat, when really
we are rallying to fight his prideful will
to the bitter end,
Making the end less bitter on that battle hill

The Dark Lord wages war, precarious,
He doesn't have the upper hand,
But he uses our doubt
against us; yet wavering, we stand

Willing to sacrifice ourselves;
Even when hope has died in our hearts,
We will go down
Fighting against Despair and his darts

And unbelievably the eagles come,
Hope beyond hope—unlooked for—
Holds out a wing
To cover and to carry us once more

But when everything sad doesn't come untrue
under the sunless sky and the lidless eye,
Still we press on
Toward journey's end, by our living Despair dies

This you taught me beyond the grave,
Across the years you reached out to me
In red ink written
Ages ago, when we were younger and free

Free in ways we didn't know and often shunned,
You were wise, I was naive as could be—
Behold, time reveals truth
If only we have the eyes to look and to see

He Makes My Griefs to Sing

Wounded I sing, tormented I indite, Thrown down I fall into a bed, and rest: Sorrow hath chang’d its note: such is his will, Who changeth all things, as him pleaseth best. . . . . .I live to shew his power, who once did bring My joyes to weep, and now my griefs to sing. — George Herbert

“...Songs, like trees, bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.”  

—Treebeard (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

And so it is with people. Sometimes they are withered untimely. 

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Nine months have gone by, and still the fallout of your untimely withering haunts me and hurts me. I saw who you could be. The poet you were...the poet you could have been, the world will never know. You died untimely, Aaron. I feel the tension of who you were and who you became—and who you could have become if...if 'how it is' and 'how it should be' somehow were different. What if how it is were changed to how it should be? You would still be here. We would still be friends. 

Or would that be how it should be? 

No one is ever told what would have been... And who can say how it should be, except the Maker Himself? You would still be here, I believe—but perhaps we would still be separated. Friendships grow, but they can also change and they can wither, too. I know that is okay, but sometimes I really hate it. I don't want to not be friends. I don't want you to be gone. I don't want to bear this perpetually bleeding wound... Because I want you to still be you. I want you to still be alive and 'normal.' I want to still be friends. I want that to be how it should be. But I don't get to be in control.


Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?

Salvation is here

"Where can you run to escape from yourself?" If only I knew. I think you wanted to know, too. To escape from the torn, tortured part of your mind. And honestly, I want to run from the ugly, mean, revolting me that I too often am. I want to escape the things and the people who overwhelm and suffocate me. And I think you did, too. I evade and hedge and hide... You took a more drastic route to escape from yourself. I think I understand, a very little bit. I am trying to forgive you for leaving me...for leaving your family...for leaving a broken world that needed your songs. 

Only God's forgiveness to me in my brokenness fuels my love, my ability to forgive. And I know His forgiveness inspired you. Do you remember penning this: "Unmerited favour is my only remedy"? You did...and it rings in my memory like a clear bell-cry. Unmerited favour is my only remedy! Indeed. 

When Redemption is fully perfected in the Kingdom-coming, I want to hear its stories. I want to hear redemption in your story...to see how it threads through and plays out. Will you tell me the story? Will you teach me the language of the Kingdom? Will you help my tongue and heart live the words and ways of the Kingdom? 


When it feels like surgery And it burns like third degree And you wonder what is it worth? When your inside's breaking in And you feel that ache again And you wonder What's giving birth?

If you could let the pain of the past go Of your soul None of this is in your control If you could only let your guard down You could learn to trust me somehow I swear, that I won't let you go If you could only let go your doubts If you could just believe in me now I swear, that I won't let you go

Nine months later and this song still makes me cry.

Jon Foreman said this about I Won't Let You Go: "If the Author of time and space, the one who breathed my soul into existence, were to sing me a song about trust, it might go something like this, 'I love you and I won’t let you go.' I believe that where you put your trust begins to define you."

Where you put your trust begins to define you. I've put my trust in myself, in my friends, in my family. I've had friends leave me, annoy me, and/or smother me. A friend recently asked if I got tired of them... My response was honest, "I get tired of myself and can't get away from me. So yeah, I get tired of everyone I know at some point. The only exception is God. I don't get tired of Him." I've put my trust in people (myself included) who let me down, who don't satisfy, who don't know what to do or what I need. For a season of my life, I even put some of my trust in you, Aaron. I trusted that you were a first-friend—someone who understood gloaming and poetry, who had seen the grey-green wave in the sunrise, who would be my friend in rough times. In many ways, you were and you did.

But my ultimate trust can't be in any creature or creation. As wonderful as people are, as much as mountains and pine trees and rivers are 'home,' they will fail me, even hurt me. It isn't that we shouldn't trust others or not revel in creation. If we first trust God to love us and to not let us go—even when we want to let go and are tired of ourselves—then we can trust others and love them and creation. But if we don't truly trust God first, how can we trust or love anyone or anything else?

