The Burning Ladder by Dana Gioia

Jacob
never climbed the ladder
burning in his dream. Sleep
pressed him like a stone
in the dust,
and when
he should have risen
like a flame to join
that choir, he was sick
of travelling,
and closed
his eyes to the Seraphim
ascending, unconscious
of the impossible distances
between their steps,
missed
them mount the brilliant
ladder, slowly disappearing
into the scattered light
between the stars,
slept
through it all, a stone
upon a stone pillow,
shivering. Gravity
always greater than desire.

The Terrible Self

“I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength." - Etty Hillesum

I doubt that I have ever been so uncertain about what I want to “do with my life.”  By this, of course, I mean choosing a career path.  I oscillate between yearning to do everything and being sickeningly uninterested in anything; the pace of my current situation is bewildering, and I often reflect that I don’t even have the time or self-possession to want.  The relationship between my directionless ambling and the waning opportunity for reflection and prayer is obvious. 

Firstly, I’d like to address the rhetorical structure that has us expressing the means by which we cover expenses as what we “do with our lives.”  Part of me hopes my job will never be so defining.  There is so much to a human beyond the work he does.  I resent the work that runs my life, and yet I feel in some way it glorifies me.  There are essential elements that run deep; I wonder how to finesse this paradox.

The other night I heard a man talk about the divine nature of inherited work.  In the creation story in Genesis, our first picture of God pictures a being moving from resting to working.  The Spirit was, and then the Spirit began making.  And boy, did He make.  I won’t rehash the awe inspired in me by the Planet Earth series, but will note that these images (and think how much more revelatory they will become as technology advances) show me much about the character of God.  The intricacies of growth and death, reproduction, relationships, predators and prey, and the seemingly pointless displays of beauty that exceed the comprehensive capacity of the eye and must be taken in by the heart.  There is power and terror, and fragility and delicacy.  The physical world ranges the full spectrum; just as God is simultaneously everything created and was once a microscopic speck of cellular material in Mary’s womb; just as He is a pillar of fire and the still small voice quieter than a whisper.  This work of God’s is a reflection of a character, a personality, a self. 

The first thing Adam was asked to do?  Work.  Name the animals.  Exercise dominion.  Build stuff.  Make stuff.  And Eve?  Not a companion – a helper.  Work gives us the opportunity to participate in the proliferation of the self of God, and it invites us to model our own (comparatively menial, yes) creations after our self.  Oh – I do not want to miss out on this. 

There are a few outliers in my midst whose occupations do indeed contain something essential about their being.  I think of filmmakers I know, stay at home moms, those who serve the underserved, one or two of the doctors I know, maybe a horse trainer I knew once came close, a teacher.  There are some whose careers are characterized by the selfhood of the worker – ah, how I long to be one of these. 

This longing is paralyzing.  I hate the thought of taking a step toward one option that will leave part of my selfhood behind.  One path allows me to analyze but stifles the artist, another indulges creativity but abandons order, one feeds my curiosity but cuts me off from people, another overwhelms my spirit by overcrowding it with personnel and bottom lines.  I refer to Etty Hillesum as listed above: “I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.”  Weakens?  Destroys. 

This might be rooted in the mystifying human condition I’ve talked about before – a divine, eternal soul stuck inside a deteriorating flesh with only a few fatty brain cells and trembling synaptic cords to try to bring the two together.  I am intimidated by my selfhood.  It has a grandness so far beyond anything I can imagine, and I make myself crazy trying to invent some catchall scenario that will allow this divine selfhood that seems so distant to do a work that will reflect the worker. 

I think I include this quotation in every other post: “For you have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”  Thank you, St. Augustine.  Tonight I use this to gain perspective on myself not just as a worker but as a work as well.  I was created.  Thus, the image I bear reflects that of my Creator.  And this – THIS is the seal I ache to press into the soft and feeble wax statues I spend my life fussing and worrying about. 

Ayn Rand chimes in, "Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."  We really want to create with significance.  To contribute.  What we really want, in essence, is to be a part of the great work – to build something that bears the mark of the Creator whose face we wear in a way that does not submit our individuality to erasure but rather shines as a testimony to its magnificence. 

I suppose we’re left with that old instruction: seek ye first the kingdom of God.  Therein the selfhood lies.  There is the work we can do that is actually “what we do with our lives.” 

Etty also offers, “Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.”  Sometimes I suppose that’s true.  

Desire

Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship, sailing across endless oceans, never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, it will find mooring for a moment.

