Imitations of Immortality

There are some things in life which can make a person feel his own mortality to a painful degree. Saying goodbye is one instance I’ve noticed it. You stand and look at the person across from you, or what passes for the person in this world, and you think, I have thirty seconds more to look at this face; twenty-eight now. And you think how you want time to stop, just for a moment, just so you can make this last, and don’t have to come to the inevitability of the last moment, the turning-around-and-walking-away. But you can’t; you try to think how to hold on to those moments, and eventually your twenty-eight seconds are gone and you haven’t said anything, and you shake your head and shrug and nod. And you are utterly helpless, utterly at the mercy of the march of the sun across the sky, and you turn around and go.

And when you’re leaving a place, you think of all the things you wish you had done differently; the times you rolled over in bed because you were too lazy to get up, the times you thought you should talk to someone but didn’t know what to say, and walked on by yourself. You imagine your actions differently over and over again, trying to make them different, but in the end, you know: you can’t.

And when you’re coming to a place, and you see folks you haven’t seen in a long time, and it comes over you all of a sudden that they’re not the way you remember them, they look old, and you look at yourself and realize you’re not the person you were; you’re old too. And a tightness comes over you when you realize how different from that person you are, the person who had the same name, and connections as yourself, but whose fears and delights were so foreign to those you’ve had for a long time; and you weep a bit for the person who is gone and can never come again.

Sometimes you forget about your helplessness, and think nothing bad can ever happen to you, you’re too smart to let it. You think that life was made for you to live, and the continuing existence of the world is tied up with the continuing well-being of your own person. Everyone naturally wants to be your friend.

And then maybe you hit some kind of a glitch, where things aren’t all right no matter how much you insist they have to be. And it comes to you, suddenly, when your car is spinning out of control and it’s too late to stop it, that maybe not everything had to be okay for you after all. Maybe people will cry a little, and shake their heads and say, what a pity, and then go right back to their business, just as if it had nothing to do with you. Maybe they think life is about them, instead.

Or you sit on the porch in the summer when the power is out and listen to the rain pounding down around you, and watch the lightning chasing the thunder across the sky, and you know you are small and damp. You know that magnificence, that unharnessed power has nothing to do with you, and could consume you in a flash.

But sometimes you know that there is a Power behind that, a Power that is the meaning which you are not. A Power in control not only of the mere universe, with its laws of space and time marching on, but outside and above that. A Power to Whom the nations are as a drop in the bucket. A Power that is the reason there is a person behind the mask the world sees.

And then maybe, if you are right in your mind, you realize that this Power made you in His image, that He became flesh and dwelt among us, that He humbled Himself and became obedient even to death on a cross, that He adopted you as His child. And you remember that He has promised to be with you wherever you go, and give to His beloved, even in your sleep. You have not come to a mountain that cannot be touched, but to the city of the living God.

And then you whisper to Him Who Was, and Is, and Is to Come, Who can hear you through the noise of the rain and the thunder and your own whispering, "through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."

After words

Rhythm dancing on my face--

Living liquid silver grace--

Dust and time and tears erase.

And then the rain came. When we were so thirsty we had forgotten the sound of rain, its taste and smell, the cold wetness of it.

We would never have dreamed of it in the afternoon, when the dust wafted through us, filling eyes and noses, scouring our pores if a gust of wind came up. When our lips were dry, limbs numb, hearts panting for peace, peace. When we could not run any longer, wrung of every living drop, weary and faint.

Then the rain came. It flowed over us like the tears we had longed for (which would not come). The skies burst forth more furiously for being leashed, lashing us with liquid, pelting us in purity. The clouds broke and emptied. Our crust of bitterness fell away in the face of the unbearable gentleness of each drop.

The dust has settled, the air is cool now. There is a puddle in the yard, perfect for dancing.

Lightning leapt from His fingertips, but His voice was not in the thunder.

The View From Here

is something like this, although they haven't quite made it to our field yet. They say it's going to be the worst harvest in 50 years, but it still smells lovely.

Home at Harvest

My dirty toes barely reach the warm cement, pushing off to propel the wooden porch swing forward. I pick up my feet, letting it fall back, and the chains creak slightly. We haven’t had time to paint the swing yet, so I can still smell the pristine gold of fresh lumber, although I can’t see it in the dark. I look across the firefly-sprinkled yard toward the wheat fields. They sparkle golden in the sunlight, but now I only know they are there by following the bobbing lights on six combines, humming slowly back and forth.

