Catch A 22
Let me tell you what life at 22 doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be hopeless.
It doesn't have to be raw and aching.
It doesn't have to be lonely.
It doesn't have to be dark.
I've caught a 22. Look, it's two wings are resting between my two cupped hands. There are two glorious black velvet eyes on each pair of indigo wings, and two long, teardrop tails, powdered with two hundred thousand specks of silver. I've caught a falling star, but it lives.
What shall I do with it?
"You know, I don't think I ever imagined being older than 21." Brittainy last night, thoughtful in the half-light of our evening room.
"Me neither," I admitted.
"Twenty-two is a frightful age. You aren't in the bloom and heyday of youth any more. You're just a 'twenty-something.' And from now on, people will continually forget which twenty you are... until you turn thirty, and then everything begins to go downhill."
But it's beautiful! It's alive! How can I treat it as unimportant? Surely, if God created it, he thought it was important.
"God? Oh, yes, that's the rub. Now you're almost out of school, now soon you have to start doing all the things for God that you said you'd do, 'when I'm 22.'"
That's all a lie. Life begins before college, and continues through college. I'm doing now most of the things that I'll have to do the day after graduation. The subject of the work changes: the work, the attitudes, the heart motivations, the orientation of the soul, don't change.
What shall I do with it?
Here, little beauty, I won't keep you. You would be of no use to that great beauty, the absolute Beauty, whom you call Father, if I kept you and stroked the color from your wings and stared at you instead of looking around. Fly up, 22, fly back, and alight in the heart of Beauty, and beat your wings in time to that heartbeat. Be better than last year's golden creature, because you know better how to nestle there. Trust it better to draw you to itself, and you will be better, more lovely, than all last year's loveliness. Don't you know, 22, that each of you do not diminish, but grow bigger and more splendid, stronger and brighter, down through time? 50 will be more beautiful than I can imagine, now. Therefore do not feel my disdain, 22, but hold up your head. Smell the quality of the air, seek the heart of the sun, and strengthen your wings for the long journey by beating them towards sunlight.
Who fears age and death, that knows Beauty waits after them? For you see, the footnote of many a Scripture passage tells us that when the Lord is "glorified," it would be as well to translate thus: "that he may display his beauty." The absolute, the ageless Beauty, won me by absolute suffering, by absolute love, and satisfied absolute truth.
A mortal, it seems, cannot bear the weight of such regard. But it was not only for me; it was so that he may display his beauty.
Display, and let us adore.
It doesn't have to be hopeless.
It doesn't have to be raw and aching.
It doesn't have to be lonely.
It doesn't have to be dark.
I've caught a 22. Look, it's two wings are resting between my two cupped hands. There are two glorious black velvet eyes on each pair of indigo wings, and two long, teardrop tails, powdered with two hundred thousand specks of silver. I've caught a falling star, but it lives.
What shall I do with it?
"You know, I don't think I ever imagined being older than 21." Brittainy last night, thoughtful in the half-light of our evening room.
"Me neither," I admitted.
"Twenty-two is a frightful age. You aren't in the bloom and heyday of youth any more. You're just a 'twenty-something.' And from now on, people will continually forget which twenty you are... until you turn thirty, and then everything begins to go downhill."
But it's beautiful! It's alive! How can I treat it as unimportant? Surely, if God created it, he thought it was important.
"God? Oh, yes, that's the rub. Now you're almost out of school, now soon you have to start doing all the things for God that you said you'd do, 'when I'm 22.'"
That's all a lie. Life begins before college, and continues through college. I'm doing now most of the things that I'll have to do the day after graduation. The subject of the work changes: the work, the attitudes, the heart motivations, the orientation of the soul, don't change.
What shall I do with it?
Here, little beauty, I won't keep you. You would be of no use to that great beauty, the absolute Beauty, whom you call Father, if I kept you and stroked the color from your wings and stared at you instead of looking around. Fly up, 22, fly back, and alight in the heart of Beauty, and beat your wings in time to that heartbeat. Be better than last year's golden creature, because you know better how to nestle there. Trust it better to draw you to itself, and you will be better, more lovely, than all last year's loveliness. Don't you know, 22, that each of you do not diminish, but grow bigger and more splendid, stronger and brighter, down through time? 50 will be more beautiful than I can imagine, now. Therefore do not feel my disdain, 22, but hold up your head. Smell the quality of the air, seek the heart of the sun, and strengthen your wings for the long journey by beating them towards sunlight.
Who fears age and death, that knows Beauty waits after them? For you see, the footnote of many a Scripture passage tells us that when the Lord is "glorified," it would be as well to translate thus: "that he may display his beauty." The absolute, the ageless Beauty, won me by absolute suffering, by absolute love, and satisfied absolute truth.
A mortal, it seems, cannot bear the weight of such regard. But it was not only for me; it was so that he may display his beauty.
Display, and let us adore.
posted by Praelucor at 8:29 AM
2 Comments:
Happy birthday dear. Thank you for sharing those beautiful thoughts. 22 is an amazing gift.
Thanks for your friendship.
Kirsten
I quite agree...and so does 28 and a half, (as one is never too old to hold half birthday celebrations). The beauty of 29, here I come!
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