- Etty Hillesum

Dinner

"People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the time their happiness is being established or their lives are being broken up." - Chekhov

Off Again

It’s my last Sunday afternoon at home before I take off on a month-long voyage abroad.  These adventures have become a bit of a routine – I haven’t had a summer without an extended solo trip overseas in six years.  I woke up this morning with what has become the familiar pre-trip feeling: so excited about the adventures ahead, but a frightening and frantic need to peel back the sheets to embrace the family I will soon leave.  The chaotic urgency of my need to love them is oddly silenced the moment I actually see a member of my family, the same way a huge horse can soar across a pasture in a frolicking, bucking gallop and bounce to an instant halt with its forelegs just inches from the fence.  I instantly default to playing it cool, often erring even on the side of appearing distant.  And yet my entire chest cavity seems to swim with heat and tightness as I deliver an intentionally half-hearted good morning hug, ensuring that I guard the terrible, shameful secret that my heart is breaking with love and longing. 

 

Right now I am sitting on one of the loungers by the pool in the backyard.  It’s 75 degrees outside, cool breeze blowing, ambient noise of water flowing around in the pool, occasionally the lazy and distant chug of a radial airplane engine traversing our sky space.  My brother is on the lounger next to me going through a test prep book for the entrance exam into the National Guard.  My dad is on a chair behind us (he recently crossed over to that side to follow the sliding shade from the umbrella) reading Steve Forbes’ new book that compares modern corporations to great empires throughout history (I gave it to Ian for his birthday, and dad – who reads about 50 pages a minute – swiped it up first, as he often does).  The cat is crashed out in the shady grass next to him, lying on his back with his white fluffy cat-tummy bared to the breezes.  There’s a pile of silenced iPhones and Blackberries on the table between the three of us, as well as small silver trays with empty dishes from brunch.

 

Ian just stood up and said, “Will you be sad if I go sit at the table?”  The table is about 15 feet away.  I smile and answer, “Of course not.”  But it does make me sad when he goes and the chair beside me is now empty.  I swallow it, however – I think my impending voyage for a month-long stint in the Middle East divests me of my right to keep him from his 15-foot displacement for the next half hour.  But I miss him somehow as I look over at his deeply concentrated little face over there. 

 

My mom and I spent a lovely morning together in quiet and easy conversation, intermittently confessing shy sentiments of contentment to one another.  We were geographically located in the epicenter of six or seven unfinished remodeling projects and countless others that had yet to be tackled.  We’ve had upwards of twenty people come out to give an estimate on the kitchen remodel we keep putting off.  I was sitting on a little sofa mother happened upon one day at the Jewish women’s charity thrift shop on Wilshire one day – it was used as patio furniture on the porch of the house I lived in my senior year of college and had settled in our breakfast nook when I moved back home after graduation.  Not the piece we imagined for so prominent a place in our home, but mother expresses our sentiments perfectly when she sits there with her laptop and a cup of coffee and pretends she’s on a cruise ship looking out at the backyard through the window next to her.  It’s a great little sofa. 

 

Mom says it well when she exclaims that we are “cursed with contentment.”

 

It has been a recent struggle of mine to try to examine the meaning of the phrase “full of life.”  Because of the fullness of the relationship I have with Him, I am satisfied to count the phrase “full in Christ” a synonym.  But to explore that, to give it gravity by giving it words – ah, I am inept. 

 

I look at it this way: here I sit in the same backyard I’ve sat in since I was thirteen.  From my vantage point, I see the patio table, the pool slide we were never really young enough to enjoy in this house, the now-empty flowerbed I once labored for an entire summer to fill with blossoms, and the back of our house.  As I take in the scene, my muscles twitch with the desire to dance about, swiping a mental butterfly net this way and that in an effort to capture and bottle all the memories that linger in the atmosphere of this 1/8 of an acre.  I can watch the countless backyard dinner parties like a movie montage, in addition to many anguish-wrought nights writing by candlelight at the table or in the wrought iron chairs by the ivy covered wall.  I watch myself finishing Somerset Maugham novels, flipping through Vogue, sitting in the middle of the line of all the cousins at my grandmother’s memorial service, refilling the punch bowl at my brother’s Eagle Scout ceremony, coming downstairs for lavish brunches (nobody can pull these together like Judith Whittinghill) on special or just normal Saturdays.  I can spread my arms wide and splay my fingers and somehow grab the jasmine-scented air, pulling downward and wrapping it around me like a blanket. 

