Fire, Light, Love

Fire: I have imagined God as a heart ablaze in holy light,
that none may behold except they go blind in wonder.
Light: I have glimpsed the barest of His infinity, saw
how utterly insignificant my greatest glory is to His,
and if love itself loves us, how utterly invincible we.
Love: I have walked these miles under a sky wider
than any thought I could ever have, and I fathom
not at all how something so small as I could in
the slightest matter, till I think how big is He.

The uncertainty… lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his obedience.

There is so much of the world that confuses me as one who believes, which I look and I question why these things must be. If I try and hold in my head these conundrums, logic finds no footing by which it may approach the heart of the matter, and I go down mental pathways that dead end, or that step out into empty space. My head spins with too many opinions, all saying (somehow simultaneously) the same thing and things opposite from one another. Some people can hold contradictions in their heads, somehow, but I don’t seem to be one of them. I think, however, I may of these matters make the best of things. Perhaps to me, they are the call to a simple faith, one not concerned with the deepnesses of truth, one that says for the complexities of how things are as they are, simply, “I don’t know.” For I know why I believe, my personal evidence is enough to justify my faith — and I have tested these things enough to make me secure. I need not try and conjure the philosophy of angels, need not have the desire to prophesy. Too easily does one get lost where such tangles run deep.

There is that twinge, when we do something we know is wrong, or is at least “iffy” — and that feeling itself is something of a second chance. For he is not dead in spirit who still feels the regret; he kills himself when he ignores that twinge, when he purposefully suffocates it. Those who feel guilty are not less so, but those who squelch the realization of that guilt compound their sin. And of course, the best thing to do when we feel that twinge is to take it to heart — as John the Baptist said in a dramatic fashion, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” When you combine that with Our Lord’s “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” we may say with somewhat less flourish: be sorry, because you never want to not to feel that feeling: the good in you, speaking up: it is one small reason your sins may be forgiven.

Flight

Flight
is merely a state of mind.
Imagining
can send one higher than
the farthest any stray cloud may wander.
Love, I think,
is better rocket propellant
than any hydrogen and oxygen fuel tank
was ever equipped to hurtle man to the outer heights.
And one wonders
at the time man envied birds,
for it was always in us to discover spaces
no flighted creature could ever dream of approaching,
of slipping past not only gravity, but desire itself — to the secret of light.

I am not the most conservative of we who call ourselves Christians, I must say. I believe in reaching out to other religions in tolerance, and that we cannot take upon us models of behavior from the totality of the Bible as written, some thousands of years ago (for instance, slaves are mentioned profusely in the Old Testament). But there is acceptance of new ideas, and then there is allowing the nullification of the faith’s essence — one point I where I must make a stand, and I will say it straight. He who does not believe in the resurrection of the Christ cannot rightly be called a Christian. For he does not then follow the Son of God, but merely some great teacher named Jesus. Some things, I think, are non negotiable when one talks of faith. That is my line in the sand, that which I cannot cross without — as far as all things that matter — losing it all. One may find we all have such a line: be careful where you put yours.

I begin to understand how unworthy I am. There are a million things in this present moment of which I am unaware, or only vaguely, even in my cognizing that this must be the case: a million things that sustain me, a million things that I am so used to I can count scant few — on my two hands, if I were pressed. Thus is the world that we live in. What a thing is life, that dawn comes in from the outer dark, the sky shelters these frailties called humanity, the earth grows with abundant sustenance — not merely of body, but of mind, and of spirit. I begin to understand that I have in no way earned the least of these gifts, could not think to offer payment for this bodily life in any service I might be able to perform: are not even my renderings of any art a gift to me, too? I behold this moment and wonder why I ever complained that it was not perfect. No, this world is not perfect: we inevitably fall short of the promise we are born with — while all the while, the million things (of every second) that sustain us hold true, keep us being, give our lives a second chance, every time.

No doubt the gospel is quite free, as free as the Victoria Cross, which anyone can have who is prepared to face the risks; but it means time, and pains, and concentrating all one’s energies upon a mighty project. You will not stroll into Christlikeness with your hands in your pockets, shoving the door open with a careless shoulder. This is no hobby for one’s leisure moments, taken up at intervals when we have nothing much to do, and put down and forgotten when our life grows full and interesting… It takes all one’s strength, and all one’s heart, and all one’s mind, and all one’s soul, given freely and recklessly and without restraint. This is a business for adventurous spirits; others would shrink out of it. And so Christ had a way of pulling up would-be recruits with sobering and disconcerting questions, of meeting applicants — breathless and panting in their eagerness — by asking them if they really thought they had the grit, the stamina, the gallantry, required. For many, He explained, begin, but quickly become cowed, and slink away, leaving a thing unfinished as a pathetic monument of their own lack of courage and of staying power.

In the Dark

When I cry out and nothing happens, I may say
it is the proof that there is no God, no Heaven.
But once, my father left me alone in the dark
so that I would see there is nothing that could
hurt me there. When I cried out, and no one came,
I did not doubt he was somewhere, loved me still….

The only viable legal strategy to take in the Last Judgment is to throw yourself on the mercy of the court. For we will find we are all guilty, but discover the Judge is willing to forgive us everything.

