This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?"
-Eliot
Alaska is in what I call "winter's miscarriage." Fall has ended. Winter has sort of begun, but there has been no snow yet. It is sort of cold - it stays below freezing until around noon, - but it is not really cold enough to snow. All the leaves are fallen, and all the trees are bare. The brilliant colors of fall are gone. The ground is wet and muddy from cold rain. The sky is overcast. Everything is gray.
When winter is finally born, there will be a layer of pristine white snow over the ground and all the branches and roofs, and the world here will be bright and cold and clean. When that happens, we can enjoy our warm houses and crackling fires in good conscience. We will be happily warm surrounded by a sleeping world of white beauty.
But for now, everything is gray and dirty. The industrial world rules us. Large, loud, smelly, muddy dump trucks are driving everywhere across town as the city tries to get in the last bit of road construction before the snow falls. People are not as friendly. We are all busy and don't have time for each other. We are tired and snappy and rude. We are in winter's miscarriage, and summer is dead in the delivery chair.
***
I spoke with my father for a long time on the phone today. He helped me track down an electrical problem in my house. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but once we were finished, we managed to get into a religious discussion. I haven't had a serious religious discussion with my father since I was about 13 or 14. I'm going to be 28 next month. That's roughly half my life gone by without having a real discussion about religion with my father.
I was about 14 when my parents got divorced. I can't remember exactly when it was. All of that time period seems fuzzy in my memory. I got mad at God sometime around then. I wasn't mad at God for letting my parents get divorced - by that time, a divorce was the best thing that could happen to us. I guess I was angry at God for giving me the life that I had - typical teenage selfishness. We were poor. My parents fought all the time. My mother constantly told me how worthless I was. I was a nerd, and I was still being picked on at school. (Thankfully that stopped about a year later as we all grew up and grew out of it.) I guess I just got angry at God for causing me to be alive. I didn't want to die, per se. I just didn't want to exist or have ever existed. I wanted to be blackness, emptiness. I wanted the voice behind my eyes, the voice of my thoughts, to be quiet forever. For all these things, I was angry at God and angry at the world, and I just stopped talking about religion with my father.
Since then, I've been slowly learning forgiveness. It takes a while. Everything else in life, I can do quickly - make friends, destroy friendships, fall in love, make life-changing decisions, etc. But forgiveness is tricky. For me, it's the hardest human virtue to master. I think that to come to forgiveness, our capacity for hatred must first peter out. We just get to the point where we don't have the energy to hate anymore. It takes too much of a toll on us. Unfortunately, in my experience, hatred doesn't leave all at once. We can't suddenly decide to forgive everybody. Hatred leaves us in drips and drabs. It dies slowly with time. But as it dies, we slowly - very slowly - begin to realize we have the ability to forgive. We start small and work toward the bigger things, and it happens without us realizing it.
In speaking with my father today, I realized that I've worked my way up to forgiving God, and that one was a big one.
I wonder if enough time will ever pass for me to forgive myself. I hope I live that long.
Out of this stony rubbish?"
-Eliot
Alaska is in what I call "winter's miscarriage." Fall has ended. Winter has sort of begun, but there has been no snow yet. It is sort of cold - it stays below freezing until around noon, - but it is not really cold enough to snow. All the leaves are fallen, and all the trees are bare. The brilliant colors of fall are gone. The ground is wet and muddy from cold rain. The sky is overcast. Everything is gray.
When winter is finally born, there will be a layer of pristine white snow over the ground and all the branches and roofs, and the world here will be bright and cold and clean. When that happens, we can enjoy our warm houses and crackling fires in good conscience. We will be happily warm surrounded by a sleeping world of white beauty.
But for now, everything is gray and dirty. The industrial world rules us. Large, loud, smelly, muddy dump trucks are driving everywhere across town as the city tries to get in the last bit of road construction before the snow falls. People are not as friendly. We are all busy and don't have time for each other. We are tired and snappy and rude. We are in winter's miscarriage, and summer is dead in the delivery chair.
***
I spoke with my father for a long time on the phone today. He helped me track down an electrical problem in my house. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but once we were finished, we managed to get into a religious discussion. I haven't had a serious religious discussion with my father since I was about 13 or 14. I'm going to be 28 next month. That's roughly half my life gone by without having a real discussion about religion with my father.
I was about 14 when my parents got divorced. I can't remember exactly when it was. All of that time period seems fuzzy in my memory. I got mad at God sometime around then. I wasn't mad at God for letting my parents get divorced - by that time, a divorce was the best thing that could happen to us. I guess I was angry at God for giving me the life that I had - typical teenage selfishness. We were poor. My parents fought all the time. My mother constantly told me how worthless I was. I was a nerd, and I was still being picked on at school. (Thankfully that stopped about a year later as we all grew up and grew out of it.) I guess I just got angry at God for causing me to be alive. I didn't want to die, per se. I just didn't want to exist or have ever existed. I wanted to be blackness, emptiness. I wanted the voice behind my eyes, the voice of my thoughts, to be quiet forever. For all these things, I was angry at God and angry at the world, and I just stopped talking about religion with my father.
Since then, I've been slowly learning forgiveness. It takes a while. Everything else in life, I can do quickly - make friends, destroy friendships, fall in love, make life-changing decisions, etc. But forgiveness is tricky. For me, it's the hardest human virtue to master. I think that to come to forgiveness, our capacity for hatred must first peter out. We just get to the point where we don't have the energy to hate anymore. It takes too much of a toll on us. Unfortunately, in my experience, hatred doesn't leave all at once. We can't suddenly decide to forgive everybody. Hatred leaves us in drips and drabs. It dies slowly with time. But as it dies, we slowly - very slowly - begin to realize we have the ability to forgive. We start small and work toward the bigger things, and it happens without us realizing it.
In speaking with my father today, I realized that I've worked my way up to forgiving God, and that one was a big one.
I wonder if enough time will ever pass for me to forgive myself. I hope I live that long.