 

These long summer sits in the backyard are like jumping on a trampoline.  Usually they are the scenes of dreaming, planning, building, preparing – altogether springing up and out.  But every once in a while, my bounce matches up with my fellow jumpers’ bounces just right (they have changed nothing about their bouncing pattern to bring this about), and instead of soaring up over the rooftops my knees buckle and I’m sucked into the floor with black-hole strength gravity.  I land softly, cushioned and cradled, and all upward and outward momentum is, for a millisecond, sucked out of me completely.  And then I am content, filled to overflowing with the fullness of life as I take a little break from the jumping, lying on my back as the trampoline settles to stillness and looking up at the sky.  I see that I do these adventures because I do them, not because I need them or because I am searching for something.  This little house here is teeming with life – it’s a wonder the roofbeams can contain it.  It drips out of the windows, pours out the front door.  It is life and life abundantly.  It is love that both cradles and launches, love that simultaneously crushes your heart inward like an empty coke can and bursts forth in an explosion.  Love that forgives, hopes, gives, and does not fear.  Oh, how content am I.  

See a Palace Rise From a Two-Room Flat

It astonishes me to imagine the way my life will change when the time comes to bind it with another’s.  I just returned from seeing Up – a movie that, like all Pixar flicks surreptitiously do, caught me off guard with the profundity of its sweetness.  Pixar is the one company of which I am aware that can fill our hearts and televisions with purity, make us reflect on the deeper things, challenge our imaginations with creative nuance, and still rake in millions at the box office.  Ah, world, there is hope for you yet. 

The movie was about marriage.  It was about men and what they deeply want, women and their hidden longing, and the human need to – as George Bailey described to his blushing Mary – “lasso the moon” for his spouse. 

The film begins with a quick and silent montage that tells the story of an entire marriage, from beginning to end.  The couple meets as children when the gap-toothed redheaded girl steals the boy’s heart with her vivid imagination and thirst for adventure.  As the two marry and age, about ninety seconds of footage chronicle all of the dreams the couple shares through the decades.  Some are realized, but most are not.  The man seems not to notice his wife age a day until all of the sudden she is expiring, and he is caught unawares by her sudden inability to realize the adventures they’d imagined in their youth. 

He is torn to pieces because he could never seem to make the adventure come together for her.  She had dreamt as a girl of building a house in the jungle of South America, so he sets out to grant her childhood dream after she has passed away.  He will stop at nothing to accomplish this for his bride. 

And this is the characteristic common to all men.  It is manifested in myriad ways, but men all ache to build and create, travel and accomplish, see, do, climb, and conquer – but all for the sake of the queen whose heart they covet, worked for, have sworn to protect, and, above all, love with every fiber of their being.  Men want the world for their wives. 

I saw the movie with my brother and father.  They grimaced as they watched as the husband in the film had to spend their waxing “adventure fund” on automotive repairs, to fix the leaky roof, etc.  It killed them to watch this man finally decide to take his wife to the Amazon, only to find she was unable to make the trip.  What marvelous men I live with. 

And now to women.  After he has finally accomplished his goal and physically transplanted their house to the specific place in the jungle his wife imagined as a girl, he finds a notebook of hers with new pictures inserted in the “adventures I’m going to have” section she began as a kid.  In it are pictures of their wedding, little road trips they took, nights in the family room, mornings reading by the front windows, weekends doing yard work.  These were the adventures she dreamt of.  Loving him, building a life with him, putting personal touches on their quirky house – that was the adventure of her life.  She liked to let her imagination run wild on the precipices of rushing waterfalls and in the verdant roots of steamy jungle floors, but her heart was not tied to these. 

And this is what women give: they deal tenderly with the dreams of their men.  They give him a soft place to land after he spends his day climbing, striving, building.  Don’t get me wrong – women certainly do these things too, often to a greater degree, but this is how I perceive the roles when the workday is over, the front and back doors are locked for the night, and the household is quiet.  Women see the fulfillment and adventure in building things that sometimes appear quiet and plain, but hold all the meaning our blink of life can contain.  A man wants to give his wife the world.  But a woman knows she already possess it because she has a man who will labor for a lifetime to give it to her. 

It’s stated well in that beautiful song from Cabaret:

“How the world can change

It can change like that,

Due to one little word: marriage. 

 

See a palace rise

From a two-room flat,

Due to one little word: marriage. 

 

And the old despair

That was often there

Suddenly ceases to be. 

 

For you wake one day,

Look around, and say,

‘Somebody wonderful married me.’”

 

Perhaps this will be for me someday, perhaps it won’t.  This discussion interests me as it concerns the comparison in the Bible between a good marriage and the relationship between Christ and man.  The bride-groom relationship is just like the man-God relationship in this respect, and in many others. 