There ain't no darkness strong enough
that could tear you out from my heart There ain't no strength that's strong enough
that could tear this love apart Never gonna let you go

It's still true. Though Treebeard also says, "Never is too long a word, even for me" I dare to say it, with God's help. Because eternity is both now and to come. And for eternity I will hold on to the love and friendship you gave to me. Not in a grasping, hoarding way, but as a handhold on the face of the mountain as I climb toward the Lord. I will hold on for dear life—because life is dear. Your love, your generosity, the beauty and wonder of your soul are supports for me on this path. I could not proceed—I would not be where I am today—without those holds you provided. Your friendship has changed me, deepened me, strengthened me...made me more like Christ. Thank you, Aaron. I love you and I miss you, friend.

~ Me

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

A Shadow of Beauty

I woke in darkness to the jingle of my alarm and the chatter of birds. Perhaps the birds knew it was the first day of Spring and were thus employed with extra jubilation, but my suspicion is that they greet every morning with such exuberance. I listened to their Lauds—their morning prayer-chant—with a slow smile on my sleepy face. Finally pulling myself out of bed as the sky became a deep rose-gold. I never can decide if I like sunrise or sunset better, I'm glad I don't have to—I can simply like them both for their own sakes. 

Being the first day of Spring meant it was my friend-and-co-worker's birthday, and I had offered to make breakfast for the office. As I toasted English muffins and poached eggs in my cast iron skillet, I turned around to rinse my hands and saw a lovely moment: a reflected shadow. The sun coming through my antique windowpanes lit up the tawny dried grasses in the bottle on the sill, but the shadow it cast made them look like fresh wildflowers. I paused my poaching liturgy to snap a photo of the spiritual reality bowing before my eyes. 

There are times in life when all we can see are the dried grasses of our dreams or best laid plans. No matter which way we look at them, they are brittle, dried up, monotone kindling tucked in the corner of the sill. But maybe the problem is that we keep looking at the broken dream or the mislaid plan, whilst God is nudging us to turn around and look at the reflected shadow. When we turn, we see flowers outlined on the wall. We see the contour of each stem and leaf; each pod becomes a glory of its own. The dried grass looks different from this perspective, looks fresh and lovely and renewed. 

Sometimes the shadow is full of beauty, not mere darkness. Sometimes the shadows that fall on our lives are not snuffing out the sun, they are the evidence that there is sunlight. Without light there couldn't be shadows cast, after all. All would be utter darkness, impenetrable, blinding. For darkness, as well as overpowering light, blinds the eyes after time. But shadows are a mix of light and solid things; they are the delicate darkness dappling the wall.

One of the darkest things I have witnessed is my faithful sister being turned out of her home and her marriage. We could only stare at the pieces all around, the shattered lives of those affected, with shock and disbelief and horror. How did this happen? Those pieces looked sharp and irreparable and bleak. In many ways, they are. But when we stop looking at the shards and begin to see the light shine on them, through them, around them, we see the shadow reflected on the wall. We see Beauty and hope springing out of dead things. It isn't the restoration or reconciliation we hoped for, but other good things are germinating. There is Beauty in the shadow, as well as beyond it. There is light high beyond the reach of darkness, as Samwise discovered in Return of the King:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

The Fall and all its evil is but a small and passing thing from God's perspective. There is Light and there is Beauty that evil cannot touch. There is unseen Reality that cannot be destroyed, even when all the seen is turned into so much ash and concrete dust. The truth is that God is Real—He is high and beyond the reach of evil. God is the Light of the world, and it is His light spilling on and through and around us that casts a shadow of Beauty on the wall of life. Many times we get too busy looking at ourselves to see the whole Beauty-filled outline; to see the Light by which we see—but He is there, prodding us to turn around and see what the Light has made new.

Wandering in Wantonness, Yearning for Freedom

Why is it that the more I desire freedom, the less of it I have? 

Am I too irresponsible with the freedom I do have? Do I hold so tightly to my freedom that I crush it, like a child might crush a flower in their hand in their effort to protect it? I know that love can be bruised, and even extinguished, if held too tightly—I have been the constrictor and constricted at different points in my life. Love cannot flourish without freedom. 

So too, freedom cannot be true freedom without boundaries, else it becomes anarchy or licentiousness: "[Freedom] requires efforts, it presupposes mental and moral qualities of a high order to be generally diffused in the society where it exists" said John C Calhoun. Freedom must be tempered with morality, or the free-will of one may suffocate or imprison the will of another. Self-determination can easily become selfishness. When I rejoice in my deliverance rather than my Deliverer, I have made an idol out of a gift. 

My history tutor succeeded in teaching me at least one thing in my eight weeks of Oxford learning: Rights entail responsibilities. According to the Declaration of Independence, freedom is a God-given right. Life is a right. Private ownership of things [not people] is a right. With these rights then, come responsibilities. A right is a moral duty, a rule of conduct; it is a just claim and a privilege. When we want a right without assuming the responsibility it entails, it will crumble. Thus, when I want freedom on my terms, I find what I have called freedom is hollow, crumpled in my grasping hand. When I buck the parameters given because they feel confining, am I asserting freedom of will or willful selfishness? 

