Swallowing Light

i am alive. i am awake. i am aware of what [life] tastes like.¹

It tastes like meteors. Like sunshine spilling warmth over me as I lie on a mound of woodchips. Like black currant tea and dark chocolate. Like thought-full and heart-felt conversations. Like fear from a film—and fear of the unknown. Like crisp autumn air, scented by leaves crunched. Like solitude under the moon. Like sorrow piercing my heart. And it tastes like Hope springing from Truth. 

May I help you taste Hope for a little while? I want to point you toward Hope Himself; to give you Something real to reach for; to write a truer story than fear would project. I want to breathe colour and Beauty and life into you. 

When I first heard the song quoted above, I thought it said, i am aware of what life tastes like. Turns out it says, of what light tastes like. What does light taste like? Does light taste like sorrow, like life can? Maybe. The song goes on to say:

i want to be. 

i want to be at my best. 

it’s bittersweet, it’s poetry. 

a careful pruning of my dead leaves.

Light is bittersweet. Perhaps because light is necessary for seeing, and seeing is wonderful. Yet living in a broken, fallen world means that seeing is also horror-full. I live in the mountains; I think they are the most stunning in brilliant autumn and scintillating winter. But the beauty can be marred by beetle killed forests; by plumes of black smoke, charcoal trees, and ash falling like dead snow. In the same way, human beings can be so intensely interesting or lovely that we can hardly look away from them. But footage of skeletal men being sent to gas chambers, or babies being dismembered—we can hardly look at that inhumane reality. Life under the Curse is exposed by light to be both indescribably beautiful and unspeakably horrific. But the Curse has an expiry date. Light does not. Not the Light of the world Who will make the sun, moon, and stars obsolete. 

Notice, though, that light is also a careful pruning of my dead leaves.  If we are like a tree (planted by rivers of living water, as Psalm one says), we need to be pruned to stay healthy. The Morningstar clips sucker shoots, prunes even our healthy branches to keep us growing. He is careful, observant, wise. He does not prune unnecessarily, only what is best—even when it hurts so much it feels like He has cut off far too much for us to keep living.

so i propose a toast: to fists unraveling, to glass unshattering. to breaking all the rules, to breaking bread again. we’re swallowing light, we’re swallowing our pride. we’re raising our glass ’til we’re fixed from the inside. ’til we’re fixed from the inside.

Where does the light get in? Where we are cracked, even shattered. The Light gets in when we raise a toast to the King: through the broken bread on our tongues, the wine burning our throats. We swallow the Light again and again, until we are fixed from the inside. It is a process, like eating daily, it is not a one-time meal that satiates our hunger for only a day. Swallowing the Light is our daily bread (Scripture); it is our weekly feast (the Eucharist); it is our continual sustenance (meditation and contemplative prayer); it is the bitter gall we sometimes taste (weeping over sin); it is the banquet to come tasted a little now (worship and adoration). It is the swallowed Light Who heals us from within, not from shining on us – exposing us – from without. We must be revealed and healed from within. We must be unshattered from the inside.

May I help you taste the Hope that is now, as well as to come? We are a people who are united by our King. We live in His Kingdom now. We build His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. We get to participate in the Kingdom's colours and tastes and smells, to build and steward and welcome others into His Kingdom. We do this when we create a meal. When we weep with those who are grieved. When we build homes and roads and grocery stores. When we play music to inspire—breathe life into—the souls around us. When we love on others by loving their children. When we give sacrificially of our possessions or bank account; or harder still, of our time and our emotions. We co-labour to construct the Kingdom of Christ in many ways—seen and unseen, big and small. In this, we are the Body of Christ, joined and knit together with Jesus as our Head. God builds His Kingdom through us upon the Chief Cornerstone: Jesus. This is what Light tastes like.

________

1. "Taste" by Ryan O'Neal {Sleeping at Last}, Atlas: Year Two (Copyright 2016, Asteroid B-612)

Resuscitated by the Arts

Does music ever make you see? Does it break your heart, spilling it hot over your lashes? Does music become your voice when you cannot find the words to express your grief, sorrow, or hope? Music paints vistas on the mind—sunsets over mountains, starlight over tawny grasses bent by the breeze, snow on trees, russet leaves kicking up in the dirt lane. Certain songs carry a mood with them—autumn fog and rain, driving under sunny skies, poignant sadness, golden morning light. Music breathes life into weary souls, stands us on our feet, bows our heads—it even gives us earthbound creatures wings. Music heals. Music speaks what we cannot, when we cannot. Music opens the storeroom of our memories. Music flies us beyond ourselves into the great, wide world and the space beyond.

