There Are No "Ordinary" People

Discouraged today.

I´ll update you on why after I´ve written a couple of posts...I think I´m going to attempt to go backwards and write about my Peru trip as if it were happening, though I´m now on the tail end of it.
Yes, I´m aware I already have a travel blog, but the idea of a fresh start appeals to me...and I think this will be more than just for traveling.

Here´s the problem I had with the last blog--

1) First of all, after writing for six months about the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, beaches of Sardinia, streets of Florence, Swiss Alps, etc....my life suddenly seemed painfully anti-climactic. Mnemosyne and her nine daughters refused to sing further, and in fact have disappeared from my head almost altogether until recently. (Confession--I find my most despairing moments to also be the ones in which I wax most poetic....any idea why it works like that?) I have a feeling I may run into the same kinds of moods after reciting tales of Machu Picchu and Colca Canyon, but I´ll do my best to persevere.

2) Okay. Heres a problem I have with Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other online social sites that have now sprung into existence. While I am just as guilty as the next person, I have an almost moral abhorrence to the idea of publishing each and every detail of my life to a place where virtually anyone can read it. I figure the people who I want, or who need, to know certain things about me, I will tell myself or they´ll find out through someone whom I´ve told.
I also know myself, and I do sometimes get a bit carried away in the excitement of the clucking keys or in the poetry of the current tale I´m reciting, and tend to reveal something rather personal to people who are basically strangers (no offense to the basic strangers out there reading this). I´m just saying--I would like to be cautious.

At the same time, there is something strangely theraputic in the act of shooting out thoughts, musings, questions, frustrations, and poetic sighs into a strange cyber-scopic (is that a word?) bottle on the waves of the internet.

And so here I am, somewhere between journal and discussion group, available to anyone who cares, and to anyone who has the inkling to reply to or question any of my musings--be my guest.

So anyway.
That was my long-winded preface. Now on to actual thoughts.

First I´d like to explain the title of the blog.

Its been a Lewis day.

C.S. Lewis is one of those people I feel I honestly know, even though I know thats ridiculous. And considering the broad expanse of his works, I really haven´t read too many of his books at all. Yet he seems almost a friend.

In the same way as perhaps some of you feel drawn to heaven through the beauty described in Keats or Frost, or through the musings of Chesterton or Spurgeon, or even through the lyrics of one band or another (I can literally weep in the power of Jon Foreman´s words...."Your Love is a Song" feels like the thank you note of an older child to a father--I can messily sign a "me too" at the bottom in my 3-year-old script, overwhelmed by the meaning and unable to express it myself---yet knowing it fully applies to me).

Anyway, I believe that, while these people should in no way become a distraction from the glory they are attempting to draw attention to, or become an end unto themselves, their words reflect the majesty of their Creator, and we should be thankful to them for that.

Lewis, for whatever reason, is one of those people who consistently places his fingers beneath my chin, and gently lifts my eyes to God and his glory. For this he is my brother, friend and mentor.

Okay, I know I´m way on a tangent now...but here´s a poem I actually wrote on this subject. Don´t be too impressed; it was for a class--

Dear Sir,
Lately you’ve been on my mind.
I’m not sure why. I’ve tried to find
your old letters, the ones I’ve missed,
that explain why Miracles exist.
I will admit it baffles me: this faith
you have—This Hideous Strength
in the midst of all your strife.
Like when you took her to wife
on that hospital bed—you two alone,
when you found out she had cancer of the bone.
Four years is too short. You all deserved
much more. I know Grief Observed
too closely and too often can drain
one’s strength, but this Problem of Pain
has been haunting me. You always said,
(I know from your books, I’ve read
almost all of them), that though we see
only the shadows at times, we must be
Surprised by Joy in life. That hope
is something worth fighting for, and to cope
with trial and death without it, is
to surrender to the darkness; to give
up. And though we may choose to curse or bless,
that ‘Til We Have Faces to properly address
our creator, how can we demand
answers which we cannot fully understand?
So I’ll follow your advice, and stay
faithful, waiting patiently for that final day
and moment, when the Weight of Glory
will settle on our shoulders, and our story
will both end and start. When that Great Divorce
of body and spirit occurs and the course
of history changes; the Chronicles finished
—and our trials suddenly diminished.
Then we’ll see. As the Abolition of Man
occurs around us, we’ll stand
together and finally slip from this Silent Planet
into the arms of the God who planned it.
So my friend, though your voice is now
in black and white, and your brow
wrinkles only when I turn the page
I’ll wait for the day, or year, or age
when we’ll all sit together and discuss
the hardships that now consume us
with a different eye. So until then,
sleep well beneath your stone, dear friend,
and thank you for your words of wisdom.
Signed,
Sincerely,
Your Fellow Pilgrim


