Once upon a time...

Fairy dust, magic wands, flying horses, a prince that against all odds slays a 30 foot, fire-breathing dragon. For most of my childhood, stories like Robin Hood, Chronicles of Narnia, and embarrassingly even Sleeping Beauty itched the right spot for a boy like me. In my later adolescent years, stories of Jedi Knights or Hobbits and Elves were more often the stimulation. Then sometime in high school this love for the fictional, this subconscious love for the unbelievable suddenly become a conscious boycott of the ridiculous. I can't say what started it and I can't say what even encouraged it other than something inside me continually pushed me towards more concrete realities in both books and film. I began to look on my beloved childhood favorites with arrogant sympathy as I had come through a sort of graduation from the fictional world. I say arrogant, only because it had a definite sense of arriving at a truer version of reality even if it meant part of me had died. I found myself turning more deliberately to movies based on real life stories or at least based on actual events - movies based on wars (Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates) or sports movies like Hoosiers and Rudy that were based on actual stories.

A short time after that something in me began to resent some of these films as well. Now, I wanted something that not only was based on actual events but that stopped with this non-sense of concluding with the same "happily ever after" type moment. Needless to say, times of fairy dust, magic wands, flying horses and princes outdueling fire breathing dragons were well behind me. My only reality of a "fairy tale" came from Davidson beating a top ranked opponent in the NCAA Basketball tournament in late March. It was not for lack of effort that I did not enjoy such works. I was enslaved in classes that forced Great Expectations, Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies upon me, as we all were. My friends begged me to watch movies like the Dark Knight, Transformers or Spiderman 1, 2 and 3. My voice did not waiver in response to their pleadings. The answer was always a resounding “NO”, possibly even a "hell no" on occasion.

So, where am I now? Still bent towards non-fiction over fiction for sure, but perhaps more willing to admit this doesn't mean I'm bent towards reality over non-reality. A little bit ago I finished reading Telling the Truth by Fredrich Buechner. His last chapter is entitled "The Gospel as Fairy Tale". It gets at the heart of what I am trying to say. He describes the Gospel of the Bible as fairy tale, not meaning untrue, but as a story of transformation, wonder and mystery, where there is evil in disguise and good in disguise too, the latter presenting itself as no less than a common carpenter.

A bit ago I had read a biography of Chesterton in which a critic of his wrote, "Who reads Chesterton for knowledge - unless it be for knowledge of Chesterton's curious mind? For Chesterton's highest aim, as we knew of old, is to recount the adventures of his soul among masterworks." And herein lie the potential shortcomings with my non-fiction. I feel a stifling limit to what I can purely describe as my reality without bringing in a sense of the extraordinary, the unbelievable, the fairy tale, if you will. Fiction can be free of the pesky limitations of details, free from exact explanation, free from full understanding. I may wish at times that my life was bound by my understanding but oh how limited an existence that would prove to be. For when I think of the most remarkable times or events in my life, all of them came through paths of uncertainty. My "adventures of my soul" have been successive tales starting with the uncertainty of events, leading to incomprehensible changes, and culminating with small glimpses of understanding.

Perhaps this is what fiction does for us, as Buechner writes, "Maybe above all they (fairy tales) are tales about transformations where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are." If you take all of my love for non-fiction, for the true wartime heroics or fantastic athletic feats, it still comes down to a longing of the soul to seek its fulfillment, its resting place. The appeal of the story goes beyond what actually has happened. It is entrenched in the emotion and elation of the bleeding through of what we thought impossible from an even deeper level of truth.

It's as if my soul’s experience has again and again replicated the great plotline format my class learned in 4th grade English or the great structure of a narrative that Hollywood has made more than a living upon. The conflict, the quest, the seeking of fulfillment to the trouble that has come upon our dear protagonist The climax, the transformation, the turning point. The resolution and the "happily ever after". This perhaps is the metanarrative, a universal structure to our collective AND individual storyboards. For on my own storyboard I have recognized that I am moved by the emotion of the conflict, driven by the hope of resolution and SLOWLY purified by the recurring process.

A few months ago, I was asked by a close friend whether I believed in the 6 day creation account in Genesis. While the question was fair, I felt that she was asking it with the unstated assumption that to take the Bible literally is the only way to believe it as truth. Theologians and scientists will continue to argue over the literal truth of that story but the narrative of Genesis has proved itself to be true and continues to prove itself in my own life. I read the story of Adam with his separation from God, his disobedience, and his desire for redemption and reconciliation with his Creator and I feel at my core that it might as well have been me.