When I see a musician who is intent at his craft, playing for pure pleasure, joy wells up in me—and a bit of envy, too. I wish I could make a heart soar. . . or sing. . .or see. Though I cannot express myself in music, I know the intense concentration, the pleasure in my craft. It happens when I write sometimes. At other times, writing is an exercise and discipline, like musical scales.

Every craft has its learning season, disciplines, and the ability to sweep the craftsman or artist into its heart and flow so deeply that time passes without notice. But what I have noticed is that various crafts and arts influence one another. Music and stories often inspire me to paint, draw, or write. The visual arts encourage poetry or music to flow out of me. Poetry makes me want to be alive, to attend.

I have a deep respect for my friends who are writers, musicians, woodworkers, leather artisans, weavers, gardeners, and embroiderers. Their words and music and crafts all breathe life into my heart, into my veins. They remind me that Beauty comes in many forms and fills life with pleasure. The time poured into a craft is a form of tangible love given to others. 

I treasure my pincushion made from cloth designed and woven by one sweet friend, a wooden box carefully fitted and joined by another, words crafted into letters, stories, and poems by many dear folks, and pen-and-ink drawings of dragons and pictograms by yet another friend. I carry in my heart the deep strains of the cello, the lilting violin, the steady piano, the magical guitar picking I have been privy to over the years. And I delight in my friend’s whimsical illustrations and story of an island of creatures that must be saved again and again by one very patient saviour, who constantly goes unthanked.

My friends are a talented set, whether through the arts mentioned above, or the art of homemaking, hospitality, and keeping beauty in their homes and hearts. The creativity of God overflows in so many directions from people, it is rather amazing. And it breathes, breathes life into others in some way or another. Creativity is constantly begetting, expanding in life and Beauty. Creativity brings wholeness and healing into a world shattered by the Fall. Artisans and craftsmen are healers, then. Agents of God to breathe Beauty and life into others. Creativity gives room for expressing what we feel but cannot name, for expressing love and inclusion. Creativity builds what we all long for so deeply: home.

Creativity Begets: How Story Inspires

As the cerulean sky bleeds into water-coloured grey storm clouds, my thoughts are somewhere between Middle Earth and Pluto. Ringing in my head is a stunning symphonic melody about Saturn—its strength in Beauty has captured my memory. Reverberating in my ears is the sound of Tolkien's prose—read aloud to hear the simultaneously earthy and heraldic tones played in his words.

Treading the paths of my thoughts are an interesting pair, hand-in-hand. The first is a comment made by John Wain, an English novelist, about the Inklings being a “circle of instigators, almost of incendiaries, meeting to urge one another on in the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life.”1 The second is the thought I have been mulling over in recent days: one individual's creativity often leads others to create. Or more succinctly, creativity begets creativity. Creativity in something well-crafted and beautiful breathes life into our souls in a way that makes us want to create, too.

This creativity is what spread from one Inkling to the next and the next—and back again. The inspiration, the life-breath, from Tolkien stirred the heart and mind of Lewis. The adamant Lewis argued and challenged the other Inklings—and when an idea is challenged, one must think long on it to see if it is true and worth fighting for or not. Charles Williams himself was inspiring to Lewis, enough to model Ransom after him in That Hideous Strength. These men were each "playing the potter to see what shapes [they could] make of another."2 Even as they moulded one another's thoughts and imaginations, they shaped the minds of men for generations to come.

Living in the wake of these men (and Dorothy L Sayers, often mentioned amongst this set), I find my own views of valour, honour, camaraderie, theology, and of God Himself shaped by the essays and stories of various Inklings. My picture of true friendship is painted by Frodo and Samwise. The image of honour, integrity, and discernment strides forth in the form of Faramir. My heart broke over the death of Aslan, helping me to connect with the death of Jesus in a much deeper way. The Voice in the fog* reminds me that God tells us no story but our own from His perspective. My rich, layered view of Heaven is painted with such real grass that it spears one's feet, and light so real that it crushes one from the shadowlands. Dorothy L Sayers' robust explanation of the Trinity in The Mind of the Maker made such a vivid impression upon me that, though I have only read the book once, much of it sticks with me still. So, I am fashioned by these long-dead hands—much for the better, I think.

Creativity shot through with Beauty has made its impression on me; has breathed its very life into me. I find I am most shaped by images and stories, more than by essays. The essays have moulded my thoughts, certainly, but they are more abstract and intangible. Essay ideas are like trying to grasp a handful of smoke or filling our probing fingers with a bit of soul. But stories are gloriously real—even when fanciful and fantastic. Friendship becomes more than an idea, it is embodied in Samwise carrying the ring for Frodo—by carrying Frodo himself—when he had no more strength to walk toward Mount Doom. Hope is not just letters stacked together, it is Sam seeing a single star through the clouds and realising that the world is bigger than just his or Frodo's bit in the story; bigger and grander than Mordor and him-who-shall-remain-nameless. There was still Beauty outside that transcended, it brought Sam’s mind to the meta-story in which he and Frodo were but small characters. Beauty would outshine and outlive the world of Middle Earth, even if the quest failed.