I am thankful for quiet. Like peace, it is not an elaborate form of nothing. And like peace, it is not anything if it does not pervade what is inside you. Some people fight their entire lives for it, even if they do not name it as such; it is the cousin of contentment, what conceives reflection, the friend of the saint. There are many accoutrements that may go with it, sometimes a cup of tea is all that suffices, sometimes it is all the world that accompanies it. Not the daze of a daydream, not the nullifying high of something artificial inducing, it is to be awake, and it is to know. It is to be as poised as is a moment that solves the crisis of to be or not to be. The quiet flows into me, it flows out. It is the breath of the ephemeral, eternal now, realizing itself through my being merely me.

The seconds diligently pass whether you choose to fill them with action or no. The sun and the moon you will never find them lagging in their duties. Gravity will never stop pulling, nor will light fail to light. I speak of these things mixing together two thoughts I have had previously, the first being that all of such activities, happening without fail, speak of the creator, the creation showing in itself the nature of God. The other is of the concept that God’s thoughts are above our thoughts as His ways are above our ways. For we cannot help but think in terms that consciousness is somewhere fallible, somewhere apt to fail: it is from this we obtain the term “only human”. But God is not like this. He is more certain than all the seconds that are diligently passing, a surer pull than gravity, better light than light. Thus we cannot truly comprehend this sort of surety of purpose, steadiness of aim, for we only know of ourselves, of whom we call at best of us only in hyperbole people “to set our watches by”.

Myself, I believe that even God gets tired, at rare moments. And like the nature of love, these times are when I think He does His best work, though we do not prefer that He work under such circumstances. But I will speak little of this sort of situation, for it draws on a third thought, and perhaps that is too much to write two simple paragraphs on. He did create us in His image, I am saying, that there are things about Him we may understand. But in us, the things are relative, and in Him, the things are absolute. In us, the things are finite, and in Him, the things are endless and eternal. And these seconds that pass by, that diligently pass: they will do so, speaking of how certainly God watches over us: it is up to us to choose to be His children, to make of them our own diligences, our own reliabilities, however faltering. To do with our time the good we were made capable of: however faint, His image in us.

Faith is better than armor.

Lost

Lost, completely lost:
I recall
the dark night of this soul
where I walked
in the shadows of the city’s alleyways.
I recall
wandering in desperate hope
that I would get
somewhere,
anywhere…. And
there were
angels all around me that I
could not imagine
would follow to where I was.
For I went
where the darkness
peered from the underworld,
where the night
had no end, where time forgot
your identity….
And I know
there were angels:
in quiet moments, there were times
when I knew
without knowing how
that dawn would inevitably
break through
the deepest of all shadow, enter
into the most forsaken
of any world, I,
there in
the city’s alleyway,
peering up at a starless sky,
wondering.

Flightless I, an earthbound wanderer; and thus is the curse of this modern day: may you be ordinary. My heart is cracked like an egg, poured out of me until I feel nothing at all there, in the vacuum of my desire. I wonder who I truly am, and I wonder where I can search for such identification. But do not think that I am in some kind of mystic pain, for what it is may be called only a kind of numbness. It is an existential yawn, I suppose. Somewhere in me, though, too far down to detect, there is a running undercurrent of faith that I know will sustain me through this drought of inspiration, the lack thereof which forces out this essay paragraph as a tirade of meaningless poetry. Perhaps all I need do is pray, and mighty forces will reengage some bootstrap process, a system restart of the soul. Or perhaps all I really need is a kick in the rear. And maybe growing up is merely how to go about doing that ourselves when someone else’s foot is not conveniently available. Yes, I think that’s all of it: I need only to get over myself.

I am a sad painting: in my stillness is a certain despair. E. E. Cummings, who was a painter, too, poeticized about a love that who, if she desired to close him, he would end “as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending.” And I wonder, who has loved like this? Anyone? I sense only silence is the answer to that. My colors are all shades of blue, deepening only when the currents of sorrow swim through me. Did I ever truly know the rhythm of the world’s motions? For if I did, I never sensed the trail of music that led me to that love, to whom I would close if she desired, to whom there is imagining transcending the bounds of this earth. I feel I am not alone. Who else has sketched himself a still life awaiting the bold colors of unknown passion? We cannot wait forever. These sad paintings, when the canvas dries, less than the shadow effects remain of what was once rendered there. But for now, patience.

The Partisan Review, a journal of literary opinion representing a section of advanced secular thought, recently published a series of papers answering the question, “Why has there been a turn toward religion among intellectuals?” The asking of the question is significant. Few writers dispute the fact implied by it. Most of the contributors, whether they count themselves among those who have “turned to religion” or not, find the principal reason for it in the collapse of the optimistic hope that modern science and human good will would bring the world into an era of peace and justice. The confidence in that outcome has been so violently shaken that men must ask whether there are not higher resources than man’s to sustain courage and hope. The faith of the Bible points to such sources. God works within the tragic destiny of human efforts with a healing power, and a reconciling spirit. Even those who have felt completely superior to all “outworn” religious notions, must look today at least wistfully to the possibility that such a God lives and works.

I dream of hills drawn in crayon, of watercolor skies.
I dream of forests colored in oils, deer sketched in magic marker.
I dream of a sun streaming down ink, and a whole world to paint.