So perhaps I'm not ready to join a Shakespeare club and sit in groups quoting the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream but I believe I am unpeeling in my own existence the reality outside the tangible. Perhaps C.S Lewis was a bit of a prophet, especially in my life, when he said, "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again." 


Tim

Life, Death, and Existence

I'm not sure what I find more shocking: the knowledge that I exist or the knowledge that I will die.  Both are utterly mysterious to me when I stop and think about them.  It used to bother me that I was not consulted before being brought into existence.  I felt like I should have been given a say in the matter and it angered me that I hadn't been.  It's one of the things that I find so strange about my personal existence; I didn't get to choose it.  God never came to me and said, “I'm thinking about making you a person.  Here's how it would work.  I'd give you a mind and body that somehow work together to make you a weird intermediate creature, something between a gorilla and an angel.  You'll live for a while and then you'll die.  I would try to explain what happens after death but you really aren't capable of understanding it.  At a bare minimum let's just say it involves remaining in existence for eternity.  What do you think?  Are you in?”

The first time I envisioned this scenario, I also noticed the obvious paradox.  How could someone consult me before I existed?  They would have to bring me into existence in order to consult me but at that point it would be too late for the consultation.  The paradox bothered me almost as much as the fact that I wasn't consulted.  Let's ignore the paradox for a moment and pretend that it were possible for me to have been consulted on the matter of my existence.  In my middle school days if I had been given a choice about my existence I think I would have said, “No, thanks.  I'd rather not ever exist, unless we can work out something where I am annihilated when I die.  Life is nice, but living forever sounds incomprehensibly dreadful to me.”  But I wasn't consulted and here I am.

Just to clarify, my mindset wasn't suicidal (I did entertain thoughts of suicide once in my life, but only briefly).  I didn't want death; I wanted non-existence.  It was my belief (and is still my belief) that death does not result in personal annihilation.  We survive our death in some fashion and we continue to exist for eternity.  Suicide would not have ended my existence, it would only have changed it in some way that I can’t really comprehend.  The prospect of continuing to exist literally forever was and is even more incomprehensible to me.  Dreadful is the best word that I can think of to describe it.  Terrifying is another one.  Why wasn't I given a chance to opt out of this thing called existence?

This past weekend I spent a lot of time basking in the beauty of nature.  It started on Friday night with a powerful thunderstorm.  (It still didn’t rival a good Indiana thunderstorms, but for a Pennsylvania thunderstorm it was very good!)  After a stressful week I sat on the back porch of my house and drank in the experience.  I find peace and strength in thunderstorms in a way that I can’t quite explain.  I think part of it is that thunderstorms forcefully take my mind off of my day-to-day concerns and focus my attention on the raw beauty that surrounds us.  Friday night I sat on my back porch and thanked God for nature.

The thunderstorm left the earth fresh and clean the next morning.  The humidity was gone.  The air was clear.  The sun was shining but occasionally dimmed by a passing cloud.  There was a soft, intermittent breeze.  Birds were chirping and flitting between trees.  On this morning after the beautiful storm I sat on my front porch and took it all in.  I think I was even sipping a cup of African tea.  I was overcome with the beauty of it all.  As I watched the birds in our front yard I thought to myself, “What are they doing here?  What is any of this doing here?  Why does anything exist at all and why should anything that exists be beautiful?”  Of course there are ugly parts of nature as well.  I could do without intestinal worms, ticks and cancers; but it strikes me as profound that nature is even capable of beauty and ugliness and that we as humans are able to create and perceive beauty and ugliness.

I think about beauty when I cook or bake.  Humans are the only animals that make an art out of food preparation and presentation.  Lions kill an antelope and dive right in with their teeth.  It's a big bloody mess and the lions don't care what their meal looks like.  But humans prepare meals and present them in bowls or on plates and platters, with garnishes, complementing side dishes, utensils and iced beverages in glassware.  Humans kill a deer, butcher it into steaks, marinade it in sauces, grill it over a fire and mount the head of the deer on a wall in their home.  Lions don't do these things, and it's not because they don't have the time or resources, or because they don't have opposable thumbs.  The fundamental reason lions don’t present their meals is because lions do not seem to be aware of beauty, much less that their meals could be an occasion for beauty.  It's true that there may be a kind of savage and raw beauty in watching a lion eat, but the lion cannot appreciate this.  There is a qualitative difference between the way lions and people are able to approach food in particular, and reality in general.  When I experience a well-presented meal that is both a treat for the eyes and the toungue, I get a taste of beauty that makes me glad to be a human.  And when I feel thunder in my chest, or watch a bird in flight it makes me thankful to be alive.