The breeze brings me the sound of June-bugs and a man’s laugh from the next field over. It’s quiet enough to think here. Daytime heat relaxes a little now with the sun gone, but leaves the air ripe with the sweet fullness of wheat dust. It has been a good day.

The heat was much worse earlier. When I opened the door to go outside, wind hit me with the force of a yawning oven. I staggered into it, relaxing with every breath. Glaring warmth soaked into my back, my face, my tense shoulders, until I almost closed my eyes to sleep.

The dog started barking wildly in the front yard at our neighbor, who had driven up in his old gray Case combine. He offered to give us all rides while he cut our field. Caleb went first, of course, while we older ones sat on the edge of the porch and swung our legs, watching the slow progress forward and back, the roaring machine devouring everything in its path, chewing and spitting out straw in a golden cloud. Four young rabbits and a field mouse darted from their homes right before being demolished.

Most farmers don’t even own a combine anymore; they find it easier to simply hire the custom crews that start in Texas and work their way north. Those are usually made up of the swaggering type, wearing cowboy hats and tight jeans and Oakleys. Some of them are romantics wandering northward on the road for six months out of the year. Some are just running away. Some of them don’t know why they do it. My great-grandfather was a custom cutter too.

When it was finally my turn I climbed up the ladder into the cab and perched on the torn upholstery. We rumbled off. The height from the ground gave a clear view of my "neighborhood." Mesas stretched across the horizon five miles to the west, the dirt covering them just as red as when my mother climbed them as a little girl. The hollow caves in the layer of gypsum are full of stories. Men made them homes while hiding from the law; one of the ranches in the hills still belongs to the Daltons. Now the caves are dens of mountain lions, Prairie Rattlers and Diamondbacks, annually hunted in the area "Rattlesnake Rodeos," where you can eat fried rattlesnake, if you like the taste of rubber chicken. Between Cathedral Mountain and Lone Peak runs Cheyenne Valley, where the nomadic Cheyenne massacred cowboys riding up the Chisolm Trail.

Looking down from the air-conditioned cab, I saw millions of royal heads bowing to their fate under the swather’s onslaught. This was what they were waiting for, ever since they were planted last fall; through their December green; through the sparse rain and the early heat of May and the first regal week of June: to bring sustenance to men.

When my round was finished the field was bare, with only a heavy two o’clock shadow of golden stubble. We watched as the million flecks of light cascaded together in one pure stream from the chute to the truck bed, a pyramid slowly settling to fill in the corners. A couple of scissortail flycatchers sat on the telephone line watching us, occasionally chasing an insect meal on wings with their characteristic acrobatics.

Naturally we all wanted to go to the elevator. Six of us piled into the faded red cab of the 1950-something Dodge. Seats were ripping, smelling comfortably of grease and dirt. The window on my side only rolled halfway down. Caleb sat on my lap, his bare legs sticking to me. Levi straddled the stick shift on the floor and helped Stan turn the heavy wheel; we laughed. Slowly, we made our way to the elevator a mile north, and pulled in line to be weighed, then drove into the dark tunnel under the high white storage bins scraping the sky.

We couldn’t see the wheat, running out like golden treasure from a chest in Ali Baba’s cave, but we could still smell the richness and listen to the rush. When we went back to weigh the truck again, the attendant in cut-off sleeves and straw-dust stubble looked in the window and asked what we wanted to drink. We all asked for Dr. Pepper, and he came out balancing an armful. It was cold and sweet.

Now the diamond mine over my head is strewn with so many stars I can’t see sky in between. I tried to count them from a car window once when I was knee-high to a grasshopper: I think I made it to eighty-seven before falling asleep. If I stay awake long enough I can see the sunrise from where I am. The stars are dizzyingly close, closer than the lights of the nearest town. Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight. It’s been a good day.

Last Weekend

"Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even to-day, when shutting drawers and flinging wide a hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.

This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again."

~Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca


"Darling, I am sorry that you left me crying. It is not that I am not happy--you must know--but because, for once, your leaving and the realization of your leaving came to me at the same moment and I could not help feeling how far you were going and how much we have together that we like to appreciate together, and that for a while we could not do that as directly. And I would rather feel badly (for that reason) than not feel that way. It is really such a cause of happiness to me."

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Bring Me a Unicorn

"To the faithful,
Absence is condensed presence--
To the others--there aren't any others!"

