Don't Forget to Slam the Door Behind You

I have been thinking. Not that such a revelation should startle anyone. Or maybe I should say that I have been feeling; I have been experiencing. And to large degree my thoughts—and my prayers—have led me here.

On any given day, I, like much of the world, have many cares and concerns weighing on my mind. Even though I sometimes spend morbid hours contemplating the fleetingness of life and any true meaning or purpose it might contain, most of my cares and concerns are generally not true questions of life and death. No, generally, my cares and concerns are quite mundane to mention, though they weight me down effectively enough. Some relatively small matter keeps me up at night, tossing and turning. Some comparative trifle saps my life and my joy throughout the day and I look past the beauty around me and see only my irritation, my worry, my annoyance. I spend much of my life chronically unhappy, or, if that is a bit extreme, at least less happy than I would like.

Now I have been thinking for a long time. Thoughts take residence in my mind and like seeds they grow, sometimes sprouting up in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times, as though they needed another thought to awaken them after a period of extended incubation. It is hard to say exactly what the combination of factors were that came together this time. But I can remember one step, at least, or at least the thing it was that caused me to feel and experience so recently. Many of you know that I am a self-styled Web designer. That is what I did all last week during my spring break, in fact, while others were off vacationing to far-distant and exotic places.

The site I am currently building is for an editor and freelance artist; for some reason, coordinating our efforts via e-mail got off to a somewhat rocky and frustrating start. Thankfully, things have smoothed out now, and it was a question she asked me last Thursday that led up to my present thoughts. Regarding all the ins and outs of the site design/optimization industry, she had written: “I appreciate so much that you know all these neat things. . . . For me, cyberland is the valley of the shadow, if you know what I mean.” My reply was simple: “I guess that’s why folks say we live in the Information Age. There’s just too much for any one person to know, so we pay others who specialize. If you consider, a large portion of what we pay for today is ‘know-how.’”

Specifically, she brings to the table a skill set that would enable her to do almost everything I do and do it well; however, she, like so many, felt absolutely overwhelmed at the prospect of launching a full-scale site, not knowing where to start. For my part, as I began to reflect on my own skills, I marveled at how they have grown since 2000 when I first started getting into this world. A few years later and I take hundreds of things for granted that for many less technologically savvy people still seem amazing. Every site I build tends to be more sophisticated than the one before it, if not in its surface appearance, then in the muscle that ripples beneath its skin. More and more diverse programming languages and technologies come together for me, adding themselves to my repertoire of unique and customized skills. The university has even hired me throughout the summer to maintain the English department’s portion of the college website, ensuring that I can keep a roof over my head even while taking the summer off school: I am to formalize the paperwork one week from today.

Regarding Elaine, when I mentioned the Information Age, her reply was a series of questions: “Yes, and it [your ‘know-how’] is valuable. How much of your time do you spend with it now? Do you market your skills well, or focus mostly on school? . . . If you were going to give yourself an all-inclusive job title for a business card, what would it be? Do you have a website for that business?” It was the formulation of an answer to these series of questions that started me thinking.

I replied that I occasionally speak about my hobby in these newsletters and other places where I am sharing my life with others. There was even at least one newsletter where I put in a more-or-less shameless plug for myself, and, as best as I can tell, nothing whatsoever came of it—smile. But I do not have a website devoted to site design; I do not have any formal marketing strategies at all and when I talk about site design it is mainly because I am talking about something I really enjoy doing (even if I sometimes really enjoy complaining and feeling grumpy about it too—even bigger smile). Instead, I very much believe that there are two interrelated reasons why business is thriving for me in spite of no real advertising. The first and lesser (and which I did not overtly have in mind when I replied to her) is that timeless bit of advice: “If you do what you want to do, where your talents and interests take you, and if you learn to do it well, practicing and perfecting it, spending hours of time and care upon it, you will never lack. You may at times have to sleep on the floor, there may be times in which money will be tight and in which luxuries will have to be passed by for the essentials of living, but if you follow your dreams, happiness and a relatively high level of prosperity will follow: you will have everything you need and some to spare. But if you follow money alone, a bit like seeking first after earth and caring nothing at all about heaven . . . well, that is a bitter rabbit trail best not pursued.” But the actual answer I gave her (which to some degree is part of the same) is that God takes good care of me. Even if we were to give greater credence to the lesser reason, we could still profitably ask ourselves from whence our skills originate: where does anything come from? Our very lives, to say nothing of our talents, are gifts.