The male and female roles described above coexist perfectly within the person of Christ.  On one hand, Jesus is the comforter, the one who reminds us of our constant fulfillment within his love for us.  When our dreams don’t pan out and the world disappoints us (as is nearly always does), Christ is there to present the eternal truths of love, joy, hope, and peace as reminders that all is well in spite of our frustrating circumstances.  And yet he is also there with us as we cling to rocky mountain faces, racing toward our high-dollar dreams.  He encourages us to take adventures, he blesses our petitions, he created this endless universe for us to explore, dominate, enjoy, and use.  And he longs to give it to us, to grant us our every wish, to love and nurture us, his bride. 

In Christ, as in a good marriage, we inherit the palace of God’s kingdom, be it indeed a castle on a cloud or, simply put, a two-room flat.  

Servant

Have you ever been in a situation where you're with someone you love more than your own life but you just can't find the way to say it?  Or worse, as you circle around that perfect expression this person denies you?  "Oh no you don't," or "Don't say that," or "I don't believe you," or "Someone like you could never love someone like me."  Ouch.  

Tom Shadyac is my hero.  He has boiled down the purpose of his existence to this: “I live to serve the divine idea.”

 

I am not uncomfortable calling the “Divine Idea” God, although it tracks with my theology to leave my Lord, Creator, and Sustainer nameless – He actually wanted it this way, I think.  So I would say, “I exist to serve God.”

 

Tom was the first person who was able to communicate to me exactly what it meant to pursue happiness.  In the same way he believes we vote with every dollar we spend, he also believes who choose freedom or captivity with every choice we make, every bit of energy we emit into our surroundings, and every word we speak over our own situations.  It’s amazing and true, and empowering in the way only true humility can be. 

 

I got to know Tom by accidentally enrolling in a screenwriting class he taught at Pepperdine.  After my first minutes in the same room with this man, I was hooked.  I have subsequently taken three other film classes from him.  In addition to a thousand lessons about life and meaning, Tom has taught me that the one non-negotiable for a great movie is that it must be about “One Controlling Idea.”  So of course, as we struggled through pages and pages of shaky dialogue and awkward descriptions of shots, the process naturally made us try to link every line of writing to this controlling idea. 

 

And just as all the little choices make the big choice for us about whether we shall be free or slave (as Aristotle reminds us, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”), so the themes of our creative endeavors compose the controlling ideas for our lives. 

 

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where servanthood embodies the fulfillment of freedom.  True, fully realized freedom.  But, ah, the bliss of bowing at the feet of the truly deserving. 

 

The deserving is you, oh Christ.  Only in service to you can we be certain that our actions are utterly right.  Only in service to you do we proclaim with unhesitating boldness that we do something worthy, something eternal.  Even as we err in our acts of service, which we inevitably do, the pursuit loses no appeal due to the grace we receive in the act. 

 

When someone says, “I love you,” we instinctively respond, “I love you, too,” with the understanding that nobody wishes to confess a feeling of love without immediate affirmation of reciprocation.  What’s worse that unrequited love?  My mother believes there is something worse.  Have you ever told someone you loved them and had them respond, “No, you don’t.”  The refusal to receive a declaration of love is far graver than the failure to reciprocate.  Sometimes, Mom responds to an “I love you” with a simple, “I know you do.”  Oh to feel your love received.  Understood.  Believed.  No more need to keep searching for the right words, to keep striving to construct the perfect description for the love that makes your heart burst and ache.  No more wishing you could only make your beloved one really understand how you feel.  To utter only, "I love you" to one who responds, "I know you do."  And you know they do.  

 

As we serve Christ, He of the incessant inaudible love song, we proclaim love for one who will receive it.  In our longing to grow deeper in our communion with our Savior, we offer praise that has a place to land.  Our relationship with Him is not just about mutual giving of love but mutual receiving of love. 

 

 I find the earthy beings and things I daily strive to serve unsatisfactory receptacles. My heart breaks for people who serve things that will never receive their love.  This is when servanthood becomes slavery.  I see many relationships where so many givers are bound in shackles to the moods of takers.  Or, beyond human-to-human relationships, I see other willing servants who are bound to the demands of an unloving culture, to coolness, to “success,” to the ridiculous requirements they place on themselves.  It is tyranny. 