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

"...Pastel mesas lifted toward the skies
With light-foot winds to leap them one by one.
Here are her scornful wastelands--proud and still...

Wide miles of sweet green cleanness everywhere,
Where distant, miraged silver waters lie,
And one grows drunken on the thin bright air..."


"My weariness drops from me like a cloak,
And I am rested as a child from sleep.
The old song brings the scent of blue wood-smoke
And wind-blown lavender for me to keep--

Out of the starry net--one song I hold--
Is sweeter than any song--and it is old."


"One of me slips away--
A small thin ghost--
Out to a still, grey place--
A strange, remembered way of loneliness--
Of distances and space--
Of eerie winds--and darkness
Coming down--
Miles and miles from a town."


"An old glad madness whirling within my veins,
A song on my lips--and a strange, wild ecstasy
That only the hearts of the very young may know
Lifting up in me...

And an old road--calling one who has been away
Such a long, long while."


"Love longing lingers, waits awaking here--
Returned to shadows of my soul's desire."

Traveling

Today I saw

A town named after me (or someone with my last name)
Cows who thought I was crazy
Mountains and trees
Farms
peoplepeoplepeople (who God loves)
The inside of my car
No light on the dashboard in Kentucky
Three places where God has rescued me
People I love
A road, going ever on and on and on...

Tomorrow I'm going lower-case home.

Congratulations, Class of '06!

"Thus says the LORD:

'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;

But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,' says the LORD."

~Jeremiah 9:23, 24


Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I thy true Son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul's Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.


Here is the conclusion of the matter.


Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te,
Ostendat Dominus faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui,
Convertat Dominus vultum suum ad te et det tibi pacem.

~Numeri 6:24-26

Ave atque Vale

"What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest reaches of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door; the gloomy horse of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and unknown person unharnessing amid the shadow."

~Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Vale Draconibus

Because I can't say it:

“Think of me,
Think of me fondly,
When we've said goodbye.
Remember me once in a while
Please promise me you'll try…”

“Learning we knew; but still to-day,
With spelling-book devotion,
Words of one syllable we seek
In moments of emotion…

Far, far behind are morbid hours,
And lonely hearts that bleed.
Far, far behind us are the days,
When we were old indeed.

Leave we the child: he is immersed
With scientists and mystics:
With deep prophetic voice he cries
Canadian food statistics.

But now I know how few and small,
The things we crave need be--
Toys and the universe and you--
A little friend to tea.”

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever! Amen.”

“Memories
Like the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were...
So it is the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were.”

“Do not mess in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”

“Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind…

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered…

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place…

Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.”

"don't you know that it hurts me so
To say goodbye to you?
Wish you didn't have to go
No no no no..."

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”

From Malory

For like as always winter rasure doth alway erase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman. For in many persons there is no stability; for we may see all day, for a little blast of winter's rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love for little or nought, that cost much thing; this is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship, whomsoever useth this.

Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world, first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto; for there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman, but they loved one better than another; and worship in arms may never be foiled, but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady: and such love I call virtuous love.

But nowadays men cannot love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty, heat soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so; men and women could love together seven years, and no licours lusts were between them, and then was love, truth, and faithfulness: and lo, in likewise was used love in King Arthur's days.

From my Favorite New Graduation Gift:

Capitolo I

"Quando Mary Lennox fu mandata in Inghilterra per stare con lo zio nella casa di Misselthwaite Manor, tutti furono concordi nel ritenere che era la ragazza piu brutta che avessero mai visto. E purtroppo era vero. Aveva il viso affilato, il corpicino magro e l'espressione scontrosa. I capelli, radi, erano di un biondo giallognolo, e giallognolo era anche il visino, forse perche era nata in India e, per un motivo o per l'altro, era sempre stata malaticcia..."

Il Giardino Segreto, Frances E. Hodgson Burnett

Now I just need to learn Italian.

Grazie, Susanna!

More on Motherhood

"[The problem with degrading motherhood is] Profanity. Not swearing. I'm not talking about breaking the Third Commandment. I'm talking about treating as meaningless that which is freighted with meaning. Treating as common that which is hallowed. Regarding as a mere triviality what is really a divine design. Profanity is failure to see the inner mystery.