I want the bit in my teeth so I can have my head. I want to come and go as I please at work, but I need to be subject to the hours of operation, to be available to my co-workers. All the other hours of the week are my own. If I squander my mornings with sleep, having stayed up too late, is that the fault of my work for being too early, or my own, for being undisciplined? And if I feel stifled at work by having to remain indoors on a lovely day, haven't I chosen a job that is predominantly indoors? I have chosen to be subject to that parameter by choosing this job over another. Have I stifled my freedom to go hiking or to sit on my porch to read or write? By no means. There are certain hours of the day when I have chosen not to pursue those things, but they are still mine to pursue on off days and off hours. Further, I couldn't afford car insurance or gasoline, housing or food if I didn't have a job, so I would be less free to live in a mountainous state to hike in if I didn't have my job. 

Freedom has its framework, keeping it from becoming an amorphous, languid, insipid dissipation. I am only free to communicate in writing if I obey the rules of grammar. I am only free to hike if I have strengthened my muscles; taken care to feed my body the right proteins, fruits, and vegetables; looked up a route and driven to it. I can't hike in Buena Vista if I don't get in my car and drive two hours away in the right direction. Because I live in this place, I necessarily do not live in any other place. Is that somehow not free?

I now come back to love not being true love without freedom. When you feel like you have to love someone back because they care so much about you, is that really love or obligation? By very definition, the word obligation means binding. And while freedom involves duty and staying within morality—like a thought is only free to be expressed and understood when it is bound by proper punctuation—it is not binding, or non-freedom. A thing cannot be itself and its opposite. This is why God gave humans freedom of will. Yes, taken out of its parameters it is turned into anarchy, self-indulgence, and licence—these broken forms being the heartbreak and death of millions and millions throughout history. 

Yet what a difference it is to freely give love, without feeling we have to! If we were obligated to love God because He loves us, rather than being allowed to choose to love Him, that would not be love. It would be duty, it would be bindingly obligatory, it would be dull and colourless. I have tried to cause my heart to love warmly because I was loved and felt I must love in return. I have tried to be friends with people who were so needy for love that they grasped at friendship and affection. These relationships do not work. They frustrate and wound both people. When the Bible says we love because God first loved us, it does not mean that we feel we are expected to love God because He loved us. It means we are overwhelmed, awed by His love for us. We are humbled by His love and we want to return it, we want Him to be loved, too! This real love appears similar to loving out of duty, but the difference is in the heart. We gladly lay down our lives, give of our time and heart with no trace of resentment or drudgery.

Freedom is not unrestrained frolic and revelry, as our culture often thinks. That is the definition of wantonness. In fact, wantonness is said to be, "resistant to control, willful; a discordant sound." I shuddered at this definition, because it so accurately describes my heart. I resist control in my heart and in my words. I am willful and selfish. The older I get, the more I find how self-absorbed I am. That makes for a discordant strain in God's harmony. Like Melchor in The Silmarillion, or the little farandolae in A Wind in the Door, I sing my own song, thinking that it is better to be myself than to be part of the mighty chorus, the rooted, life-giving farandola. I want to do my own thing rather than being confined by doing what others want. And in some ways, that is good. I shouldn't go along with the crowd of our culture. But I am a member of the Body of Christ, not an individual. It is freedom to live with, to serve with, to give myself for Jesus—and He says I do that by being part of His body. I don't lose myself by being part of Him. I do not make music by singing my own song, I make discord. When I sing with the host of heaven and the saints, we shake the universe with the song of Illúvitar, the mighty chorus vibrating life and creativity and joy into every atom and galaxy.

All this time I have been grasping at wantonness, lack of restraint. I have not been yearning for freedom after all, I have been craving self indulgence: 

"Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction" (Prov 29:18 NIV).  

Or as the ESV says, "Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law."  

Prophetic vision and the instruction of wisdom are our parameters; they are the complete thought bound in a sentence, the melody of the symphony. The head of the Body is Christ—the Head has the eyes, and through the brain, the eyes communicate to the rest of the body what it should do. The wisdom and the vision come from Christ through His prophets, apostles, and teachers. I have rarely found these people leading a church, but I have shared many a meal with them around a table, exchanged letters and calls with them, read their books, and lived and worked alongside them. 

Freedom is not unrestraint—that is wantonness. Yet it is not a binding cord, either. Freedom is not a chain, it is a channel. A river that overflows its banks is out of control, damaging property, sometimes killing people. People who cast off restraint are said to run wild, often doing much more harm than a surging river or stampeding [uncontrolled] herd. "That which we restrain we keep within limits; that which we restrict we keep within certain definite limits; that which we repress we try to put out of existence" (Century Dictionary, 1902). When I try to cast off restraint, I am not pursuing freedom. When I seek God's wisdom, it represses sin in me, crucifying my flesh so that I might be fully alive to Christ in my spirit. When I seek God's vision, when I heed wisdom's instruction, then—and only then—am I free.