Did I Ever Say Sorry?

Through troubled times and wasted years
Hurried goodbyes: your summer tears.

Fog is all this vision can muster.

But tell me, if you please,
Did we ever whisper what was needed?
What of it? Can we stop this pain tonight?





The backward glance, the empty hand,
the ubiquitous fog. Forlorn souls. And why?

Your lost touch.

The Dark Mountain approaches.

Again?

And with it all, I stop. The road turns.

I will follow.

Tethered

Always on the eve,
When do we ever unravel?

"Then the Righteous Will Shine Like the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father…"

Or, perhaps more accurately, what I learned from a holiday at the sea… and other adventures.

~*~

The sun was sinking into the horizon, the ocean darkening with mystery, and I was suddenly stabbed by joy – the sensation of being wicked, wild, and wonderfully in love. A very old book, full of precious reminders about the sanctity of this inspiring burst of existence we call life, was sitting very comfortably next to me in the sand. Maddened by too many words, not enough movement, I’d had too much talk… too little life – I was ready for more. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew that I wouldn’t find it here sitting down. Whispering all sorts of crazy things to myself, I finally gathered the courage and leapt into a great unknown.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton has taught me to view life as a cosmic shipwreck in which a sailor awakens, blinded and bewildered by the dazzling sun, only to find himself stranded on an unknown island. Remnants of a mysteriously wonderful past lay strewn about the coast, relics from a better time. He has forgotten who he is, what the mission was, and why everything went horribly wrong. He curiously wanders about gathering these relics, these clues from a distant past, each one hinting at the meaning of his struggle. But amnesia stunts his progress, marring his potential, keeping him from action. He is content toying with wood chips when a golden palace awaits him just beyond the shore.

I am that man.

Earlier in the summer you would have found me laying face-down on a surfboard, a hundred or so feet from shore, waiting with eager expectation for what I knew was already over – the day had ended with a few worthy rides, but very little satisfaction. In the moments that followed I learned an amazing lesson. In the quietness of the departing sun and softening sea it came to me as if the brightness of spring had overtaken the melancholy of fall in only a second’s notice. "It" was the arrival of a flurry of emotions that few men could put into words. My mind works better with images, so I will see if pictures can make sense of what I stumbled upon… or, perhaps more accurately, what stumbled upon me.

"Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains."

For all my moral-uprightness, all my prided victories, collected friends, possessions, and memories – from all these things I was forced suddenly to take a step back, observe my empire, reassure my needy narcissistic affections. But what I saw did not meet any of these gluttonous demands. Again, think of the child content with building and rebuilding his own unfortunate little sandcastle, when a real one of gold and marble and love is awaiting him up atop the nearby hill. I was the child for an instant – muddied hands, tear-stained face, but bright beaming eyes full of hope and joy and wonder. The crushing revelation that all of my life, in comparison to the glory of God, could be nothing more than a collected empire of dirt, so easily dissolved in the mindless crashing of an ocean wave was simply undoing for a moment… but, thankfully, it only lasted a moment. For the very next instant brought with it the kind of serenity that most men would give their lives for.

I find myself by losing myself.

White is a hard color to keep clean; innocence is a shell likely to crack. The older I get the more convinced I am that most people spend the majority of their adult lives trying to reclaim and restore their childhood. It is the all-encompassing fear of loss that haunts most of us. But there is another way.

Perhaps this is why so much scripture speaks of child-like faith – that those who will inherit the everlasting kingdom must first deny themselves, and become like children again. Ah, but I do not want to die! How can death and denial to myself be good? What could ever motivate a generation to cast themselves into the sea? What if His arms are in the ocean?

It is the worship of self that makes men mad; it is surrender that brings serenity. It was George MacDonald who reminded me that the one rule of hell is "I am my own." We are all broken gods, we cannot handle divine power. Make a child a king and watch the kingdom fall. We become demons as gods. I believe the essence of hell is the removal of the common grace of God – that we are finally given over to our own unwise, independent rule, and are haunted tirelessly by the specter of guilt that continually brings up mistakes and failures and regrets. We fall short of glory and land in endless self-annilation. We hate the ruin we recklessly cause yet are unable to hand back the scepter to whom it rightfully belongs.

To get one’s eyes off oneself is a task that can not be accomplished by merely natural means, as the child can not stop the ocean – it is not his to command. The Spirit of God must awaken a mind and a heart with a burst of light and heat so intense that it fills one with a passion both to live and to die - death unto the flesh, alive unto God. And now I see – the beauty and brokenness, the wonder and woe, all in its rightful context. I die so I can live. This is why I abstain from sin: it robs me of joy, it mars my mind, destroys my ability to worship and to wonder. I desire exaltation and expansion – a world to stretch myself in… but evil of sin is that it enslaves me to lesser things, darker gods, false pleasures. I become my own, build my own prison, lock myself, and give the key to some lesser god. I must kill the side of me that, strangely, desires my death.

"Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this...
Quick, show me that sweet thing
Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire."

"Our valley is His golden cup
And He the wine
Which overflows
To lift us with Him as He goes."

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness
for they shall be filled."

Do you see it now, how loss can be gain, how pain can be precious?

Were I never hungry, never would I have sought the Bread of Life. Were I not these wings once broken, never would I truly appreciate flight.

Grace is the sweetest of words to a broken man

There… and it was done. As the vision slowly blurred back to reality I remembered the dark ocean still stirring beneath me. What lurked under the surface I had not the slightest idea. But something I did know – One greater than myself commanded and controlled the sea and everything in it. What, then, was left to fear? I knew the God of gods.

Every man is a rebel at heart, craving independence and unmitigated affection for himself.

"And from these sprang the dream I dare not chase,
Lest, the long hunt being over, I embrace
My shadow. Furies wait upon that bed."

~*~

I have come to believe that perhaps the greatest reason why the Great King willingly breaks a man of his loves and his dreams – of all the ones he has come to cherish – is to crush the rebel inside of him – to bring him back to God. To make him a child, who depends fully on parental provision and sustenance and guidance.

I am not my own.

Behind each frowning providence I find a smiling Face.

As each ruin falls I must remember that it is the ruin that is falling. Something greater and grander remains hidden and secure under the ancient debris – the promise of an inheritance.

A new world awaits:

"… the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God…"

A smile suddenly crept across my face. I quickly paddled back to shore, placed the surfboard on the glowing sand; then turned and ran as fast as I could.

"those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength
they will run and not grow tired…"

My feet collided over and over again with the incoming waves, flicking foamy water up into the air and painting them against the sinking sun; they were instantly lit aflame in a beautiful collision of purple, orange, black, and blue. Faster and faster I ran, joy stabbing me all along the way. I had never been so alive.

~*~

Good things come to those who wait.