> From this.
If you believe, then you must believe this: that whatever evil, it will inevitably play into the purpose of God. This, I think, is the most difficult point to reconcile, and perhaps the key to the entire puzzle of existence. It is where, I think, we have the sticking point that people simply cannot reconcile, the point where some fall away from faith entirely. For it is a deep point of conviction in the greatness of God, and in His wisdom: that no matter how horrible, how horrific, that He can make of it right: if not in the immediate now, somewhere “in the end” (vague but sure). It is something we must believe, we of the faith, or the entire faith ceases to be nothing more than a band-aid on a sucking wound.
It may be that there are just too many things in the world that test this hypothesis. There are too many things that can shake this heart of belief. The true believer must be able not to turn away from the worst of the evil in the world, and still in his soul believe that God is good. Supremely good. For the greater the horror, the greater the God we must believe in — for only One greater than the evil can exist, if He exists at all. If making us believe that the Devil does not exist is Satan’s greatest trick, surely it is at least his secondmost favorite ploy to make of the world a playground of horrors. For anyone who feels, it makes faith need to explain itself. And God seems so silent on such things. But that is the test.
> From this.
The following just came to me one sunny day, and the Lord remarked that it was the best thing I’d ever written:
There was a light, but it faded. It was not faith.
There were visions, but they twisted. They were not faith.
There was a feeling, but it was illusory. It was not faith.
Faith was to hold on, when all those things went wrong.
Because I saw that light, had those visions, felt what I felt.
The narrow way is a journey, and rest may only be momentary.
It is a life that leads to life.
It didn’t all make sense until later, for I had written it years before the War, and only leading up to and through the War did it completely make sense. It is a way to keep faith in this continually shifting sphere we call life, where nothing seems secure. You don’t have to discard the old things because you outgrow them in some way. You may believe in the same way as an angel, whose faith is constant in change, the flux of pure spirit, and is therefore touched of the eternal.
> From this.
In a passing moment in the Dreaming, once, outside of sleep and in my visions: I from this certain perch perceived the notion, conceived of a very curious thing. Originally not even put into words I could hear, but existing as a partially conceived cartoon and almost purely semantic in thought, thus no words enclosing: “the Tree of the Forgetting of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Has anyone else conceived of something that could be so wondrous? I cannot think that this idea has ever occurred to anyone ever before; such a thought in my reckoning would catch on in certain circles, would it not? Bottles of virginity? A lollipop of purity? Youth, just the good parts? The splash of being new again.
The claim of thus imagined is nothing less than the return to innocence, a return to Eden. When we were naked, and were not ashamed. Such fruit I imagined to be heart-shaped, and bright yellow — a fresh sweetness, no hint of sour at all. Almost as if skinless. And to eat of it, the sensation I cannot think of what it might be like. Better than childhood. Wider to the eye than an open sky.
> From this.
Sing the song that songs cannot sing. Write the words that words cannot say. Draw what cannot be pictured, dance in ways the body cannot go. Find the inspiration for it all from the God who is love, for love is the greatness that greatness can aspire to. The eternal that lives in our mortal souls.
Thus is our true purpose in anything worth doing: to do the impossible. Can anything less be what is meant for us all, for the children of God? See how wonderful is the creation of our Father, and dream that we may also do such things as our Father is responsible for — when we are ready. When we know enough, when we have done enough. In eternity we will see what that means. Our second birth will be when we are born anew in Heaven, and will we there grow up to be as children of God are meant to be. Can we expect anything less of ourselves, we children of the light, made in the image of love, than what is love’s true potential? To do in all justice what cannot be done?
(Do not say “cannot”. We will forget such words.)
> From this.
i hear tell there is a flower
which blooms only in the darkness:
if light were displayed upon it
would it immediately turn to dust.
now, how it is it may be
i have heard but scant the rumors,
rare few who faintly claim
they have seen what the flower
in its cool nethers may be…
palest of the white petals
which seem to be suspended
in air, so gossamer is its stalk…
these folk who breathe the subject
of this invisible, impossible flower,
others whisper they were born
and were nourished there,
in blackness deeper than night:
better to view the mysteries
of life, of flowers only darkness sees.
> From this.
What if, at the end of the day, Romeo and Juliet were not meant for each other? And it was exactly this quality that made them what they were? What if “meant to be” is actually really boring, and what that really is is all the people who got together without the drama, married and had kids, who had kids, and they grew old, and died, and that was the whole story? When the entire world is against you, after dropping hint after hint, what you get is one stolen night, and then that entire world catches up to you — death is almost inevitable. Some sort of horrible tragedy, at least. But that’s Romeo & Juliet, right? There is no way it would have been anywhere near as romantic had they not both died at the end, being a hairsbreadth from getting away with the perfect crime.
Whether this means that it was true love, after all, or that it was not, is just because when one thinks of true love, one’s mind immediately jumps to the concept “meant to be” — maybe I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Is this an example of love’s true nature? I think not. It is an exception, and that is precisely why it is so prized as a story, as an experience. Maybe I am leaning in one direction, then. One idea of true love: if you love, truly, what else need it be? When you say, “I love you,” are you telling the truth? That’s it then. Maybe that’s all true love is meant to be. The nature of the world can be seen in this way, too: that the most ordinary of people can experience the most extraordinary of phenomena. For free. And I rather like that way of looking at the world.
> From this.
There comes over some of us, sometimes, a notion that perhaps should always be shared, if one is so fortunate to experience it. It is the idea that everything is going to be all right — that somehow, beyond the reach of all mortal hopes, everything will at the end, end well. Is it so hard to believe?
Though those who have religion have more form to these feelings, a spelled-out prophecy or some kind of formulation that actually describes how things will work out, I don’t believe one has to believe in anything to believe this. I imagine it is somewhat more easily done for those who have faith in a higher order to believe that there is a larger good that circumscribes the most terrible of tragedies, but hope is not monopolized by such faith. There shall always be those who have a kind of trust in the better side of humankind, no matter that they can only look forward to new generations to make amends for those past (and those present) and think not that some great power will create the ultimate justice. This is not an impossible thing to hold. Hope asks not for your credentials.
It is, to put it in today’s parlance, the ultimate meme. We can see that it’s been put in songs more than once (Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” says it, for one; do a search for “everything’s gonna be alright” on Google, and you get more than twenty million hits). And it probably shall be put into songs as long as there are songs being written. To those who don’t feel it, perhaps have never felt it, the idea may be shrugged off as lighthearted wish-fulfillment whimsy, made by those who have no grasp of how grave the situation of the world truly is. But that it exists in such forms as the Book of Revelation, I think says differently. It is perhaps to be as in the spirit of a quote by Oscar Wilde, “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” That to fight the good fight is ultimately not in vain, however much the evil seems victorious. It is the idea of turning the other cheek: they cannot defeat us by their violence; we are better than that. It is a sign that says, “This way up.” Everything is going to be all right.
