Divine Plagiarism

Thanks to everyone who prayed for my test. I did well, a couple of dings, but good overall. So I’ve been reading the Silmarillion. Excellent book. I remember that someone critiqued me once (very directly) for thinking that they were a character in a book. When we cease believing that the stories happen is when they cease to happen. We confuse being grown-up with being cynical. The Professor of the Narnia stories would set us right, if he were here. The stories resound with us because they reflect to us of aspects of our own stories. These stories are written upon our hearts and hidden in our deepest dreams, but in the safety of fiction we allow them to bubble to the surface. Yet, there are still those who choose to dream while awake. They find themselves in the middle of stories worth living. There is a story here. And as painful at times as it is to be a character in this story of my Lord’s authorship, I have no doubt it will be a story worth living, however it ends. I want to see it through to the last pages. I believe He will give me the strength. Perhaps in the wake of a tragedy and the failure of all hope, He will vindicate me by giving me a new book. Perhaps this book will end with reconciliation and a real friendship before a new story is given to me. Perhaps the fool’s hope, and all that hinges upon it, comes to pass and everything will be made new again. I do not know. I am not the Author. But I will continue to turn the pages of this story.

D.

Desires and Dwarves. In the Silmarillion, Aule (the angel of earth) was present near the beginning of time. Eru Illuvatar’s (God) plan was to create the Children of Illuvatar (Elves and Men) to inherit the world that He made. As the foundations of the world were being laid, Aule desired along the same lines. He wanted someone to love, someone to teach. So he fashioned the dwarves out of Earth. Yet, in doing so, he oversteps the bounds Eru has set for him, and jumps the gun on His plan for Men and Elves. When Eru confronts Aule, Aule asks for forgiveness for his impatience, and to his great sorrow prepares to destroy the dwarves. Yet, he pleads with Eru, saying that he created the dwarves as a child emulates a father, from the same desire that led Eru to create Elves and Men. He offers the dwarves to Eru, as a gift of a child to a father. Eru accepts this, and tells Aule that He will weave the dwarves into His plan. Aule gratefully exclaims ‘May Eru accept my work and amend it.’ Eru tells Aule that He will not reward impatience, so the dwarves will not be allowed to awaken until after the Children of Illuvatar. Nonetheless, He chooses to honor the desires of Aule and give them life beyond Aule.

I could not help but feel that I had been in the shoes of Aule. I had desires, desires inherited from my Father. These were not evil desires, there was neither rebellion nor selfishness in them. But I was impatient. I wanted someone to love, someone to honor and fight for and care about. I should have been more willing to wait. I tried to bring these desires about through my own power, rather than bringing my desires to the throne of grace. Hence much of the heartache of the first two years of knowing C. Yet, through some set of circumstance not of my own creation, her and I would end up speaking again. God is merciful in His patience… it was as it He was bringing me back to this chapter of the story until I learned to lay it before His feet. Strangely, it is this time through that I actually feel at peace with this story, even in the midst of the storm. It feels more honest, more real, certainly more scary, but more intimate with Him.

Yet, in this is the hope of Aule. My desires were not set against His, they were just impatient. So I pray the same prayer: may God accept my work and amend it. And as Aule’s impatience was not rewarded even as his desire was woven into the grand story, I am sure that my impatience will not lead to a quicker end to the story. But I raise up my desires to Him, and I raise up the time, energy and heartache I have poured into these desires over the last three years. May God accept these works, and may He amend them. May He redeem my desires in His time.

Death to Life. So CSL is totally right that love requires vulnerability. If anyone has ever been vulnerable, surely Christ was. But here is the question. Once Christ passed through death to new life, He was no longer vulnerable to death’s sting. He suffered, He died, and He rose again victorious. We look for invulnerability in so many places. Perhaps it can be found here. Once you have passed through death and found new life in Christ, you are no longer vulnerable to death. This is true in physical death, but perhaps it is also true in the little deaths of heartbreak and loss that we endure. When we turn to face our pain, embrace it in grief, and pass through it to find new life in Christ, we are no longer able to be hurt by that pain. We gain an immunity, perhaps. Not an immunity through scars, but an immunity through rebirth. I cannot speak with authority here, but this occurred to me in two very different lines of thought.

The first is from the book Children of Dune. Leto Atreides (the younger) is made to eat spice essence until he is saturated with it. The essence causes him to have visions and hallucinations, and gives form to his fears. In that crucible, though, he gains an immunity to the spice. It is still part of him, but he can direct it to his will. In passing through suffering, he is no longer subject to that suffering. ‘Fear is the Mind-Killer…’ (There is a third line of thought born in the travails of Alia that will not be addressed yet.)

The second was a hypothetical I allowed to go too far before refocusing on Christ. I think I still learned something of value. It occurred to me that if there was another communication from her, there is not really anything that would prevent it from being as hurtful as her last one. And I wondered what my response would be. It occurred to me that I now care far less about what she thinks, and far more about what God thinks. This is not scar tissue. I have faced the death of my heart, and Christ has carried me strong through it. I do not doubt that He would do it a second time, so I no longer fear her words.

Gift of Mortality. Sorry for the macabre tone here. I recently wrote a precursor to a ‘just in case’ note, which I greatly hope will not need to be delivered anytime soon (given the logistical inconveniences for me upon which it would be predicated.) In the outside chance that I do not return home at some point, I do want her to know the story that is happening here. That would not be easy for her, I think, but it would be a thick blessing, not like the pleasantries that are thin like water. This is an unpleasant topic. I will reframe it in somewhat more positive terms. (I am not depressed or anything. Please don’t draw any very incorrect conclusions from my discussion of this serious and important topic.)

