benpalpant.com

Life and Culture

A Fist Full of Water, Part 3

by

I can stand on the curb and watch thousands endlessly marching toward another blind corner with their fingers in their ears. Disappointment is around that corner, too. I would know. We change directions and try another alley, but the passions remain unsatisfied. Like drug addicts, we must text, we must multitask, we must have sex, we must have the weekend. And the water slips through our balled-up fist: these are the chains of our mortality. We have sold our souls for ethereal promises and vast mirages. Like our fathers, we are carried away for nothing (Isaiah 52:5).

Nothing.

Diddly-squat.

Augustine’s impassioned recollection of his own pilgrimage fits our own: “I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my morality, the punishment for my soul’s pride, and I wandered farther from you, and you permitted me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications—and yet you held your peace, O my tardy Joy! You still held your peace, and I wandered still farther from you into more and yet, more barren fields of sorrow, in proud dejection and restless lassitude” (Confessions). He wandered deep into the wilderness of dissatisfied pleasure. He was carried away for nothing and searched recklessly for an opiate. Augustine’s opiates looked a lot like ours.

What is our favorite opiate? Distraction: it is our greatest aid in avoiding the reality of exile. Distract us. Please distract us. Distraction takes a million forms and nobody cares what the form, as long as it works. Unfortunately, the distractions are only one more mirage on the horizon. After all, “man was born for trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). And again, “How frail is humanity! How short is life and how full of turmoil” (Job 14:1).

Everyone wants to be on the other side of emptiness. Each of us chases varying promises of satisfaction, but this inherited wasteland is a satisfaction vacuum. All the happiness we try to hold slips through our fingers. We were made for happiness, made for the garden of Eden, but the garden is gone and happiness evades us. Still, we keep trying.

Sex.

Sports.

Weekends.

Exercise.

Drugs.

Facebook.

Activity.

Opiates, every single one. Very few of us listen to our emptiness. The grumbling of our starved souls is shouted down by our harried lives. Few of us are asking what the emptiness means. Why the fracture? Why the restlessness? Why the letdown? Until we stop to listen to this misery, we’ll keep trying to satisfy the need with all the wrong things. Our opiates cannot fix the fracture. They will only end in dissatisfaction and we will find ourselves dragged through the wasteland, lashed to a horse that will not tire, nor will it die. Indeed, God has made us for himself and “restless is our heart until it comes to rest in him” (Augustine, Confessions).

My dad was always a little restless and the proverbial apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. My father’s vocation is medical doctor. His calling, however, swings between writing poetry and exploring whatever is in front of him. This particular day worth remembering was one of exploration; specifically, Mt. Elgon. The mountain was north, northwest of my childhood home in Lugulu, Kenya and for whatever reason, it always seemed to me a gloomy, brooding mountain. It was, of course, tropical but high enough to catch snow with the tip of its head. We never reached those heights, but the jungle vines surrounded us and they were thick enough to hold a full grown man. Dad looped a vine and tied it off like a hanging lasso. He sat down in it and I sat on his lap. We swung like Tarzan and his son. Maybe next time we will take our shirts off and swing one-handed over the jungle floor.

For now, we explored the mountain: sometimes on vines, sometimes on the dirt paths. My little strides could barely keep up with my dad and a medical intern. Trackers, hunting the prints of wild jungle life, we found traces of elephants: elephant dung, enormous piles of poop big enough to cover me up to my knees. Three guys, an entire mountain, all the time in the world, and an opportunity for scientific exploration. We felt like three kings, so we squatted and turned the pile with sticks. Dad and the intern were looking for something. They found it soon enough: a dung beetle, dark like obsidian rock with a trace of blue buried in its blackness.

The beetle moved quickly, trying to recover and rebuild its warm dome. It tried to ignore us, but our sticks were hard to ignore. We kept turning over the lumps and discovered more beetles. There was apparently enough room to share the warmth. Such busy activity kept us occupied for awhile, but we decided to hunt bigger and better game.