Okay. Sorry. Now for real--

Sitting here, a bit depressed and wrestling with the book of Job--a book I always feel stupid reading, as I cannot go througha chapter without become mottled and having to go back and reread (no, I still dont understand it)---and I decided to pick up the Weight of Glory to kill some time.

This is the passage that gets me every time--

"The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor´s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

It was this passage that came to mind for me yesterday. An extremely short summary of what happened is that I was wronged--and that the man who hurt me, without knowing it, cut me very deeply.

I found myself thinking about him throughout the day, in two starkly different ways.
The first was the bitter, rather ugly Jessica who called him a lot of very unpleasant things which I was raised never to say, and wished that God would bring him to justice wherever he was for what he´d done.

If I wanted to be a cheat, I could say I was very David-in-the-Psalms-like; "strike down my enemies O lord!", kindave thing.

If I wanted to be honest, I could say I was an angry little girl who was pushed in the mud and who threw a tantrum.

The other side of me was much more mature, but no less confused.
I thought of that passage, and began to think of this man as a son of eternity--one way or the other. It both helped and didn´t. I do realize that justice is in the hands of the Lord--check. Some day, that man will answer for this somewhat trivial, but to me very hurtful, thing he did. But which side is he?

Of course I´m inclined to say that he was a son of the Devil--a unknowing tool of Satan sent to steal joy from me and hurt a deep part of me when I was reveling in the goodness of God to allow me to go on this trip. That´s true. But he is also a potential son of God. Perhaps someone God is on the heels of even right now--perhaps someone who will come to know Christ and be ashamed of his actions. Do I forgive him with this knowledge? Can I?

I know all the right answers, trust me. But I get so sick of the Christanese lines I´ve been fed all my life. I get so fatigued kneeling down and squinting at the scraps, trying to differentiate betwen what I´ve been told and what I know and have lived and I feel, picking trought the piles of "that´s just the way it is" and the "thats what the bible says, so accept it" and holding it up to the light to try to tell if I can see through it.
I know how this sounds. I´m not saying I don´t beleive the bible to be absolute truth....I just mean that there are things perhaps that we need to experience beyond just words or someone else´s ideas.
Or maybe I´m just a Thomas, thickly crossing my arms and crying "Show me! Show me or I won´t beleive it!"

I think the long and short of it is--I´m tired.
I´m tired of being confused,
of having five different voices in my head, and trying to find the right one;
of feeling wrong
of feeling defeated
of feeling alone.
I´m tired of living in a world where bad things happen and there´s no reason for it.
I´m tired of living amongst the broken;
I´m tired of being one of them.

I´m tired of living in the in-between--
stuck in the already and the not yet.

But we´re all stuck here, aren´t we?
Chained to this rotten world, like the condemned prisoners locked in the embrace of a rotting corpse; the decaying flesh mixing with their own until there is no difference.

Though I don´t understand it, I have to be here.

I hate this calling--but this is the cross we all must bear daily; to know that we do not belong here, that we have been pardoned for our crimes, and yet still to endure the stench of the body to which we are chained, to patiently wait for the salvation ship to sail to our side, throw us a rope, and to hear those words ¨welcome home, beloved daughter".

It´s a day I long for. It´s a day that, with the stench of the corruption I am a part of and which affects me in ways both large and small, I lose sight of.

Lord help me watch the horizon for your sails; to see past this current sentence and to remember that, I am already pardoned, and someday I will be freed.
Help me to endure living on the inbetween.