Sad, Yet I Breathe
To whatever extent--not much--that I thought about getting through this day, I didn't expect to do it successfully. I fell asleep last night in the midst of explaining to my roommate about how being a Christian is like living in a rainbow, and woke feeling rather numb.
The numbness continued. I am sure that people spoke to me, but I don't remember most of their words. It has been a very Aprilish sort of day, a day in which laughter and tears were well mixed. Hugo meant this, I am sure, when he wrote of Cosette that she sometimes looked a little strange because her smile was joyous and her eyes were sad.
But you see, my dear, I shall get through tomorrow too, and the day after, and the day after that. Eventually, the pain grows somewhat less. You don't ever forget; you don't ever quite stop hurting; but you are made for Christ, not for sorrow. Therefore you cry a little, but you remember that weeping is for a night, and that joy cometh in the morning.
On a day like this, I am not surprised to open my assigned reading--C.S. Lewis' Studies in Words--and find that the chapter is on the word "sad." What did surprise me, what surprised and comforted me, were Lewis' comments on the subject. He explains that the origin of the word is the Anglo-Saxon saed, which is cousin to the Latin satur, and that both mean "gorged, full (of food), replete." Lewis goes on to relate this concept of "having your fill" or "having more than your fill" to the Latin gravis, the sense of heaviness and solidity.
Things that are heavy are physically difficult to move. If your fortress gates are heavy, then they will be a force to be reckoned with, and a deterrent to the enemy. Lewis explains that the word "sad" came to have a connotation of heaviness and solidity, and even of wisdom. To be "sad" is a virtue of the mature or elderly person, and to have a "sad" head on young shoulders is to be wise beyond your years.
In both the sense of having had too much, and in the sense of weight, I feel "sad" beyond my years. I am filled with sorrow and pressed down, but also intensified and purified. I believe that wisdom and worship accompany this sort of trial. Something important has been done, something right and honorable, something that was not what I wanted but was, I believe, pleasing to God. It was an act of worship, of laying something on the altar.
I remember telling someone, at the end of last semester, that suffering should never be a consideration when one is trying to decide what is right to do. At the time I was about to choose a particular course of action, knowing full well that very great suffering would be the result, but knowing also that what I did was right. The outcome was, as I knew it would be, pain... and not just any sort. It was stabbing, suffocating pain, the kind that makes eating a chore and breathing an exercise and living a dullness and the sun not a sun and--hardest for me--light not light, colors all gone gray.
All this I had expected, but I did not expect to find joy in the midst of it. My world went dark and gray, but the face of my Beloved blazed with light and color. As human loves betrayed me one by one, divine love came to dominate my vision. I found that, losing all, I gained everything. I found that, though I have not forgotten the pain, and though I will bear sad--and I mean by that "weighty"--memories always, nevertheless I would not trade that experience for any treasure on earth. It taught me to trust my Lord; it showed me, more clearly than ever before, the radiant and all-sufficient love of Christ.
Truly, we do not need earthly relationships and friendships in any essential sense, for when they all fall away, Christ is more than enough for us. The things which happened last semester gave me wisdom, and solidity. I stand firmer through this trial, with less of pain and more of gladness, with less of fear and more of trust, than ever before. I am reminded of Psalm 73, for God is continually with me, and holds my right hand. For me it is good to be near him, and I have made him my refuge, so that I may tell of all his works. Do you see that the point of making God our refuge is so that we might glorify him by expressing the ways in which he has spared and saved us--his marvelous works and unfailing love?
You ache now, O my soul, but scis in quo credidisti. Turn the eyes of the soul up and away, away from myself, my sin, my failings, my pain... it is good to know that we have sinned, because they love much who know that they have been forgiven much. But it is wrong to dwell on ourselves in any way, in any form. Crede me, intellege me. You will be glad for this trial soon, quite soon. Concentrate on breathing, O my sad soul. Do you not know that the word for hope (spero) is related to the word for Spirit (spiritus) which is related to the word for "breath"? The Holy Spirit indwells me, to rebreathe me in Christ's image, to breathe hope into me, to be my Comforter.
Fix your gaze on that, on Christ crucified, and wait for day. It will come soon, very soon. Weeping lasts for a night... God only permits one night of weeping, and it is a short night, not an aeterna dormienda, not an eternal sleeping. Suns rise and set here, and night is here, and night is frigida, nigra, irata here, but Heaven is aeterna lux, the eternal day. Gaude.