My dad began walking again and I had to run just to keep up—we ventured further up and further in. The trees were taller and thicker now. We could hear the Colobus monkeys squealing among the towering cedars and eucalyptus trees, and sometimes I caught glimpses of their white tails and white beards, bushy like balls of cotton. There was no time to sit and watch them swing. Again, we followed a dirt road. Like the road before, this one was littered with elephant dung. The sight was familiar and so we paused, waiting for my little lungs to fill.

The earth suddenly began to tremble beneath my feet and in the distance to my right I heard tall trees creak and groan as they crashed to the jungle floor. Many of them were falling and the earth grumbled loudly. My eyes grew wide, as did the intern’s. Dad clutched his camera with a wild look of adventure peeking behind his shaggy beard.

“Elephant stampede,” he whispered.

Logic, even a child’s logic, said run away.

“Stay with Ben,” Dad told the intern. “I’ll be right back.” Then, without another word, he dashed off into the tall timber. I yelled for him to stop, but my cries of terror did not deter the bearded white hunter with camera. He disappeared from sight, and within a moment I was sure that the last thing I would remember of my dad would be his back and striding crane legs. Surely, he would be trampled to death. I wept and worried, but the worry soon turned to indignation and bitterness: it would be his fault if he got crushed.

I moped and whined and prayed for a few minutes and then I saw him appear through the trees. He was sweating, but sagged at the shoulders. “They were too fast for me. I never saw them,” he said and I was elated to hear the news. Dad described a wide swath cut through the jungle by the stampeding elephants, and I was overwhelmingly glad that he was not a permanent part of that landscape.

This memory ties no knots in my stomach as I record it, even though the event itself caused plenty of them. What is interesting is that over time, my mind has objectively distanced itself from that little terrified boy and put me smack in the middle of Dad’s shoes. I understand the urge, I think, to witness something so frolickingly fearsome. I was cowed at the time, but there is something inside me now that admires and understands my father’s tenacity. He too would be satisfied, but he too met dissatisfaction. We will discuss where such imaginative satisfaction is found in the next edition of “A Fist Full of Water.” In the meantime, if you’d like to be a part of the conversation let me know what other ways we try to satisfy ourselves. 

A Fist Full of Water, Part 2

by

In part 1 of “A Fist Full of Water” I painted a rather bleak picture of life as we chase these desires for satisfaction. Is the picture always so bleak? No. Many days are pleasant enough. A ceasefire between the warring parties of our desires and the fragmentation is temporarily instituted. A peace holds the inevitable battles at bay. Sometimes, to our great relief, the sun shines so brightly that we wonder whether a permanent peace treaty has been signed. Sometimes we actually get along with ourselves. Sometimes we even get along with others. There are days when failure’s moldy finger doesn’t come close to touching us and we feel like the stars are aligned. “Look at me now,” we call out, capering over the rocky ground of this world like a mountain goat. All angular obstructions are ours to overcome. Ours. On really good weeks we’ll caper with ease for several days in a row, but sooner or later the stones rise up and bite the heel. One phone call, one mistake, one dead battery, one migraine headache, one bank statement, one blood test result, and we’re pedestrian again, dragging through the wastes and wondering why the shaded spring-water and happy palm trees vanished. No peace treaty. No ceasefire.

“Mirage,” whisper the blinking stars. “Illusion,” says the pale moon.

Illusion: a false perception of reality.

My dad used to practice sleight of hand for hours. He had this tiny, hand-carved stick with two red dots on one side and nothing on the other side. He could make each dot disappear and reappear with a simple flick of the hand. Maybe I was easily impressed, but I was baffled and overawed by what I perceived to be magic in my dad’s fingers. “My dad’s a magician!” I told my friends. Illusion. A more experienced eye would catch the trick. Another illusionist, even a B-level conjurer, would spot the trick a mile away. My eyes were colored by fancy and I confused magic with sleight-of-hand.

Like my childhood self, I still fall for the world’s sleight-of-hand. I willingly believe the mirage on the landscape of this life because I so desperately want it to be real. I trust and, therefore, envy the happy faces on the advertisements. I lean in when they show me a shiny new tinsel gadget that will surely make my life happier: I can order it online and not move from my spot on the couch. All is bright and beautiful and clean and easy and within reach. The vinegar of disappointment is not yet in my eyes. The milk has not yet soured in my mouth. I am Eve, dissatisfied and desperately wanting to believe the airy promise, the illusion, of happiness found the easy way. I am Adam, flippantly following the fad of popular opinion. I ignore the wormhole and bite the apple.

