Encore
Dear Eugene,
Rain this morning. Finally, again, after a good run of dry spell.
Again.
Why again? Who am I to say this morning's rain is comparable to the last rain I've experienced? Who am I to say they are the same?
God gives us discernible patterns for us to make sense of life and finally to know him more, but with the underlying, imperative caveat: You can't pin me down.
Of course we say, Well, I don't do that. When did I do that?
When we say this rain is just like that rain. This person belongs to that group of persons (so to justify my disdain). This view can be lumped into that agenda (so to nurture my hatred). This action of yours reminds me of that awful memory of mine (and I hereby serve you a death sentence at Hello, without you even knowing).
When we say this very morning is just like every other previous morning, and I see no reason to greet it any differently than the way it has always been working for me hitherto. I am not changing because the world is not changing, has nothing new to offer me. When there is nothing new there really is nothing good. The marginal utility of whatever good in life is rapidly declining if it can't reinvent itself to impress me anew. An awesome phone from last year is an awful fashion statement today (also someone "out there" must get his act together to improve its worsening performance for me; and don't tell me its degeneration has anything to do with my subjective perception).
Yep, ultimately someone "out there," "up there" is responsible for my lackadaisical life. If he doesn't rise to the game soon enough to fix things I might need to take a vacation I can't afford a pill I shouldn't try a bait I sure will regret just to protest and don't no one judge me for trying to live a little life here...
That God from yesterday has nothing new he can do to this morning of mine...
"The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."
Good morning, Alex
Dear Eugene,
ReplyDelete“Morning has broken like the first morning.”
My father has always been a morning person so naturally, I have learned to become an early riser even on weekends & holidays. Yet I have never woken to appreciate sunrise & its “rush of life” with encore every morning.
If I had to pin down a human superhero in my childhood years, it would be my father. I could not have imagined anyone grander than him. I must have adored and exalted him to the heights of worship for he had taught me the most fundamental principles of life since my earliest memory of existence. His words & actions impressed upon me beyond the most valiant & enchanting protagonists in Marvel comics. I remembered his portrait taken in his late teens: hair, glossy in gel & poetic in flair; skin as luminescent as starlight; & the most memorable was his gaze, deep in dreams & convictions.
During my early primary school years, I regularly followed my father to his work place in the late afternoon. I was stationed behind the main counter of business transactions, sketching figures on my notepad or napping on a padded, raised platform. At the end of each work day, he brought me along to inspect all the areas of the shop, especially the freight & storage rooms. As we surveyed every corner for unusual discoveries, he would relentlessly decode & demystify life’s complexities into morsels of truths for me to absorb & apply. Most of my questions began with “why’s” & he would spur me to think but always concluding with answers in certainty. On our way home, I would typically see sunset, not knowing at the time how naively blissful & tenderly tragic these days would later present themselves through the windows of nostalgia.
“All our life we’ve been taught to think for ourselves, to build a house that would welcome our favorite memory, people & things… Why do we want a “ breakthrough” when things have been working well…? So why change now?… Maybe our house is a shithole & stinks…”
When my windows for viewing life & the frames of my dream house have begun to crack before my eyes in bewilderment, I must ask myself precisely the most obvious reasons for desiring to live towards another morning: what kind of a home project have I been building & why have I invested all my life to construct something which can never satisfy my deepest longing for truth & worship in the context of my God-given vocation? My human superhero - now shifting more rapidly from sunrise towards sunset of life in the absence of alluring portraits - will one day become so arthritic, degenerative & amnesic that he would diminish into an unrecognizable presence without the luxury of observing another sunrise in this house. No past or present accomplishments could replace the joy of waking to a new morning, which speaks for itself.
Tonight, in search of waking to this new morning, I have bought NT Wright’s e-book, “The Day the Revolution Began”, which cast a new beam of truth through the cracks of my soul: “to worship that which is not God is to fall in love with death.”
“Help me to die like you. Help me to live for what you made me to live for…”
Yours, Kate