 

We long to be used.  We long to contribute.  We long to be good enough.  We long to hear the voice of Truth say thrillingly, “Yes, YOU, come.  YOU are exactly what I have been looking for.”  This is why we all yearn for our spouses, for we are somehow convinced this is the only instance where you, specifically you, are the only one who can fulfill the need of another.  While good marriages come close, we need not wait for that.  This is the call of Christ.  He calls to you specifically.  He longs for you to serve Him.  He longs for you to tell Him you love Him.  He waits for you to turn your ears to that love song He’s incessantly singing to you and respond, “I know.”  Serve one who will receive your service.  Love one who will receive your love.  Bind yourself to one who will always leave you free to walk away.  Choose freedom by serving the one who is worthy. 

"And he who loses his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 10:39 

I started a new job today.  My boss isn't Jesus, but he loves Jesus, and he lives to serve.  And thus, the hours of greuling service to this man will be blissful, for together we co-labor to serve the one who loves us.  

Gladness

For what else are servants of God, but minstrels, whose work it is to lift up people's hearts and move them to spiritual gladness?

Francis of Assisi

Economy

Last weekend I made a little road trip to go visit some friends. I had conversation with two friends who got married this summer and moved up north, he to attend Stanford Law and she to begin teaching third grade. They are both smart, funny, and deep. They love Jesus. I adore them.

She had a difficult year learning the ropes but seems to have made a strong impact on her students. I was so proud to hear her talk about the way her heart goes out to her kids, and it made me glad for them. He certainly had his work cut out for him as a first year law student at Stanford. Both are so dedicated. Inspirations to me. She just found out that district budget cuts have left her without employment for next year. He’s heading into his second year. Lots of loans. No free time. No income for next year.

And yet, sitting at coffee with these two people was one of the top three most inspiring things that has happened to me in 2009. They told me the story of filling out their FAFSA forms, leading me through the questions:

Are you a student? Yes

Is your spouse a student? Yes

Have you or your spouse been laid off recently? Yes

Combined annual household income? $0

And so on. Their eyes sparkled as they talked about it. They held hands. She kissed him. They were full of laughter. And that’s because none of that stuff actually matters. They love each other very much. They have found ways to make a strong impact on the needy people around them. They are perfect examples of how to live in an economy of love. And that, I believe, is the meaning of life.

As Anne Sexton says, “For happiness that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.”

Automotively Challenged

“I drive a BMW but my dream is to one day own a Hyundai and still be happy.”  This is a line from one of my oldest friends.  Wisdom that amazes me.  Yeah, that’s what I want – what I truly want – too; to spend my life learning how to have more by wanting less.  

For most of my senior year of college, I drove a white 1987 Nissan Stanza.  It was a funny little car that made deafening scraping vacuum sounds, randomly stopped while in motion (usually just as I cut in front of oncoming traffic making left turns across PCH), had no radio, and had monstrous grey-blue sheepskin seat covers that complimented the royal blue velour interior.  All of the fixtures were held together with Velcro.  I inherited it when my grandmother passed away. 

It replaced an old 1991 Chrysler minivan my parents bought when I started kindergarten – I remember being pretty excited when we got it when I was five, but I guess I didn’t imagine at that age that it would still be my mode of transportation at age twenty-one.  The ceiling liner had come completely unglued and it hung like a drapery on the whole roof of the car.  Often some electronic connection would falter and all the electric mechanisms in the car would go wild – the gauges would fly back and forth across their trajectories, the electric locks would compulsively flip back and forth, the windshield wipers would wildly scrape and stutter across the dusty cracked glass, and all of the lights would start flashing.  The passenger’s door wouldn’t fully close (at times I had to rig up something with the seatbelt to keep it from flying open in turns.  The sliding side door wouldn’t open, so everyone in the back had to climb out the trunk.  If the RPM dropped too low, the oil pressure would plummet and ran the risk of seizing the engine.  The entire family got in the car together to celebrate 350,000 miles on the odometer.   No air conditioning.  The steering wheel had begun to melt and would leave a greyish residue on your hands about the viscosity of pine sap.  Embarrassed doesn’t come close to the way I felt about that van.  Mortified comes closer, but still doesn’t capture the sickness that reverberated within my entire rib cage anytime I passed someone I knew.  My friends called it “the immigrant van.”  It was funny to them, but somehow could not be funny to me.  Do we call that pride?  I think that’s the word. 

There was lots of sorrowful begging for my parents to think of another automotive option for me, but it just wasn’t going to happen and that was that.  My mother used to tell me that as soon as I didn’t want a new car anymore a new one would somehow show up in my life.  Every time she said this I would excuse myself and go release my fury into a pillow.  I don’t know why this was such a big deal for me.  I am not an otherwise materialistic person, and while I love clothes I wouldn’t consider myself terribly image-conscious.  But anytime the car conversation started, my body would tighten with anger and hatred in a manner no other occasion has ever given it cause to do. 