Like our Israelite fathers before us, we are desert wanderers who desperately clutch after happiness. All effort is made to barricade unhappiness from our lives. We claw and grasp and refuse to admit any negative, unhappy thoughts onto our mind’s property. With all due diligence, we set dogs at the gate and sentries at every wall. We lay the barbed wire and set up the video surveillance. How tragic, then, to re-enter the house and find unhappiness sitting quite comfortably on our favorite chair, wearing our robe and soiling our slippers.

So many of us are too often like Thomas Wolfe’s protagonist, Eugene: “Caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another… Caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us” (Look Homeward, Angel, p. 31).

And then we hear the preacher’s words in Scripture, saying, “the crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered (Ecc. 1:15). And although I did not keep any pleasure from my eyes and I did not withhold from my heart any pleasure, all was still vanity and grasping for the wind” (Ecc. 2:10-11). We grasp after happiness and it slips through the hand. We live and breathe and make love in a spiritual wasteland where fulfillment is fleeting, where the heart, like a desert traveler’s tongue, is scarred, swollen, and heavy. We taste pleasure like drops of water on the tongue because God’s creation is good, just as he said, but lasting happiness remains evasive. Let the Pollyannas of the world preach their gospel of positive thinking; regardless, the hunt for happiness remains persistent and often desperate. We keep running full throttle into dead ends. The soul, “like some heat-maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill” (Theodore Reothke, In a Dark Time).

Lost. Exiled. We bumble from one mirage to another “and of all the years of waste and loss…these are blind steps and gropings of our exile, the painting of our hunger as, remembering speechlessly, we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, a door. Where? When?” (Look Homeward, Angel, p. 4).

Why?

Why the loss?

Why the exile?

Why the restlessness?

Because we traded in a garden for a wasteland. Well, our father and mother did. Genesis states it quite plainly: we inherited a thousand acres of sand and ninety years of futility. Eve bit first and Adam followed, as he is wont to do, leaving generations stranded somewhere between a garden and a city, wandering bewildered through a desert of unsatisfied desire. Nobody wants to say it out loud, of course, lest they spoil the illusion. Nobody wants to point out that people are parading through the wasteland, filling their mouths with sand and licking the dust. Somebody should run to the front of the line, throw up her hands and yell, “Stop!”

“This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star1.”

Stop!

1T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, part III

A Fist Full of Water, Part 1

by

“…but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

-u2

 

I thought it a good idea at the time. The front porch was high enough off of the ground to allow adequate air time without the danger of subsequent broken bones or personal disfigurement. A running start down the hallway would prevent the hard right turn into the living room from hindering my overall speed and my Superman costume would do the rest. I suppose, in retrospect, that I should have scouted out the territory more rigorously, but boyish ambition and glee got the better of me. I was in mid-air sporting a pose of heroic masculinity before I saw all the guests sitting at tables in the yard, forks poised at their open mouths, their eyes wide with a mix of astonishment and amusement. The inglorious distance between the ground and my feet expanded and in my heart I understood the old adage, Eheu, quam volucris laetitia!1

My infant cry was first heard in Tucson, Arizona, but I was scampering barefoot in Kenya, Africa before my sixth birthday. In a strange career move, Dad secured a post as missionary doctor in rural Africa. The small hospital was located at the base of Mt. Elgon and the view was amazing. I could scamper a few houses down and look over a wide valley that spread its agrarian patchwork quilt over the distant Ugandan border. My imagination was nurtured in tropical climes so remote that even seeing airplanes over that part of the world was a rare and distant event. I used to scramble up the Guava tree and onto the tin roof of our house at the slightest sound of an airplane: a sound as thin and far off as an extended exhale of breath from pursed lips. I would lie down on my back and search the azure sky, learning early to look well past the sound itself for any shimmer of light that might betray the gravity-defying object hurtling through the heavens.