The Silmarillion describes mortality as a gift from the Creator to the race of men. It comes to be viewed in time as a curse, but was not originally meant as such. There is much truth in this, I think. I was talking to one of my friends regarding mortality and duty and the intersection of the two. Philippians 1:21 was the framing verse for the discussion. My best friend from college died a while back in a car wreck. I thought I would feel more grief, but in fact, I felt mostly peace about it. This I did not initially understand. Upon reflection, though, all my sorrow was for those left behind. I know for sure that my friend went home to Jesus. I felt as if God were saying ‘I loved him so much I could no longer bear to be without him.’ This made sense to me. Tolkien describes the gift of mortality as a respite from the wearing of years. I think it goes beyond that. Not only have we been given a life with which to serve God, we have been given a death as well. I intend to serve Him with mine. This is the prayer of a martyr, and I ask Him that He makes me fit to pray it, whether or not He ever invokes it. So this is the gift of mortality. May He invoke it whenever He pleases. I am at His service. To live is Christ…

Proxy Wars. I have been convicted of something recently. Even as I pray that He would heal her deep pain, I have found Him healing mine. I have been holding on to reservoir of pain from my time in Cantabrigia. Something in me resents deeply that school and the academe in general. There are surface reasons for this. Anyone who is remotely non-liberal at a liberal policy school will surely be familiar with the torrents of vitriol unleashed upon anyone who is considered ‘unauthorized different.’ (There are many categories of ’authorized different.’ I was not in these.) Whether that millwheel ground its own furrow, or found its way into ruts left over from other Junior High School type experiences, I cannot tell.

There are deeper reasons, though. If I am really, totally honest with myself, the real reason I do not like the academe is because I believe they made a promise they could not live up to. I had hoped, my whole life, to find a place where I was not unusual. Some place where I fit in. Somewhere I could be myself without having to downshift, where I could shed the layers of control I developed for the sake of being relevant. Somewhere I could be relevant just by being me. I believed the hype. I expected to find a town of geniuses. I expected it to be hard. I expected to be one of many. But I was not. And I think I never forgave them for this.

Perhaps this requires a bit more explanation. It is very difficult for a child who reads Hunt for Red October in the second grade to find peers. I do not say this with arrogance. I once wished it were not the case. I no longer do, for I have come to peace with the gifts God has given to me. Nonetheless, I have always desired a place where intellectually I would not be uncommon. I have hoped to find this in each new stage of education. And in each new stage, I have been disappointed. ‘When you get to [whatever the next stage is,] then it will be hard.’ But it never was. I saw the last best hope of finally finding such a place in my final educational stop north of Boston. Surely, all the propaganda said that was the place all the smart people went. That was the place where it would be safe to be brilliant. That school considered itself to be the center of the intellectual universe. And I took this as a promise that there I would finally not be alone in my gifts.

What I found was the trappings of privilege and a culture of pseudo-intellectualism. I did not find the brilliance I sought. In fact, I found a conspicuous lack thereof. And I resented them for it. To add to the depths of my resentment, I found many who believed that allegiance to a given set of ideas was the only true indicator of intelligence, hence anyone who disagreed with those ideas was clearly unintelligent. Yet many of those same people could not debate their way out of a paper bag or use an equation to save their lives. The same people who were terrified of Greek letters in economics formulae accused my friends of stupidity because they did not unquestioningly accept Chomsky. (I am being convicted of pride as we speak.) This same attitude informed the assumptions of Damon and Affleck (both Harvard undergrads) in their screenplay Good Will Hunting (naturally the genius would like Zinn and Chomsky, because someone that smart would be liberal, of course.) So I resented them doubly… first for their inability to keep their promise, and second for their blindness to their own failure. This is the depth of this wound.

There is a darker rumor here. A whisper of the enemy using the salients in my life to undermine my prayers. Perhaps the depth of my resentment toward that town and toward academia has to do with a more immediate story. I have forgiven her (C.) I pray for her freedom. Yet, I kept a tremendous amount of bitterness toward the two things I would have associated most strongly with her. My issues with that town are independent of her, as are my issues with academia, but it seems as if the enemy has used these as a way to undermine my prayers for her. How can I consciously pray for her when I subconsciously resent the things she stands for? I will no longer be a house divided against myself. I close this salient. May academia be redeemed, restored into a place where people proclaim the truth of the LORD. May the town of Cambridge become a place where His Name is spoken openly and loudly. May she be an instrument in both of these prayers. May the things she cares about be redeemed and blessed.

I renounce this brokenness. I yield it to God’s healing waters. I forgive and I seek forgiveness. I forgive anyone who has mocked me or insulted me for my beliefs. I forgive for the times when my classmates made Ethics class feel like an interrogation. I forgive for the times I was accused of racism by those who did not even know me, much less know who my friends were. I forgive anyone who has hurt me during my time in Cantabrigia. And I seek forgiveness. I seek forgiveness for my pride. I have been given what gifts I will require to fulfill God’s purpose for my life. I am sixpence none the richer (CSL) for those gifts. I seek forgiveness for demanding that the gifts of other be the same as my own, and for judging others when their gifts were not mine. I seek forgiveness, ultimately, for hiding in my gifts rather than running to God for protection. So thus I end my war with the academe. I’m pretty sure they won’t notice. (I suppose that is normally the case with these sorts of things.)