When my grandmother was no longer able to drive, the Nissan passed to me.  It was blissful.  Anything to get rid of that van.  I think the two were really equal in awfulness to the outsider’s eye, but for some reason the Nissan cracked me up where the minivan had made me angry.  Perhaps it’s because I chose to take the Nissan where I did not choose the minivan?  Perhaps it was the connection to my adored and departed grandmother?  I don’t know.  But I was fond of it, and didn’t care who saw it or drove around in it or what.  No more anger, no more looking for a way out. 

And then one weekend my father just up and announced that we were going car shopping.  Graduation was a couple of months away, but I already had my graduation gift planned and picked out.  We looked at some great used cars, and then for some reason my dad decided to spring for the brand spanking new Mini I’d had my eye on for years.  The decision was made in about two days.  I guess my mom was right – it just somehow appeared the second I stopped caring. 

A roommate once told me about a theory of hers that we long most to be the one thing we can never be. 

She said this while we were sitting inside that Nissan in the carport of the mobile home we lived in on Point Dume in Malibu our senior year.  We liked to do that periodically, to sit in the car and talk, go for a quick drive around the Point to look at the moon over the glittering Bel Air Bay, somehow create a physical barrier between ourselves and everything we had established that we were inside the house we’d chosen, decorated, and lived in.  Our best conversations happened on those drives.  This comment referred to a theme that ran through all of the papers I wrote in my English classes. I had this subconscious fascination with nuns, cloistered women, anything in or of a monastery, ascetics, any character who renounced worldly things for a higher spiritual path.  

It’s like that Frost poem I included in my last post.  My life is running straight toward the varied and exciting land, and I am excited about that.  It is where my gifts lie and where my energy comes from.  And yet there’s a longing to not care in the least about it.  I love the things the world produces, but (while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that in the least bit – it’s what we were meant for) I wish I didn’t.  It’s not the sort of longing that will make me alter my life plans, but the sort that will maintain the incessant tension and tug that will always keep me asking, wondering, yearning, and seeking.  And, as I've said before, these are blessed, for what worse thing could there be in life than an end point?

Today I drive a Mini that I adore.  My dream is to someday drive a 1991 minivan and love it.

Beach

Neither Out Far nor In Deep
Robert Frost

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be--
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?


It is interesting in this poem how Frost describes the people on the beach. He points out that while everything “important” going on happens on land, people somehow can’t stop staring at the ocean. It’s a big, limitless void. Whether we’re supposed to be attending fastidiously to the cares of the world or standing in static contemplation gazing into the blue horizon, there is something about the water that pulls each of us to its edge and asks.

Frost points out that the people standing here staring do not look out far into the future or into the heavens. They do not look deep within themselves, deep within our society. They just sit and watch, unutterable hope, anguish, joy, sorrow, and concern churning within each one, never to find the “local habitation and a name” Shakespeare wrote about. Without words, our “unutterables” remain such, and so we just keep standing on the beach looking out.

There is nothing about our human experience that requires this. There is no job that demands looking out far or in deep. We will never face a task that cannot be done on the surface level. And the longings within us can stay there. Certainly they will manifest themselves in part in the events and choices that compose our lives, but the ache that alternately blesses and tortures writhes unceasingly in a realm over which words exercise no authority.

And yet we are still drawn to believe that “out far” and “in deep” are somehow important. I’m one who can’t seem to tear myself away from the pull of the watery nothingness/everythingness to embrace the world. Frost explains it so well here – to face one it seems we must turn our back on the other.

“For you created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” – St. Augustine.

Deeper Still

I spent a good part of this year immersed in a project about the relationship between C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot.  In case you don’t know, and few people do, the two maintained a close relationship for decades – the majority of which was more than unfriendly, and almost all of the coldness was, contrary to the expectations of many, initiated by Lewis. 

When one compares the creative works of these two writers, the tone, mood, and subject matter of Eliot’s poems put him in the same camp as the modern poets whose graphic descriptions of despair and decay would make my stomach turn.  I remember so well the modern poetry segment in English classes in high school.  My face would contort as I skimmed the pages, lips folded inward between my front teeth, brow wrinkled, eyes intently focused.  I don’t remember exactly which poems made me feel this way – probably Ted Hughes and his talk of crows and abortions, DH Lawrence and his weirdness, and, among the most startling, Eliot himself with his sick insistence in “The Hollow Men” that “This is the way the world ends./ Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The word “sick” is probably my best descriptor here.  The world these moderns described resembled the one I knew and loved, and yet it seemed diseased, as if someone had taken a ghastly syringe and withdrawn the marrow from the bones of our collective life here.  The word “apocalypse” comes to mind Eliot taunts in “The Waste Land,” “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”  It’s about the end.  Death.  The one toward which we're all racing. 