So when I received a gift from the states and unwrapped my first and only authentic Superman outfit, it seemed only natural to give it a test run. The power of flight, after all, was in my own hands. I was sure that the bright cape would somehow transform my skinny, pale body, indeed, even my boyish character, into something different. I longed for something better than regular me, but that longing met only disappointment.

I haven’t changed much since then. No, I don’t don the cape and spandex suit any more, but I still wrestle with the same longings. My life is characterized by inconsolable longing, I mean, a really persistent hunger. I long for meaning in my life, for significance and purpose, for freedom and the ability to change. I long to be loved and to have someone to love. I long for spiritual flight, even happiness—which I have a sneaking suspicion would be satisfied by having freedom and purpose and love—but happiness likes to play Hide-and-Seek. You know what I really want? I want to be whole. I want to be more than I am right now. I can only assume that I’m not alone in this longing. We turn out in hordes to buy the next book on finding purpose and significance. A glance at the year’s top ten books and music betrays our dominant need for meaning, but a perennial disappointment seems to be the capstone of our efforts.

With all of the money and effort put into finding significance, why are there still so many broken lives? Why does the thirst for significance only increase? Why does disappointment lurk around almost every corner? Like people trying to hold a fist full of water, many of us hope that this time, this time will be the last time we are let down. So a young girl dreams of finding her prince, but twenty years after marrying him, she leaves for another prince. So a boy stays up at night dreaming of a sleek technological toy by which he can harness the admiration of his peers and leverage his way into the global marketplace, only to chuck the gadget for a newer model within a year. So a man squanders his life anticipating the next promised land: after high school, college; after college, a career; after a career, retirement. But college is a litany of coursework, his career is a grind, and retirement proves a bore.

Satisfaction eludes us both on the outside and the inside. We plunge our hands into water, we plunge them in up to the wrist and, staring into the basin, we wonder what we’ve missed2. Yes, we meet disappointment even within ourselves. Our New Year’s resolutions turn rancid within only a few weeks and the dedication to be a better human being usually fizzles out within hours. What we promised to forget keeps tapping on the mind’s window and what we promised to remember has fled the building. Like the psalmist, we cry out, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” And like the psalmist, many of us still wake up downcast, nagged by disappointment, and the praise remains a heartless mumble on our lips.

The mildew of letdown also strikes family. How often are family members insincere with each other? Where they expect joy, they uncover bitterness. They offer lip service to forgiveness and wink at ungratefulness. More often than not, they drag their chains of bitterness and refuse to leave them behind. So many of us pretend to be all grown up, but our spirit throws tantrums when it feels under-appreciated or misunderstood or crossed. People slap each other in boxes, duct tape them shut, and smack a label on top: “She did it again,” we mutter. “He always thinks that,” we say. “He’s always so arrogant,” we complain, and although the failure happened many years ago, it is easily trotted out for the entire family to revisit annually. And then we wake up in the shower, suddenly realizing that we’re stewing over the same person again and have no idea how we got in the shower or how long we’ve been standing beneath its spray.

Healing. We want healing and we look under every stone to find it.

1Alas, how fleeting is happiness.

2From I Walked Out One Evening, by W.H. Auden.

The Importance of Being, Like, Earnest?

by

A poem entitled “What She Said,” by Billy Collins:

When he told me he expected me to pay for dinner,
I was like “Give me a break.”
I was not the exact equivalent of give me a break.
I was just similar to give me a break.
As I said, I was like give me a break.
I would love to tell you
How I was able to resemble give me a break
Without actually being identical to give me a break,
But all I can say is that I sensed
 A similarity between me and give me a break.
And that was close enough
At that point in the evening
Even if it meant I would fall short
 Of standing up from the table and screaming
“Give me a break, for God’s sake will you please give me a break?!”
No, for that moment
With the rain streaking the restaurant window
And the waiter approaching,
I felt the most I could be was…like
To a certain degree
Give me a break.  (The End)
I, like, have a problem, you know?

My sentences have become littered with filler words. My thoughts are brought to a complete stop by “ums” and “likes”. Why do I say them? Perhaps I’m in the habit. Perhaps I’m afraid of looking aloof. As Taylor Mali put it, “In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Has society just become so filled with these conflicting feelings of ‘nugh’… That we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since…you know, a long time ago!”