Now then, everything I have written thus far in this newsletter is crap; what I am about to write has several loose threads that must all be explored before being woven together. What I realized in that moment of answering Elaine’s questions is that my Father is very, very good to me. I have no crown on my head, the clothes on my back are rarely the newest or latest. But I feast at the King’s table. I go in and out of my Father’s house, in my better moments even slamming the doors carelessly behind me, self-forgetful. The universe is my playground. I have no want or care. I am free like no one has ever been free. That is the reality: it truly is the reality. There are no strings on my hands and feet; I am eternally free. That is reality. But it is the reality I so rarely live in because I so quickly forget.

After writing my reply, I walked around the block as I often do. I felt as if I could fly. The spring grass was just beginning to green, still that lighter shade of green of new life. The trees were beginning to bud, some relatively bare yet, others, like the dogwoods, already in full bloom. The air was warm but not oppressively hot and humid as it most likely will become in a few more months. I felt I could go anywhere, I could do anything, I could pull up stakes in a moment’s notice and go wherever the wind blew and the sun shone. I did not have to worry; I did not have to fret; my concerns and petty cares were so much fluff that would easily enough float away on the breeze. I wear shackles of my own forging: I chain my own arms, my own legs. I lack because I do not trust, I do not ask, I do not believe. But the world is really my playground and my Father owns the cattle on thousands upon hundreds of thousands of hills throughout the solar system and beyond.

And what am I? Biologically speaking, I am earth, I am the stuff of the stars. Science says I am made of earth and the sun. The Hebrew people believed it too and wrote as much in the creation account we know today by the name of Genesis—“Beginning.” They were unique in that their record very clearly saw God and creation as separate entities, a legacy that very well may have contributed to the perspective of much of the scientific world; Stephen M. Barr argues this point well in his article Retelling the Story of Science. In any case, our modern learning and most of the cosmologies of the world agree: we are made of earth.

Children do not grow out of thin air, as truly miraculous as it is to behold them growing toward adulthood. Rather, as the child shoots up before our eyes and reminds us of our own mortality, he or she eats food, drinks liquid, and spends at least a certain amount of time in the sun. The food and the liquid and to some degree the sun not only nourish the body, but become the body, converted into cells and blood and nerves and sinews and fibers. The food comes from plants and animals, animals eat other animals or plants: soon enough all things feed on plants. Plants feed on the sun above and on water below. Plants dig deep roots into the earth; animals roam upon its surface. Animals are made of earth; plants are made of earth. When the tribal peoples of the world think of the earth as our Mother, as a living organism, they tell a story many of us dismiss for all the wrong reasons.

Yesterday afternoon I was hurtling along at the leisurely rate of seventy miles an hour down the highway, sitting next to my friend who was navigating the metal shell in which we rode. The liquid crystal display (LCD) of the CD/MP3/AM-FM receiver alternated between a graphic equalizer, digitized numerals, and phosphorescent letters boasting of its pedigree. The dashboard was a smooth plastic, the seats fabric with synthetic leather trim. The temperature inside was regulated and the container in which we traveled was sealed off to the noise of the tires furiously scrambling over the asphalt. Amidst the trees and hills to our right was a massive tower transmitting invisible signals going who knows where to do who knows what: it rose high into the sky, its flashing lights bright and blinding, designed to keep airplanes at bay. Shortly afterward there was a string of billboards, still legal in our state, showing various night-life attractions, among them a violin player and his instrument many times larger than life. In front of us, the city lights stretched out like a blanket and the smog-like layer overhanging the urban landscape was illuminated by the billions of artificial spheres of light glowing beneath. Nothing we saw seemed very much like nature; in fact, we typically call such things “artificial,” “synthetic,” “man-made.” Each term connotes something “other than”: something other than nature.

