HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

WORDS FROM THE WASTELAND-I am telling what I know...

“What gets you is the knowledge, and it sometimes can fall on you in a clap, 

that the dead are gone absolutely from this world. 

 

As has been said around here over and over again, you are not going to 

see them here anymore, ever. 

Whatever was done or said before is done or said for good. 

Any questions you think of that you ought to’ve asked while you had a chance 

are never going to be answered. 

The dead know, and you don’t. 

 

And yet their absence puts them with you in a way they never were before. 

You even maybe know them better than you did before. 

They stay with you, and in a way you go with them. 

They don’t live on in your heart, but your heart knows them. 

 

As your heart gets bigger on the inside, the world gets bigger on the outside. 

If the dead had been alive only in this world, you would forget them,

looks like, as soon as they die. 

But you remember them, 

because they always were living in the other, bigger world while 

they lived in this little one, and this one and the other one are the same. 

 

You can’t see this with your eyes looking straight ahead. 

It’s with your side vision, so to speak, that you see it. 

The longer I live, and the better acquainted I am among the dead, 

the better I see it. 

 

I am telling what I know. 

It’s our separatedness and our grief that break the world in two.” 

 

 

“...There wasn’t a body to be spoken over and buried to bring people together, 

and to give Tom’s life a proper conclusion in Port William. 

 

 Berry, Wendell - 

A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William

 

-----------------------------

Words from the Wasteland 

(actually Little Gidding, but our words reflect everywhere we have have ever been)

10 years ago I could have read these words and thought them quite beautiful and poignant and admired the simplicity of his prose conveying a most complex, but common human experience.  

My experience of death and loss was not, what would you call it, ripe, yet.

Sure I could write about it, but the words were just cover for rage, confusion, and nowhere near anything like knowledge.

I was stuck in those early stages of kubler-ross’ death and dying…pretending to be on the other side of “acceptance”.

 

Today, I think I can honestly say I am finally there.

It’s the “It’s our separateness and our grief that break the world in two.” that’s the clincher.

 

That’s a place you can’t pass over and not know you are in it…mostly because it turns everything you knew for certain to chaff.

 

“But you remember them, 

because they always were living in the other, bigger world while 

they lived in this little one, and this one and the other one are the same.”

 

Then all those “childish things” that you put away, because you had pronounced yourself no longer a child, MOCK THE HELL OUT OF YOU and you must recover that childlike humility, because that is what you still are…no matter how many candles are on the cake.

 

Then, in that humility you  remember the rest of the story…”For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

 

No matter what we see in that glass or mirror-(ἔσοπτρον really doesn’t translate well-but if you ever were in a museum and looked in what they called a “mirror” ages ago-it’s doesn’t resemble anything like the “modern” one of the same name), it is still dark, distorted, and imperfect and always will be this side of life.

 

The old theological canard of the “now and not yet of the kingdom of god” has bitten you in the back-parts, again.

Berry’s simple words define a complex reality of concentric places of being…..

 

“But you remember them, 

because they always were living in the other, bigger world while 

they lived in this little one, and this one and the other one are the same.”

 

And even though you are always at home, ‘hidden in Christ’, doesn’t mean you can’t get lost…and I was, and I am, and may always be.

Then I hang on to the words of another wise writer-

 

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring 

will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. 

 

T. S. Eliot

Little Gidding V,

Four Quartets.

 

 

"Reality would burn. And I do not like it much"

 

 

 

Because you're not what I would have you be

I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar

Your you. Love, I would like to see

Past all delusion to reality

Then would I see God's image in your face,

His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.

Because I'm not what I would have me be

I idolize two Ones who are not any place,

Not you, not me, and so they never touch.

Reality would burn. And I do not like it much.

And yet in you, in me, I find a trace

Of love which struggles to break through

The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.

 

 

From: The Irrational Season By Madeleine L'engle

 

 

Photo-key to heart By nikaa

Of what use was it to be loved...if it all ended like this?

 

 
"And while the Boy was asleep, dreaming of the seaside, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books in the corner behind the fowl-house, and he felt very lonely. The sack had been left untied, and so by wriggling a bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out. He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.
Near by he could see the thicket of raspberry canes, growing tall and close like a tropical jungle, in whose shadow he had played with the Boy on bygone mornings.

He thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden–how happy they were–

and a great sadness came over him.

He seemed to see them all pass before him, each more beautiful than the other, the fairy huts in the flower-bed, the quiet evenings in the wood when he lay in the bracken and the little ants ran over his paws; the wonderful day when he first knew that he was Real.

He thought of the Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him.

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?
And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground."...

 

Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself:

"Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!"

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.

 

From:

THE Velveteen Rabbit

by Margery Williams

 

 

 To My Brother, lovingly known to all as"Rabbit"

Another 365 sunrises without you and I keep looking for you; at times I see or hear something that seems familiar and I think to myself...do you ever come back and look at the child that is me who loved you so dearly?  I hope in some way that love, which often times left you worse for wear, also helped you find out what it is to be real, to be loved, and that you are frolicking, without pain and weariness with other "real" rabbits.

 

Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself:

"Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!"

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.