The consequences for such decay are enormous. George Orwell said, “The current political chaos is linked largely to the decay of language.” And here we are, stranded in a wasteland of ambiguity, unsure of what we think and, therefore, insecure in, like, every way, you know? Winston Churchill put it this way: “We are slaves of the words we let slip out.” He was right. We were made to be masters of the words we speak, not slaves. What makes our slavery worse (if that’s possible) is that we have chosen this slavery. In the classroom we guard our tongues from slippage to avoid the raised eyebrow and the lowered grade, but then we speak in the hallways of the world with near incoherency, as if words don’t matter. But words matter.

Imagine a man, well educated, competent, reflective, who found himself living in a house full of mice. What would we think of him if he chose to squeak with them whenever they were near. Whenever they showed their faces he would show his front teeth like a mouse, get down on the floor and start squeaking. One minute he would speak like a man amongst men and the next minute he would squeak. Go ahead and ask him what he’s doing. Go ahead. He will say one of two things: either he is in the habit of squeaking and doesn’t know it (in which case he needs a kick in the pants) or he fears they will no longer be his friend (in which case he needs a really big kick in the pants).

The world is full of mice, my friends. It is full to the brim with people who don’t know how to speak and don’t care to know how. God made them to stand tall, to live vertically, but they squeak along the ground nonetheless. We are not mice. We are men and women made in the image of God, the Logos, the Word. He made us like himself and for himself. We are people of the Word so let us speak in a manner worthy of that Word.

But I begin to preach with conviction and maybe we’re not, like, ready for that yet…you know?

The history of the world has known many bad men: Attila the Hun, Adoph Hitler, Ivan the Terrible. All men who sought to throw God from his throne and sit upon it themselves. I propose we add another name to that auspicious list: Jacque Derrida.

Jacque Derrida believed that all the world was wired for the Logos, the Word. He considered God tyrannical for wiring us with himself and so the little anarchist came up with a scheme to destroy God. Like many others before him, he believed that if we take God down then we will be free. His plan for taking God down was sneaky, almost innocent. It was applauded as highly intellectual and worthy of the great minds the world over. Jacque Derrida decided to discredit the Logos, the Word, by discrediting words themselves. He wouldn’t destroy them, of course, he would simply discredit them. After all, he said, the simplest words have so little meaning. Surely, if little words have no meaning, then the Father of words also has no meaning. The father of Deconstruction Literary Theory, Jacque Derrida, needed no bombs, no guns, no high powered technology to free us from God, he simply freed us from the importance of words.

“Ums” happen. “Likes” happen. But when they happen we should not embrace them. When we say filler words and speak like those unfamiliar with the language we call English, we embrace Jacque Derrida. When we take such little care to learn our own mother tongue and to speak and write it with all the care due to such a mighty inheritance, then we lock arms with a very bad man and call him our brother. My friends, this partnership is not worthy of those who have been called by grace to be sons and daughters of the King.

Why would the King’s children so willingly become slaves to the words they let slip out of their mouths when there is so much in the English language yet to master? Thomas Howard said, “The English language is an entity o rich, so exquisite, so inexhaustible, that no one–not Shakespeare himself–has yet wrung it dry.” There so much to say, so many ways to beautify the world and enrich each others lives. Why waste our oxygen, precious as it is, on so many empty words? Because our words have become muddied, our sentences are muddy. Muddy sentences betray a muddy mind and a muddy mind betrays muddy affections. Know what, or Whom, you love and order your thoughts and words accordingly.

In I Corinthians 14:19, Paul says, “I would rather say five words with my intellect and intelligently than say ten thousand words incoherently.” And Proverbs 15:23 says, “A man has joy in making an apt answer, and a word spoken at the right moment–how good it is! (Proverbs 15:23 AMP). This is the joy of being earnest, people of conviction, people who are true, aimed and purposeful. This is the importance of being earnest.

I have a problem–a problem that needs your help to hold me accountable. And though “ums” and “likes” have slipped into my speech I, for one, will not link arms with a bad man. I will not call Jacque Derrida my friend and I will not aid him in his sneaky rebellion against God. Yahweh stands in righteousness and his Word is established forever. I beg of you, my friends, to renew your love for God by loving the words he has given to us and to speak in such a way that those around you are raised from the ground to stand vertically, like men, for it is good and fitting to do so.