It is true: modern man has spun his cocoon of concrete and steel with a good amount of plastic thrown in. He feels a bit like a god even and in a very real sense he is, sharing to however lesser degree in God’s image and his activities. But proud humanity does not often stop and realize that we need one another even on this level where our connections are economic and impersonal—drop any of us from an airplane into an unpopulated region of earth and see just how far we get. We would not begin to know where to start rebuilding the technology that has culminated from centuries upon centuries of knowledge acquisition about the planet, its properties, and how such things can be harnessed and exploited. We did not build the modern Babel by ourselves; we built it, as Isaac Newton (1642–1727) writes in his letter to Robert Hooke, on the shoulders of giants, or perhaps not giants exactly, but on centuries of civilization, culture, and learning, each standing on the one before it like some ancient tell awaiting excavation.

Contrasted against much of our contemporary world and its tiresome ways—or perhaps seen in relief and in response—we find in the beatitudes certain states in which God and His kingdom may be found. I take these rather literally: I see God saying: “Where these conditions are, there I am also. It is a constant of my universe and of my nature. Like the Tao my Eastern philosophers have proposed, it is my very property to flow into the empty spaces and to fill that which is lacking.”

Pride and self-sufficiency were a great obstacle to the audiences that heard the beatitudes of Christ. In our cocoons of steel and concrete, the same can be said of us. Once we lived closer to the earth and we recognized not only our dependence upon it, our kindredness with it, but also something of living in harmony with it and our neighbors and thus our common Creator. We still live on the earth, and just as we—men and women suited in bodies of dirt—do not very much resemble the soil from which we share common compounds and elements (perhaps particularly carbon), so too our “artificial, manmade” world does not very much resemble the trees, plants, and foliage of the earth from which it grew. Yet it is as the classic joke would have it: when God and the scientist engaged in a man-making contest, the scientist confidently scooped up a handful of earth, well knowing how to fashion a man. But he grew startled when God tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Not so fast, pal. Go get your own dirt.” The scientist could make a man out of the earth, but he could not make the earth it took to make the man.

From the ground up, we too are still tethered to the earth. Biologically speaking, we are children of the earth. Technologically speaking, all the metal and plastic and silicone, circuitry, and petrochemical substances have organic origins: they were not made of any other dirt than that which has always formed the body of our planet; even electricity upon which the modern world runs is itself a natural force. In the end, words like “synthetic,” “man-made,” and “artificial” often serve to obfuscate our sense of connection to the earth and thus tend to obscure our recognition of the true state of our being and our utter dependence upon God’s provision and creation, a vision so simply and elegantly expressed in the beatitudes. Yet all the extra, “artificial” layers may only serve to render the beatitudes truer and more poignant.

We have wandered a long way from the sidewalk around which I was walking Thursday. I realized that my very life was a gift. I did not ask to be born, yet here I am. I did not choose my talents and my gifts, yet they were given to me anyway. The satisfaction I find in using them is a gift. The fact that they provide for my needs by securing my sustenance and shelter: these too are gifts. The earth is a gift; all that is in it is a gift; all things come from God. I have nothing to worry about, for I feast at my Father’s table. He has given me my life. He has given me my talents and gifts. He knows everything there is to know about me and He cares deeply about me and the rest of his creation. I own nothing, He owns everything: like the older brother, I am always free to share in it, for what is my Father’s is also mine by birthright. In spite of that fact, I am often like the younger brother squandering my life away in reckless living. I am still far from perfect.

The Father not only forgives the prodigal, he is the same Father who causes his sun to shine and his rain to fall upon the righteous and unrighteous alike. When his children ask him for bread, he does not hand them a stone; when his children ask him for fish he will not hand them a serpent. The entry of the kingdom is characterized by recognizing that we are God’s children: from the awareness of God’s infinite love and provision springs the transformative elements that infectiously seed the world with the same good news that does not return void or empty, but produces the abundant harvests for which it has always been sown. If we are gods, it is because our Father bestowed upon us crowns, entrusting to us his resources and the wisdom to use them wisely.