Creativity begets. Creativity inspires. Creativity gives us a tangible understanding of intangible ideas. Creativity changes cultures—moulds minds.

I write with a score of good thinkers, theologians, historians, fathers, mothers, friends, and fellow Believers. I firmly believe that many of them are shaping, and will shape, the minds of the next generation(s). Yet I posit that those who will shape hearts, imaginations, and minds in this and future generations are the prophetic poets. These are the story-weavers and song-writers who both let us feel and give us the embodiment of ideas and ideals. They intertwine Truth and Beauty naturally, artfully. The story is the main thing and Goodness drips out, unforced. The creativity of past poets, painters, and musicians is still life-breathing into us. Let us create in whatever way our hands and minds find to do so. Who can tell what story we will encourage or inspire in someone else...

_________________

1. Wain, John, as quoted by Bianca Czaderna in "Who Were the Inklings" at firstthings.com

2. Bradbury, Ray,  Something Wicked this Way Comes (New York: Harper Collins, 2013) 18

* Aslan in The Horse and His Boy

Undone...

'Thread by thread I come apart, 

If brokenness is a work of art

Then surely this must be my masterpiece. 

I'm only honest when it rains,

an open book with a torn out page 

and my ink's run out. 

I wanna love you, but I don't know how...' 

—"Neptune" by Sleeping at Last

I get hung up on these lines, because they make sense of me, of life in this season. I often feel like an open book, but one missing pages—or the ink for the empty pages. I need that ink to explain myself chronologically—or just logically—to folks sometimes, and it has run out, run dry.

Yet it was the last line that stabbed my heart, because I've been feeling like that with God in this season of life. I want to love Him, but I don't seem to know how. I just know I keep failing. And if I don't love God well, how will I love people well? Doesn't loving—for the creature—begin with being loved? And doesn't that mean being humbled by Love enough to receive that precious gift from the Giver of all good things? 

Really, when all is known, isn't He the only One Who can prepare us to receive the love He gives? Do we ever do anything? He makes us vessels to be filled. He fills us. He runs out through our cracks—over the lip of us earthen jars—onto others. It isn't us. It never is us. It's all Him. Always. 

But He chooses us to be those ready vessels. He chooses us to be conduits of His love and creativity. Even though the echo of love, creativity, and Beauty is dim—poorly reflected through us—somehow He seems to delight in that reflection, no matter how grubby it is. 

Does that ever amaze you? It amazes me. It humbles me. Because I know myself... How could He be pleased with the flicker of an echo of Himself that shivers through me? But He is. 

Woe is me!

I am undone...I am flying shrapnel shards. O God, hold me together! I come back to Him. Because He is the Love that creates us to hold love—and to be held together by Love. 

Such a mystery and a joy, this. He is our Great Lover, meeting us in mystical union—the weaving of our body, soul, and spirit into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I want to throw my hands over my head, over my face, over my sacred places to shield myself from this invited invasion of the realest One splintering my shadow-self. Finity cannot contain Infinity. Time has no hold on the Timeless. Flesh as frail as mine cannot contain a particle of the Spirit of God. 

How can His Spirit dwell in me? I must cramp, confine, and frustrate Him. I must necessarily shatter as He enters, my ink spilling out, dripping all over. And then He re-forms me; makes me new. He doesn't rebuild me as I was, all fragile and wispy—He begins to make me a solid home. He makes His dwelling, finity expanded to hold the Infinite. Not contain, but hold. 

I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their soul. A soul can be knit between two distinct persons. I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their hand. O God, make me strong enough to be empty hands, cupped to receive the outpouring of Your Spirit! It is the Spirit of God who empties me; shatters and re-makes me; heals and makes me whole. It is the Spirit of God Who is the fluidity of Love pouring Himself into me, over me, through me, onto others. 

'Thread by thread I come apart...' And He makes my brokenness a work of art—makes me His masterpiece, though I don't know how to love Him. Though I try and fail. Love takes me apart, stops my striving, hushes me... He unwinds my threads and weaves me into His tapestry, His story, His art—into Himself. 

I am undone.  

                            I am remade. 

I am still me, but woven so tightly into Him as to be both found and lost; a piece, yet so intertwined that I am inextricably linked to the whole. 

                                                                    I am made whole.


O Love Who will not let me go—though I let You go so often—I want to love You. I just don't know how. O help... I don't know how. But I want to.