A Short Story for Easter

by

Once upon a time, not so very long ago actually, the snow was falling…and the towering pines bent under the load, brooding in the dark. She was tucked in, covers pulled up to her chin and a heat pack at her feet. The bed creaked and settled under the weight of her father when he sat on the edge, but she did not mind. She waited and watched him gaze out through the window, his mind wandering along trackless drifts as he was wont to do.

The snow was falling…

“A king’s heart was broken, once upon a time,” he said. “So the king decided to kill one woman each night and exact revenge on womankind.”

“That’s terrible,” the little girl said.

“Yes, it is,” said her father.

“Could you tell a different story?”

“Alright,” he said, “let’s try this one. There once was a man who sailed across the sea, but a vicious storm dashed his ship apart. When he awoke, he was stranded on an island filled with terrible beasts and he had no way to get home.”

“That story, too, is terrible,” she said.

“Alright,” said her father, “There was once a Hobbit…

“What’s a Hobbit?” asked the little girl.

“Well, a Hobbit is a small creature with very hairy feet who prefers safety to adventure and would happily spend his days smoking a pipe and eating with friends. But our poor hobbit had in his possession a magic ring whose powers would destroy the world, so he chose to travel a very long distance into the land of death and darkness to destroy the ring. There he met an enormous spider who stung him, wrapped him in webbing, and planned to eat him.”

“O, father,” cried the girl, “no more, please.”

“No stories tonight?” asked the father.

“Well, maybe a different story.”
“Okay. There once was a boy who met a witch in a snowy wood just like the one outside your window. Now the boy loved himself very much and when the witch offered him her admiration and a piece of candy, he betrayed his own sisters and brother.”

The father paused. His daughter had pulled the covers over her head.

“A different story?” he asked.

The bed covers nodded.

“There once was a monster that ravaged the land, killing man and beast, because he hated the sound of singing. And he killed so many that the people grew quiet, huddled together under their small roofs and listened to the drip, drip, drip of water and waited for the sound of the monster’s claws on the wooden door.”

The father paused because the bed covers were shaking violently.

“You’re striking out tonight, Dad.”

“What about this one,” he pleaded. “There was once a boy, the favorite son of his father’s old age, whose brothers were jealous of their good brother so they lured him into the desert where they threw him in a ravine and gave him no water. When some slave traders rode by, nodding, half asleep on their camels, the brothers sold their little brother and went home with gold coins jingling in their pockets. Their father asked, of course, where his favorite son was and the brothers pretended to look very sad, telling him that their brother was killed by wild animals and buried in the desert.”

“Dad, that’s no good either.”
“Okay, one more try,” said the father and he stared out the window again.

…The snow was still falling when he began. “God, who made the woods and snow and you, walked amongst his creation one day and saw that the people hated one another and they hated him. They played king of the mountain every day and kicked anyone in the teeth who might out climb them. They fawned over themselves and played games of power.”

“What did they call the games, Dad?” asked the girl.

“O, these games went by many names: They called the games “Rome”, and sometimes “Greece”, sometimes they just called it “Savvy” or “Shrewd”. But they always called their games “Perfection”, giving the prize to the perfect one, the strong man, who made it to the top of the mountain and left a trail of bleeding mouths behind him. So God sent his son, his favorite and only son, down to become a man. He walked with all those people. He ate with them and healed their broken mouths, but he refused to play their games. So what do you think happened?”

The little girl was peaking above the blankets again with wide eyes. “Did they become friends?” she asked.

“Nope. They took him to the top of their mountain one day, kicked his face and then they killed him right on the spot. And for good measure they stabbed him in the side until water and blood flowed out”

“Come on, Dad! These are awful!”

“But…”
“No buts, Dad.”

“But…”

“You’re not listening, Dad!”

“No, my dear, you’re not listening. You’ve forgotten the most important word in every good story.”

The girl was sitting up now and her father’s firm voice stopped her miniature tirade.

“One word?” she asked.