We need not fear with the various household chores and responsibilities entrusted to us, for just as the Father provides life, substance, and shelter, so too he equips his children for every task he calls them to perform. And did you notice our key word again? “And when this is said, enough is said to transform every weary burdened life into one of blessedness and rest.” We spent the previous two issues speaking of the transformative virtues of faith, hope, and love, paying special attention to faith in the second issue. The spiritual life is all about the kingdom of heaven; everything about the kingdom of heaven is transformative, from top to bottom. As I write in the recent dicussion forum post:

I am reminded here of love—particularly eros, the love between man and woman—but love no less, as displayed in the mind of Pierre, a central character in Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. Specifically, Pierre is engaged to Natasha, the woman he loves, and everything is transformed for him: strangers seem secretly to be sharing in his happiness, the world seems interesting, exciting, illuminating, he sees hidden depth no matter where he turns and his comments sometimes seem enigmatic to others who, contrary to his perceptions, are not likely sharing in his heightened sensitivity. Tolstoy concludes his chapter:

Have you ever considered how many elements of the Christian life do not operate according to what exists by sight but what will be brought into being? Take forgiveness, for example. Forgiveness does not reward based on merit; rather, as the Psalmist suggests of Israel’s Redeemer: “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our wickedness. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is his mercy great upon those who fear him” (Psalm 103:10–11). Thus, we do not get what we deserve, but what we need. The same is true with human forgiveness. The cycle is never broken when lex talionis—an eye for an eye—becomes the rule of retribution. The Christian virtue of forgiveness, then, does not operate according to what is seen but according to what is unseen—what will be—intent on ushering in the kingdom of heaven. Like Pierre who in his happy state of engagement did not wait to love people based on what he saw in them, but rather loved them first and then saw in them the very qualities of that love: like Pierre’s love, forgiveness transforms us. It does not look at what does exist, but at what will. It impregnates, recreating itself. The kingdom of heaven always operates on this transformative rule from the least to the greatest.

If then, everything about our faith is continually being born out to realms higher and more beautiful, how is it that we become so easily distracted and driven to worry? We have the very elixir of life!

The very same friend who was navigating the metal shell in which we were hurtling down the highway is a man in his fifties. After we reached the city limits, he told me he feels a little weary of earth sometimes. He feels like he has seen most everything there is to see and done most everything there is to do and that there is very little new, just re-arrangements of the same old. He also said he does not really think he wants to live forever; he is tired and there just does not seem to be that much left for him here.

For my part, I told him I thought life was a lot like college. Four months at a time is the longest we see other people, often ever. Some of those people float back into our life once or twice, but for the most part the sea of faces rolls over every four months. People come, people go, no one gets close to anybody except in rare instances in which they join forces outside the classroom and cultivate their mutual relationship. Life often seems this way, just as my friend described it. We all get very weary sometimes. We say hello and we say goodbye and we say hello and we say goodbye and after enough times it all gets so very wearisome and it seems like our hearts just do not have in them the same depth of response as when we said our first hello and our first goodbye. And living forever would indeed become tedious—scenes from Interview with the Vampire flashed through my mind, though I did not say so to him—if those around you were always dying. But what if everyone lived forever? Or at least, what if you were part of a community that lived forever and shared much in common? He agreed that might be different and brought up the passage in Revelations about a time in which it is forecast that the children of men would cry out for the very rocks to fall upon them, but the sweetness of death would evade them, defying them, mercilessly taunting them.

