H,
Well, on that note I could
not agree with you more. There is a sick vulnerability you feel around the
things and places and, above all that, the people that you love. I can relate
to all that more now than Esther is finally here. Her eyes are these whirlpools
of innocence and wonder. How can I bear if she ever has a broken heart? How do I
cope with the fact that she is breaking mine by just being here and beautiful? There
is a rage in being a parent. A certain and overwhelming need to protect and
preserve. Yet, we cannot do that in any full way. We are limited and we are
small. There are a thousand dangers in every second and we have only two hands
and two feet.
Is there a more tragic bout
of helplessness than this? The inherent failure we will have in trying to
protect others when we cannot even protect ourselves from that very limiting
thought of thoughts? It is a humbling thing and it should be. All the other
things we have talked about over the week end in this idea that cripples our
rising souls: we are not the hero of even our own story.
In the end all we can do is
deny and disobey but we have a whole level of experience that is still a
mystery to us. The idea of God may have been made up, if you believe so, to
fill in the blanks of this despair. Yet, the reality of God does something
else. It says to us the thing we do not really want to hear: there is a level
of control beyond our fleeting sense of self. We sometimes and then eventually
and maybe always hit the limit of what we can do. There is a myth that we will
find to be real of a being beyond all limits. We are helpless in the eternal
sense and He is endless. There is no other sense but the eternal. Camus told us
decades ago that the limit of life makes it absurd. He was right. Without the
weight of the eternal, the reasons for life make no sense.
And all these things, all
these speculations on life and love and weight and helplessness do not take us
any closer. This is a thing you experience. The life in God is to be lived. The
Rubicon is crossed only in true surrender. True surrender is to be wise enough
to know the very limits that make you question everything. And to finally
believe there is an answer to every fear and every tear.