I once heard a lecturer compare the death of Socrates to the death of Jesus.  Their deaths are similar in circumstance, for they were both sentenced to death by powerful governments for feeding rebellious ideas to society.  Interestingly, the ideas were about humility, which, one would think, would make a people easier to govern.  When he drinks the poison ordered upon him, Socrates eases into eternal sleep completely at peace, believing that this was indeed the right time for his life to end and that he would be better off dead.  Jesus, on the other hand, writhes in agony on a cross for three hours, pleading with God, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” even though he knew he fulfilled a prophesy that had been ordained for millennia.  Now, it’s hard to compare drinking a cup of poison in perfect comfort to the physical torture Jesus endured for days, but I believe there is still room to compare their two reactions to the final moments. 

I raise this issue because I believe we are prone to withdraw from circumstances, literary or actual, that do not bear the emblems of our creeds.  I want my faith in Jesus to surround me with a force that keeps evil and death far away from me.  At an Easter service this Sunday, I sang in “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (a favorite hymn) the line, “Where, oh death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!” 

I’ll show you were thy sting is, oh death. 

It’s here.  It’s all around.  Recently I had a conversation with a Christian who fully expected death for believers to be sweet and easy, much like the death of Socrates, and was undone by the savagery of a body falling apart when a relative died.  That’s a sting. 

Eliot’s early poems jump right into this deep pit and throw it all on paper.  Then Eliot became a Christian.  And while the redemption of his soul is apparent in some writings, despair was still there.  There was a misty solution to the sorrow, a center point was found, and peace was blissfully within his reach, but much of his writing still depicted bleakness. 

In The Hiding Place Corrie Boom writes, “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.”

No pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.  Not, “There is no deep pit in God’s love.”  Not, “Be saved from the deepest pit by embracing God’s love.”  There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still. 

C.S. Lewis knew well that Eliot was a Christian, and in spite of the acknowledgment that their common ground was vastly greater than their conflict, Lewis frequently criticized and mocked Eliot in public and in print.  Lewis’ disapprove of Eliot began with the opening stanza of his first big poem in the lines, “Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized on a table.”  Lewis was horrified that one would dare describe something as lovely as twilight in such a grotesque manner. 

And yet it was Eliot who responded to Lewis’ harshness with love.  Not with retaliation.  Eliot never teased Lewis because he was the more popular writer, certainly the better poet.  The two were finally reconciled when they were both asked to assist the Church of England in a project to update the translation of the Psalms.  Surprisingly enough, Lewis wanted to rephrase the beautiful classic verses and Eliot fought to keep them as they were.  In one of the very few recorded instances of Eliot’s feelings for Lewis, Eliot exclaims, “I believe I may have just been the savior of the twenty-third Psalm!

I suppose I conclude this: there is no idea, no subject matter, no question that we must hold in reserve.  I like things that are sweet, pleasant, and holy.  But might holiness gain more power if we refuse to exclude anything from it?  There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.  

Plan A

Choose

                    The single clenched fist lifted and ready,

     Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.

               Choose:

     For we meet by one or the other.

 - Carl Sandburg

I was amazed to find that my recent rejection from grad school did not break my heart.  Quite the contrary, in fact – it thrilled me.  I say truthfully that I have never worked harder on any academic project.  I read books, wrote papers, perfected bibliographies, made friends, and even traveled to Oxford in December to get the lay of the land.  I was pretty sure I really wanted it. 

 

I think the celebration I feel in my soul is testament to the fact that no measure of genuine, hard work is ever wasted.  The direct goal of my efforts was not realized, but the indirect goal (or maybe these should be switched?) – to become a more educated and mindful person in the eyes of God – was.  I fell in love with my topic.  I got to read books about a subject I would have never explored otherwise.  I met people who showed me the sort of kindness that breaks your heart in the way it needs to be broken. 

 

The path is now completely uncertain, but instead of the crushing fear that used to suck hope and energy out of me, instead I see this as a premature opening of the starting gates.  There is something in the uncertainty that makes me deliciously angry.  I use that word because it’s a sensation that shares all the symptoms of anger – blood boiling, mind racing, at-the-ready, and when I go on my evening runs I cover twice the mileage and don’t even know it.  I feel bulletproof.  My imagination goes crazy with all the things I could go out and do with my life, and my muscles flood with adrenaline to beat down anything that will stand in my way.  But….