My reply was to suggest that the Greek clearly shows the word “eternal” translated in the expression “eternal life” has as much to do with the quality of life as it does with quantity. To be a human zombie forever is surely no life at all—comparisons to Anne Rice’s vampires seem particularly apropos here: half-dead human shells, lost souls preying on the life force of others so that they may perpetuate their undead and largely joyless subsistence ever and always separated from the sun and all that belongs to the daylight. To be a living zombie for an eternity would be to make one’s abode in hell. Presumably, those persons described in Revelation were not enjoying a very high quality of life; what is more, the weariness my friend described that makes him scorn life to a degree is not exactly the eternal life possible to us in the present. He knows as much: he is a believer and we are much alike: neither of us live in eternal life much of the time, freely coming and going in our Father’s house, at times carelessly slamming the door in our self-forgetfulness. And again, after this part of our conversation, I mentioned being a child in our Father’s house to him and this time he said, “That is the second time you have mentioned that idea. Whatever else you write in your newsletter this upcoming week, write about that. It is something I would like to think more about.” And so you see that I have written of the very thing he suggested. :)

In fact, most of what I have written here was part of our conversation that evening; I had, after all, spent the afternoon in a renewed awareness of my inalienable birthright as a son of God after answering Elaine’s questions. My friend and I had earlier spoken of the advances in technology, of how it is not so far-fetched these days to consider man a god who can create human life. If the man god could create bodies that did not die naturally (though still susceptible to being killed, perhaps by decapitation or suffocation), he might very well be able to resurrect the dead. For am I who I am based on the matter from which I am made, or am I who I am based on the particular pattern or constitution that matter forms? Every moment I ripe and ripe and rot and rot and the reason I age in the first place, as my friend mentioned, is because eventually the replication and replacement of cells begins to go off course by degrees, the new cells that replicate and replace the old ones misfiring on occasion, until eventually the whole process comes to a screeching halt. Agreeing, I suggested that the body sitting next to him—the body named Eric—may not have a single element in it that would have been the body of Eric a year ago. Yet it is the same Eric, transformed in more ways than the merely biological, but still Eric no less complete with missing teeth and blemishes on his back and other parts of his body: even his imperfections are preserved!

I was reminded of Keith’s post on the (old) discussion forum from January 2006; I was telling my friend how Keith is versed in Information Theory (which deals with, among other things, signals and their degradations: signal to noise ratios) and how he suggests there that theoretically, at least, the works of Shakespeare could be translated into an “alphabet of odors,” each smell corresponding to a letter. The medium would be different, but the integrity of the work—the integrity of the information itself—would be preserved so long as the odors persist.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

Extrapolating from Keith’s thoughts, no matter how hopelessly mangled my body might become, no matter what debilitating illnesses, no matter if I meet my death by being blasted to bits, I still exist whole in the mind of God, to which my friend said, “Yes, even before we were formed He knew us.” If from God all things originate, if He is the creative energy that brings all things to bear, if he is eternally living and all-powerful, my body and being can never be lost no matter what happens to the particular constitution of material elements that forms me at any given moment. And then I told him of the Anglican philosopher Berkeley who disagreed with Locke (Alfred North Whitehead argues that according to the insights of Einstein and modern physics, Berkeley told the truer tale) and his claim that we are ideas clothed in the mind of God, the material world around us His thoughts, we ourselves His thoughts, His dream, in Him whom we live, and breathe, and have our being, forming the very dendrites and axons of His mind, as it were. Put another way, he believed that world was not material but spiritual substance; similarly, modern physics suggests that matter is merely slowed-down energy. You can see how even on this highest and most fundamental level I have nothing whatsoever to fear: if I can never be lost because I exist always in the mind of God, what have I to fear of death? And though he slay me, as Job says, yet will I trust Him: if I cease to exist, it will only be because He has blotted me out of His mind. I am a child in His house; what have I to fear of anything: my life, my bread, my needs, my cares, my concerns—my very existence as Eric?

My friend said: “If these ideas be true, perhaps there is still more to see of life than I thought,” and we both smiled.

For those who have recently signed up for the forum, welcome! Don’t overlook the Seven Deadly Skins: you may as well add some color to your life while living it, seeing your world a bit differently than other folks. :)

Subscribe to Le Penseur Réfléchit, the Mr. Renaissance bi-weekly newsletter.

Previous E-mail | Next E-mail

Don’t Forget to Slam the Door Behind You