The beauty of life is a gift.  The flip side to this gift is the unsettling ugliness of death.  Both are strange to me.  While I marvel at the beauty of all the living things around me, I also know that everything will die.  Just the other week one of my housemates was taking care of an injured hummingbird.  We aren't sure what was wrong with it but it couldn't fly and it was obviously scared.  My friend created a terrarium for it and gave it a bowl of saturated sugar-water solution, but the bird didn't seem able to find the nectar on its own.  It just sat in a corner with its heart pounding rapidly, its whole body pulsing with each beat.  It was a beautiful bird, delicate, elegant, shimmering emerald green.  And it was dying.  It's heart would soon stop beating and its beauty would be turned into a decaying lump of feathers, organs, and bones.  Even though it was just a hummingbird, I couldn't help thinking that some of the beauty of the world was dying along with that bird and that death is always a real loss both for the living creature that dies and for those who are bereaved of its presence in the world.

In the case of humans, death is an even greater loss.  Part of the beauty of this world lies in our ability to share life with other living things and people.  When people die we lose something valuable.  As a Christian I have hope in life after death, but that does not change the fact that something precious is lost in death.  Even Jesus himself who came to conquer death wept at the tomb of Lazarus.  He knew that he was going to raise him from the dead, but he still cried.  Why this display of emotion?  I think Jesus cried for at least two reasons.  He was empathizing with those around him who were mourning Lazarus’ death.   But I also think he was personally mourning the loss of Lazarus, acknowledging the legitimate sadness of what had happened, and grieving the loss of one of his friends, even if it was only a temporary loss.  Death is not the end, but it is still very much a loss.

In times of death we are often reminded of the fragileness of life and the fact that every living thing must eventually die.  Observed from the outside looking in on the world this is perhaps nothing more than trivia, a mere fact.  But we come to understand the gravity of this reality when we view it from the inside, as living creatures ourselves.  To say “everything dies” can come across as trite, even to ourselves.  It too easily registers in our minds as “everything out there dies.”  We don't take its meaning personally.  The full existential force of the truth comes through only when we are able to say to ourselves “I am going to die,” and we let the knowledge sink in.

Reflecting on one's own death can be life changing.  In American culture the knowledge of one's death is often used as a license to do whatever you want.  It is conceived as a liberating knowledge to live for yourself, in the moment.  Cake succinctly expresses this mentality in their song Sheep go to Heaven: “As soon as you're born you start dying, so you might as well have a good time.”  It's a common response to the reality of death and it is echoed all throughout American culture in catch phrases (yolo) and personal philosophies (live every day like it's your last).  It's a hedonistic, self-indulgent response to the human condition and sometimes I find myself caught up in it.

Last night I was at a drive in movie theater for the first time ever.  After the first movie I wanted some popcorn so I got in line at the concession stand.  I made my order and as the attendant was getting my popcorn I notice a sign that said “Deep fried Oreos – 3 for $2.”  Sure, it sounds like a terrible idea, but where else was I ever going to get deep fried Oreos?  The attendant was coming back with my popcorn.  Should I get them or not?  Yolo!  “Can I also get some deep fried Oreos, please?”  That is a rather harmless example, but it illustrates the point.

There is another way that one can respond to the knowledge of one’s death and that is to take an eternal perspective.  Death is not the end.  And although it blows my mind to think about it, and scares me to death, I do believe that we are eternal beings.  Furthermore, I believe that the things we do in this life will influence the nature of our existence after death.  This concept appears in many of the world religions.  In Buddhism it shows up as the theory of karma.  In Christianity we have the concepts of heaven and hell.  Both religions place our lives within an eternal context which gives us a different perspective on our lives and how we ought to live them.  As the author of Ecclesiastes concludes in his book:

“Now all has been heard;

    here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

    for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

    including every hidden thing,

    whether it is good or evil.”  (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

The knowledge of our death should cause us to reflect on the eternal and to order our lives around it.  We live in the moment, but we should not live for the moment.  Death is a great loss, but only because life is such a great gift.  It is out of love that God has granted us life and we should enjoy its beauty thankfully.  The prospect of eternal existence is still dreadful to me but I have hope that the terror can be swallowed up in the infinite love of the One who created this beautiful universe.  I’ve caught glimpses of it on earth in times of prayer and conversations with friends when I’ve thought to myself, “I don’t ever want this to end,” and I truly meant it.

-David