“The most important word in every good story.”

The little girl tried to plead her case, “You’ve never told me that word before,” she said.

“I’ve told you that word every time I tell a story, but tonight you haven’t let me say it yet.”

“What’s the word?”
The father leaned in toward his little girl and whispered in her ear the magic word, “…but.”

“Really?” she asked. “But it’s such a small word.”

“Yes, but you’ve forgotten that it’s the little words, like little people, that make all the difference in the world.”
His little girl was puzzled. “I don’t quite understand.”

“Here,” he said. Then he took her hands in his own and said, “Do you remember the king with the broken heart?”

She nodded.

“He decided to kill one woman each night and exact revenge on womankind…but…he met a woman named Scheherazade who told him many stories and saved both her life and his. And the shipwrecked man on the island? He was stranded on an island filled with terrible beasts and he had no way to get home…but…he was delivered by God and given a friend named Friday and was saved.”
“Today’s Friday too!” cried out the girl.

“Yes, it is.”

“Dad? What about the hobbit? He was stung by an enormous spider who planned to eat him.”

“Yes…but…he was saved from the spider and threw the magic ring into a pit of fire, thereby saving all the earth from destruction”
“And the boy who betrayed his sisters and brother?” asked the girl.

“He was saved by a lion who killed the witch and when the boy asked forgiveness, it was given to him gladly and he was never the same again. Remember the monster and the people huddled together under their small roofs? They waited for the monster’s claws, but a hero came and killed the monster and saved them so they might sing again.”
“What about the boy who was sold into slavery?”

“Well,” said the father, “he became a great ruler and one day his brothers came before him because they were in need. They did not recognize their brother, but he recognized them and when he revealed himself to them, they were ashamed and afraid for their lives…but…he forgave them and lavished their lives with good things and with hope.”

“Those are very good stories,” said his daughter who was quite relieved.
“Yes, but I have not finished.”

“O, yes,” cried the girl. “What about God’s only son?

“Ah, yes. God sent his son and he walked amongst us while we played ugly games and kicked each other in the teeth, and when he was killed for not playing our games, he died and the blood and water flowed down his side and along his legs and onto the ground, and they buried him in the dark, cold ground.”

He paused and looked outside again. The snow was falling.

His daughter was now impatient and she sat up. “…But!…”

A grin broke across his face and he said, “…But three days later, he came to life and broke the ground, took the monster by the throat and chained him down. Remember the blood and water that flowed out of his body and down his legs and onto the ground? It still flows across the whole world. His blood and water will, like a mighty river, wash away all the ugly games and all the strong men will be drowned. That’s why you’ve been baptized by water and why we have communion every week, my little darling.”

He paused while the snow fell softly outside the window.

“Don’t ever forget, my love, that God will save us from the wicked kings and the monsters that hate singing. And every day the world will be cleaner and brighter, filled to overflowing with little people…just…like…you.”

At this, the little girl fell back into her pillow with a great sigh of relief. She grinned from ear to ear and the father leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. He rose from the bed and stood in the doorway. The snow was still falling, the earth covered in a blanket of white that glowed by the light of the moon.

“It’s Friday,” she said.

“And Sunday’s on the way,” he replied.

“Goodnight, Dad,” she whispered.

“Yes, indeed,” he thought. “It is a good night.” And as he stood in the doorway with his hand on the doorknob, he thought of blood and water and of God’s promise to Zechariah: “I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy,” says our God. “…On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.”

So he smiled while his daughter thought of wine and water and the snow, clean and fresh, fell outside.

 

And that, dear children of Zion, is The End.

The Gospel and the Imagination

by

There has been a growing refocus on the gospel and its transformative power of late within Christian evangelicalism, an emphasis for which I am grateful. Books are being churned out in an attempt to help us understand not only the blood of Christ, but the affect it in fact has on our life. What seems to be overlooked, however, is the role the imagination plays in this process. We treat the gospel as if it were something to understand like  a math problem and while it can be written in terms of a logical syllogism, a belief in the Gospel demands much more than intellectual assent. The hardest part of understanding the Gospel is not so much understanding it, but picturing myself sanctified by the blood and then living as though it were, in fact, actually the case.