 

…in my way of what?

 

What’s the goal?  My spiritual side tells me that nothing of this world is of value because it is not eternal.  My human side tells me there are endless possibilities for what I can accomplish, people I can help, ways I can advance mankind.  My mind is able to find endless common ground between the two.  I am primed. 

 

I commonly use the rhetoric, “Coming up with a Plan B” when people ask me what I’ll do when my job ends in a couple of weeks.  I don’t think that’s true, though. 

 

This is Plan A. 

 

Humans have been making great journeys as long as history records.  Many of Western culture’s great foundational texts chronicle the epic voyages of heroes, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Homer’s Odyssey, the book of Exodus in the Bible, Virgil’s Aeneid, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Hess’ Siddhartha, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, and so many others.  One of the earliest of these articulates the fundamental question of the wanderer-seekers that followed: What does life mean?  And how should we live it?

 

All of this journeying, though, must be directed at finding something.  We seek so that we may find.  The point of the journey isn’t the journey as some say.  But the point of the journey is seldom the destination – the point of the journey is the thousand destinations we find accidentally along the way. 

 

When I look at the choices ahead of me, Sandburg’s words printed above describe the state of my hands – I can feel the weight of blood in my fingers, the strength of the muscles in my palms and forearms, the elastic readiness of the tendons in my joints.  The most difficult task of my days is to peel my tenacious fingers from the fist that grasps at air – to set it open, asking, “hand held out and waiting,” as motionless as a steel trap set open on a forest floor with springs and cables straining. 

 

As C. S. Lewis says, “I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He is sure it is good for him to wait.”

"Everything is made of one hidden stuff." - R. W. Emerson

I just saw the DisneyNature preview for Earth for the third time.  I am getting so excited for that movie.  I’ll never forget the first time I saw the BBC Planet Earth films – I don’t really know why they’re so much different from every other nature film ever made, but they brought me to tears.  Now Disney is coming in with music and storytelling to give the images a purpose – I think it will be wonderful.

A few months ago I was at dinner with some professors and administrators from Pepperdine and Cambridge, and the topic of the spiritual significance of nature came up.  Pepperdine’s provost Darryl Tippens proposed a theory that estrangement from nature and the fading of religion/spirituality among young people might be linked.  He observed that each time he has the chance to speak to students about powerful spiritual experiences in their lives, they almost always recall a moment at a retreat in the mountains, a time of solitude on the beach, or another quiet moment away from the city and suburbs.  Perhaps if more people spent more time in nature, its mystical ability to encourage reflection and introspection would produce a generation more inclined toward the spiritual.

The other night my mom was talking about an interview she saw online with a man (I wish I knew who this was) who reexamined the sentiment that we are a group of evil humans destroying a self-sacrificing and benevolent planet as we plunder its resources for our own dark purposes.  I strongly believe that the earth is worth protecting and must be respected, but man’s charter to exercise dominion over the earth and its creatures should not be forgotten.  The earth is not a weak and submissive bleeding albatross – it is dangerous and volatile, and we seem to do all we can to cling to its surface in flimsy shelters to survive.  It is a difficult task to try to subdue the earth, and a joy to be able to use its materials to carve out our little civilizations.  As far as the earth is concerned, we and our empires are just a flash in the pan.

There is one little three-second clip on the Disney Earth preview that shows three or four dolphins peeking out through the surface of glassy, still water with an enormous blue-white iceberg in the background.  It is crushingly beautiful.  It strikes me that the amazing thing about this film is that it involves no sets, no actors, and no special effects.  It’s all real.  It all already exists, and scenes like this one occur every few seconds, completely unnoticed, all over the world.  This film looks at the family relationships between animals, how they care for each other, experience distress on one another’s behalf, and, it would seem, even love each other.  It is beauty that moves us and changes us, although it is just the everyday world of the critters on screen.

So now: does this mean that our distant, authoritative relationship with the animals we’re watching translates to the far away, higher beings who watch us?  If we lived in some other realm and got to see shots of footage of the human world, would we still be moved and changed by the beauty we beheld?  I think so.  This perfectly describes the root of my desire to make movies.  Movies enable us to look at our own world from a “distance” – when it’s projected onto a screen, somehow the mundane things we look at every single day of our lives become captivating and powerful.  This is the special gift all artists give the world; they extract, package, and present scenes from our own world to remind us of the beauty that surrounds us every time we draw a breath.