Occasionally, we meet with a Midas thought, massive, unexpected, totally transforming. It will transmute the landscape of our thoughts, if we let it. Gold is a poor structural material, however, and this transformation often leads to wholesale collapse. The worlds in our heads which we imagine to be real are rarely designed for such weights and spans as eternity presents.
Thoughts though (like Midas powers) can be flinched from, resisted, repealed. How often have we stepped forward over the ever murky depths of knowledge, slenderly on a whim or thought, and saw heaving up from beneath a concept like Leviathan. “Behold, you are overcome at the mere sight of him…” and all the soul can mutter is “what…” as the masonry congeals into metal and begins to yield under its own weight.
As the jaws and creeping roots infringe on my peripheral vision, as I look through the gold like glass (to some still incomprehensible shape approaching) there is the knowledge that I may still live happily in ignorance. Knowledge knocks hard and “There lives one moment for a man, when the door at his shoulder shakes…” as both beauty and terror tear at the hinges. What do I do when everything may change? As Saint Clive said “Her world was undone. Anything might happen now.” It is this uncertainty which makes me scramble for furniture, anything, to blockade Truth’s arrival. But always we are allowed to resist. Saint Clive also observed “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
I have stood at this juncture several times. In knowledge that the stones are screaming beneath my feet. In knowledge that the shape may be a friend, but I am not sure of anything anymore.
Once I have turned back. How many times? Once, always the same. Only once forever unchanged. No gold. No sea. No beast. No truth. Furniture. That’s what I have. I have a house with furniture to sit on, because really, you can’t stand being in the house all the time. You can’t stand it forever. I thought I was strong for locking the door. For holding on to what I had.
Then, forever later (time has nothing to do with it) I spoke to Truth, and he answered. Truth is a man, is The Man. I have started to open the door. I have begun, forever ago. He has come in, and eaten. Not me, but with me. I have eaten. Both Him and with Him, for He is more generous of his flesh than I. And once you have opened the door to know math, and people, and space, and God (for without deception, it comes back to Him in the end)…
Then the stones are falling from under my feet, and I see myself “burning in the horizon… The sun is setting tonight on the world of me.” Where everything may be false, and nothing will stop it. Where everything may end up being true after all, but there are no guarantees. No control; Only tumbling water, going in my nose and my eyes and (stupidly infuriating) in my ears. A roar.
How upside down the furniture looks now, lying among the golden masonry. And who needs it anyway? Look! We are kings, and God is our Father. How dizzying it would be to see from inside ourselves; He would be terrifying, like a vast uncontrollable sea creature. How fortunate that we have died in Christ, and “the life that I now live, I live by Faith…”
So, this is Faith after all. Oh my God.
You are good.
I like the part about making yourself stupider.
Sometimes, God seems mean when he takes away your things because He doesn’t like them. Sometimes He doesn’t like you having them, because you make a big mess with them, so He takes them away. Like if you use your smarts for being bad, then God makes you stupider. So think good things, so God can make you smart instead.