When women--sometimes well-meaning, earnest, truth seeking ones say 'Get out of the house and do something creative, find something meaningful, something with more direct access to reality,' it is a dead giveaway that they have missed the deepest definition of creation, of meaning, of reality. And when you start seeing the world as opaque, that is, as an end in itself instead of as transparent, when you ignore the Other World where this one ultimately finds its meaning, of course housekeeping (and any other kind of work if you do it long enough) becomes tedious and empty.

But what have buying groceries, changing diapers and peeling vegetables got to do with creativity? Aren't those the very things that keep us from it? Isn't it that kind of drudgery that keeps us in bondage? It's insipid and confining, it's what one conspicuous feminist called 'a life of idiotic ritual, full of forebodings and failure.' To her I would answer ritual, yes. Idiotic, no, not to the Christian--for although we do the same things anybody else does, and we do them over and over in the same way, the ordinary transactions of everyday life are the very means of transfiguration. It is the common stuff of this world which, because of the Word's having been 'made flesh,' is shot through with meaning, with charity, with the glory of God.

But this is what we so easily forget. Men as well as women have listened to those quasi-rational claims, have failed to see the fatal fallacy, and have capitulated. Words like personhood, liberation, fulfillment and equality have had a convincing ring and we have not questioned their popular definitions or turned on them the searchlight of Scripture or even of our common sense. We have meekly agreed that the kitchen sink is an obstacle instead of an altar, and we have obediently carried on our shoulders the chips these reductionists have told us to carry.

This is what I mean by profanity. We have forgotten the mystery, the dimension of glory. It was Mary herself who showed it to us so plainly. By the offering up of her physical body to become the God-bearer, she transfigured for all mothers, for all time, the meaning of motherhood. She cradled, fed and bathed her baby--who was very God of very God--so that when we cradle, feed and bathe ours we may see beyond that simple task to the God who in love and humility 'dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.'

Those who focus only on the drabness of the supermarket, or on the onions or the diapers themselves, haven't an inkling of the mystery that is at stake here, the mystery revealed in the birth of that Baby and consummated on the Cross: my life for yours.

The routines of housework and of mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one's life for others. Then they are no longer routines. By being done with love and offered up to God with praise, they are thereby hallowed as the vessels of the tabernacle were hallowed--not because they were different from other vessels in quality or function, but because they were offered to God. A mother's part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.

To modern mothers I would say 'Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as a mortal man. And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal. That is why God has now lifted him so high. . .' (Phil. 2:5-11 Phillips).

It is a spiritual principle as far removed from what the world tells us as heaven is removed from hell: If you are willing to lose your life, you'll find it. It is the principle expressed by John Keble in 1822:

If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice."

~Elisabeth Elliot, from On Motherhood and Profanity: http://www.backtothebible.org/devotions/authors_attic/elliot

Thank you to a creative mother for seeing the Other World!

In Honor of a Special Lady...

"Mothers are different. Mothers are darlings."

~Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband

Post Scriptum

Many thanks to my personal web technician, Darth Nater, for the existence of this particular venue. You, sir, are invaluable. How shall I ever do without you?

Home-thoughts From Before

I’ve been feeling lately like I’m living in a past that hasn’t happened yet. I look around and see people as if we are already separated, and I am looking back on them from half a country, or half a world, or half a lifetime away. And I am homesick.

I’ve known this kind of homesickness before: it happens every time I have to say goodbye to people I love, or when I breathe in a particularly beautiful sunset, or a symphony (Beethoven, not Mozart). When I see the fleetingness of life, and know there are moments I want to hold on to, but they will slip between my grasping fingers and I will never have them again. And then I weep, on the inside at least, as a child who has been hickory-sticked.

I miss my home.

Not the one where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain (although I have always loved the perfection of the third syllable), and not the one where I am, and not the one where I will hopefully be soon. I have begun to realize how little I belong in any of these worlds, not because I don’t love them, but because I don’t belong in the world to which they belong: my citizenship is in Heaven.

And when I hear the laughter of people flying down a zipline over a retention pond, or smell the wavin’ wheat when the wind comes right behind the rain, I have to remember that these things are but a shadow, a copy of the reality that is to come. I love the Old Narnia so much because it reminds me of the New Narnia I haven’t seen yet.

And then I long for the time when I can say, as my grandmother did, “Oh, Jesus! It’s so beautiful!” When I can dwell in the house of my Father, the King yesterday, and today, and forever. When there will be no more parting, and He will wipe every tear from my eye. When His children do not give way to fights and quarrels among them. And we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

“Oh, God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Our Shelter in the stormy blast,
And our eternal Home.”