The numbness continued. I am sure that people spoke to me, but I don't remember most of their words. It has been a very Aprilish sort of day, a day in which laughter and tears were well mixed. Hugo meant this, I am sure, when he wrote of Cosette that she sometimes looked a little strange because her smile was joyous and her eyes were sad.
But you see, my dear, I shall get through tomorrow too, and the day after, and the day after that. Eventually, the pain grows somewhat less. You don't ever forget; you don't ever quite stop hurting; but you are made for Christ, not for sorrow. Therefore you cry a little, but you remember that weeping is for a night, and that joy cometh in the morning.
On a day like this, I am not surprised to open my assigned reading--C.S. Lewis' Studies in Words--and find that the chapter is on the word "sad." What did surprise me, what surprised and comforted me, were Lewis' comments on the subject. He explains that the origin of the word is the Anglo-Saxon saed, which is cousin to the Latin satur, and that both mean "gorged, full (of food), replete." Lewis goes on to relate this concept of "having your fill" or "having more than your fill" to the Latin gravis, the sense of heaviness and solidity.
Things that are heavy are physically difficult to move. If your fortress gates are heavy, then they will be a force to be reckoned with, and a deterrent to the enemy. Lewis explains that the word "sad" came to have a connotation of heaviness and solidity, and even of wisdom. To be "sad" is a virtue of the mature or elderly person, and to have a "sad" head on young shoulders is to be wise beyond your years.
In both the sense of having had too much, and in the sense of weight, I feel "sad" beyond my years. I am filled with sorrow and pressed down, but also intensified and purified. I believe that wisdom and worship accompany this sort of trial. Something important has been done, something right and honorable, something that was not what I wanted but was, I believe, pleasing to God. It was an act of worship, of laying something on the altar.
I remember telling someone, at the end of last semester, that suffering should never be a consideration when one is trying to decide what is right to do. At the time I was about to choose a particular course of action, knowing full well that very great suffering would be the result, but knowing also that what I did was right. The outcome was, as I knew it would be, pain... and not just any sort. It was stabbing, suffocating pain, the kind that makes eating a chore and breathing an exercise and living a dullness and the sun not a sun and--hardest for me--light not light, colors all gone gray.
All this I had expected, but I did not expect to find joy in the midst of it. My world went dark and gray, but the face of my Beloved blazed with light and color. As human loves betrayed me one by one, divine love came to dominate my vision. I found that, losing all, I gained everything. I found that, though I have not forgotten the pain, and though I will bear sad--and I mean by that "weighty"--memories always, nevertheless I would not trade that experience for any treasure on earth. It taught me to trust my Lord; it showed me, more clearly than ever before, the radiant and all-sufficient love of Christ.
Truly, we do not need earthly relationships and friendships in any essential sense, for when they all fall away, Christ is more than enough for us. The things which happened last semester gave me wisdom, and solidity. I stand firmer through this trial, with less of pain and more of gladness, with less of fear and more of trust, than ever before. I am reminded of Psalm 73, for God is continually with me, and holds my right hand. For me it is good to be near him, and I have made him my refuge, so that I may tell of all his works. Do you see that the point of making God our refuge is so that we might glorify him by expressing the ways in which he has spared and saved us--his marvelous works and unfailing love?
You ache now, O my soul, but scis in quo credidisti. Turn the eyes of the soul up and away, away from myself, my sin, my failings, my pain... it is good to know that we have sinned, because they love much who know that they have been forgiven much. But it is wrong to dwell on ourselves in any way, in any form. Crede me, intellege me. You will be glad for this trial soon, quite soon. Concentrate on breathing, O my sad soul. Do you not know that the word for hope (spero) is related to the word for Spirit (spiritus) which is related to the word for "breath"? The Holy Spirit indwells me, to rebreathe me in Christ's image, to breathe hope into me, to be my Comforter.
Fix your gaze on that, on Christ crucified, and wait for day. It will come soon, very soon. Weeping lasts for a night... God only permits one night of weeping, and it is a short night, not an aeterna dormienda, not an eternal sleeping. Suns rise and set here, and night is here, and night is frigida, nigra, irata here, but Heaven is aeterna lux, the eternal day. Gaude.
posted by Praelucor at 11:37 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home