Sometimes I get caught up in terms of positive or negative. As in this is a positive or negative day. Or, I can’t think these negative thoughts, or I can’t write until I write positive words. But minutes and hours and days are not negative or positive. They just are. They go on and on. Minutes tumble over each other and turn into months, and then years, then decades, and what do we have to show for them? Is it negative or positive? How do we measure experience? How do we judge time?What will it mean if we spend our years dreaming of money we want to fling around the decks of cruise ships toward the end of our lives when we've proven we're worthy of our hire? Money—the golden American calf—a flimsy symbol of exchange for real things we think we want—a new white summer dress to show off our tans, a float boat that drifts lazily down the Snake River while we catch more fish than we can possibly eat, a new dune buggy to race up hills of sand, down hills of sand, to make big, cosmic, silly circles in sand. Or, above all, it may buy a momentary look of envy in a friend’s eyes across a small dinner table in a New York cafe.
Money—that paper representing thousands of hours of my focus and time—may buy me a solid house with a full basement of food storage, so I can be safe and ready . . . for what? The End? The end of what? Some nights I see in dreams my fragile children falling from cliffs, and I am screaming until my throat bleeds, and it does not stop their fall. And they lie on the ground at my feet so real that I reach out and try to gather their jagged bones in my arms. But . . . with a full supply of food storage, I can, at least, be sure I won’t have to go begging to neighbors, whom I hardly know and barely like, for food and water. Ah, the threat of humiliation bred into me— probably worse than whatever pain the End will inflict.
Last night a small snake that lives in the flowers by the front porch slithered across the door’s threshold as I opened the screen. It was as thin as a pencil and as long as my foot. The snake must have been trying to find a warm place up against the door ridge or more bugs to eat. (Have I ever mentioned that I loathe snakes, detest them, and fear them like I fear rabid, raving Republicans?) This pearl-colored snake sashayed back and forth, fast, toward the coat closet before I could grasp that another of my nightmares was actually happening in front of me. (Though in my dreams, the snake is thick and ten feet long and, of course, poisonous.) He slid back out of the dark corner of the closet to slime sideways across the floor, and I beat him with a broom until I almost swallowed my tongue. He slithered back and forth, trying to squeeze under the door jam, back to the closet, and then slid sideways toward me. I swept him out the door with such force he flew across my garden fence. And then I clinched both fists, while I sat on the couch, shivering, to keep from smashing him into powder with huge rocks. Fear is an illness like a bad flu. Fear is a definite negative.
Or is it worth anything to me if my years never quite lost some moments of curiosity and creativity even though for many hours a day I tried to become a “company” person—to bend to those in control whose ideals I wanted to believe in, but could not because those ideals seemed to fly around the universe like loose wet paper, a compromise between fidelity to God and an obsession to turn out students on a conveyor belt who would, above all, be able to make more money. Can these two goals exist in the same overall blueprints? What has it all meant? The time I gave to my employer, organizing lesson plans, attending endless meetings, typing recommends for students who have no idea what lies ahead of them? I, who once received A’s, now gave out A’s—for what? Is it courage or resignation that I do not let the grind or the deadlines stop my ornery voice, keep me from singing Santana when others are not around? Or blind me to the deer in my backyard who stand so still that time stops? Or, instead, will I shut myself up in high towers –for creativity’s sake—and turn into cement?
What happens to the times we gave to friends who have moved on? The hours we lavished on our lovers--the vibrant richness we thought would never end, though it soon settled into dappled colors? If nothing ever disappears or is destroyed, where are the days we spent watching the skies and thinking about God, astonished at how His essence can infuse everything beautiful, but wondering how He can possibly hear our puny little prayers when at the same moment a small boy in Afghanistan is torn from his parents and bashed against a wall? Do those times get logged down in a book or do they fragment and float outward into space connecting with . . . what?
Earnest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 (?) and took his own life in 1961. His wife locked his rifles and pistols in the basement, and then put the keys behind the kitchen faucet. Why did she think he did not know where they were? Or did she know? I thought his suicide was in bad taste, not because he blew his head off—he had that right; we fought a war in heaven over his rights—but because he blew pieces of his brains all over the stairs for his wife to find when she woke up.
In Italy, I have trailed my fingers across the marble of a Michelangelo statue and felt so animated. I cried the same tears over the deep colors of a Rembrandt as I cried in 1960 Monterey, CA over a Crosby, Stills, & Nash concert. I have planted vegetables and flowers and watched them grow and ridden a horse to the tops of mountains behind the grand Tetons. I have tasted blood in my mouth during childbirth and buried two husbands—one in the ground, one in my heart. In Turkey, I lay on a midnight balcony to catch a breeze and watched two men below me play an all night game of chess in a perfectly round pool of light from the street lamp. I have listened to a Dylan song that suddenly helped me make sense of a confused moment. In Greece, I have felt under my feet the same smooth stone path that Paul walked in sandals to preach the gospel. I sat on cool benches in a chapel where John is rumored to have taken Mary after the crucifixion. I’ve jumped out of a plane and turned somersaults before the chute opened. On a black horse, I’ve chased a fox across snowdrifts, and I've heard the fall elk bugle in Harriman Park. I’ve watched my granddaughter laugh and dance as she blew bubbles that turned into rainbows and floated down on her hair.
I can’t stuff experience into negative and positive categories—except fear and snakes. Life is complicated and worth it—though I admit I go back and forth on that one—but what does it all mean? Do we live so we can have eternal life? Why? I don’t have any doubts about God. I know He is real and near, though often I don’t understand Him.
I doubt me. What if I don’t want eternal life? What if I don’t feel like I’ve got what it takes for eternal living? Eternity is a long time.
I have seen much beauty and know a few truths. I’ve been through great miracles, and I have paid for them—but not like the Savior paid. I can’t even comprehend what He did, which, I hope, is some kind of proof it’s all worth it. This is what I hang on to when the fog sets in.
