a story

Once upon a time there was a little girl who wondered what it was like to be a frog. No reason in particular; she was usually wondering something or other, and on this day she was gluing green pom-poms to a green hat, and probably the green made her think of it. For whatever reason, it came into her head to wonder what it was like to be a frog. And she was instantly seized with despair, because she realized she would never know. Those words (never, never know, never) were horrible to her, the most horrible words she could imagine. Crushing, crippling words, words that pinned her into a tiny box of space and time, isolated from the rest of the world -- forever. Never, forever. Horrible.

There were other points of despair, too. She hated kaleidoscopes, hated that the beautiful pattern she was looking at would shift with one turn, and never be seen again. The day after Christmas, or after any long-anticipated joy, her heart would sink and sink. She was very young to feel so oppressed by time; adults do not generally believe that children can feel things like time, and the limits of existence, so painfully. But she did. The future was her joy and her hope; every night when her mother tucked her in, she would ask, "What are we going to do tomorrow?" She loved to hold the future, as a possession, to look over it when the lights were off and enjoy its beauties. So disappointment was the most cruel feeling she knew -- a beautiful future turned into a lie -- and "never" the most horrible word.

She warded off the cruelty of disappointment by throwing herself into a new future as quickly as she could. The horror of "never," though, the black wall between her and a future that could not be... her only defense against that was a hope of heaven, an extra-earthly future where the impossible became possible. Eternal duration, unlimited joy. In heaven, she would either know what it was like to be a frog, or she would no longer feel the need to know. Either way would be okay.

She grew older and she read more. Her relationship to life and time became more complicated, but always with the hallmarks of her childhood. She had little hope or fear attached to the material world. Her imagination was where her real life took place, and the outside world was only important because it provided the materials for her imagination to play with. If something precious was taken from her, she would suffer a little, and then transfer her love to something else. If something precious was threatened, she could transfer her love pre-emptively, prepare for loss. Life was like a game, an adventure, a story. All the important things were happening inside her head, under her control. The adventure could take her where it would: the cornerstones of her life were safe from outside hands.

All her life, she called herself a Christian, and this faith was important in helping her maintain that inner stability. The hope of heaven, which got her over that early day of despair, gave the philosophical anchor she needed. No matter what happened, she had a future, a good and beautiful future, which no fear could breach. She did not need to know what it would be like: she was promised good, and she had only to cling to that promise. Promises others clung to ("God will provide, God will protect us") seemed silly to her. Quite evidently God did not provide and protect in all cases: plenty of people, as deserving as she, suffered loss and died young. But she had that promise: in the end, after the end, everything would be all right. An unshakable hope.

Clinging... that's the word. We usually do cling to something, don't we? A lot of people cling to something in the material world: a lover, a possession, a job. Something that tells us who we are and assures us that our lives are not empty. Something that lets us feel like we have a handle on the world. I thought I was lucky. I could lose everything, but I would always have my imagination, and my imagination would always have heaven. Torture me, maim me, imprison me -- it might hurt, but it could never strike at the heart of who I was. And if you killed me, you'd only be escorting me to hope's final consummation. Fool-proof. Invulnerable. I even boasted of my invulnerability, not long ago (December 14th, 2006). My hope, my future, my prized possession, was one that even God couldn't take away from me.

And then God did. Not a month after writing those proud and confident words, my faith was gone. I still don't know what happened, but the experience was like this: I was driving home from playing pool with friends, friends who had been challenging me on my beliefs for several months. I had said to one of them, several weeks ago, "I don't know why I believe in God, I just do." And I was speaking the truth; there was a place in my thoughts where the belief was lodged, firmly, not apologizing for or explaining its presence, just there. I couldn't not believe in God; if I tried it, I knew I was kidding myself.

So on this night, driving home, I went back to that place, to make sure it was there, to see if I still couldn't not believe in God. And I found that I could. And darkness fell.

And what that meant, and what happens next, is a story I've been trying to tell for a year, and I haven't fully managed it yet because I don't understand it myself. But at the same time, it's quite clear: this is where the story had to go. If you cling and you cling, and you protect yourself from all calamities, and you use nothing except your faith to shield yourself from reality (which is to say, to shield yourself from God), then that faith must be dismantled. Because a life buried in imagination, anchored in the hope of heaven, is a fictional life. It is the destruction of the things we cling to that drives us into reality, into truth, into the heart of God. Sometimes that destruction takes a very strange shape.