Visions

by Elanor

I want to share a new vision for myself and blogging, and that is, to share new visions. I just realized half an hour ago that the thing I like best about Christian writers is when they present a picture of the world that I would be incapable of seeing on my own. Those new pictures place in me a longing for the perfection of the future, but they also remind me of the pictures I have been given. So what I intend to do with this blog is to share the visions God has given me—not of how-the-world-should-be-but-isn’t; visions of how the world can be: Earth’s crammed with Heaven / and every common bush afire with God (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

I want to start writing poetry again. I haven’t for the longest time, because I got to the point where I was sick of how the whole process was so self-conscious. I had confused artifice with being artificial. I had to get away from doing it so I could breathe for a while without looking to see if there was a poem in the way my lungs expand and contract. Today I’ve been looking back at some of the things I’ve written, and I like them more than I expected to. I want to participate in creating beauty again.

It will take me a while, though, to get back into the habit of word-art. So for now I’ll just share something I found in my computer archives that made me really happy:

Well, little knot, I’m going to have you undone one way or another. Stop coming between me and my family. I don’t know how you got there. I do remember sitting in the car on the way home from school, maybe even as far back as elementary school. Daddy asked me how my day was, and there you were, tight in the middle of my chest, and you wouldn’t let me answer him. You change all my words, and make them come out like they’re trying to cut to pieces any person they might run into. You keep me lonely, and keep the people around me lonely, too. I’m not going to stand for it. You’re on your way out, just wait.

Sincerely,
Elanor

I wrote this last May, when I was thinking about how over the years of my childhood, I have built up bad habits in the way I relate to my family, habits that are now very difficult to break, even though I am now married. But the start of a new family makes it all the more important that I be aware of the habits of relation that I am forming with Edwin and with our future children, so that I do not allow these knots to get tied up inside of me.

I want to live.

Captain McCrea: Out there is our home. Home, Auto. And it's in trouble. I can't just sit here and-and-do nothing. That's all I've ever done! That's all anyone on this blasted ship has ever done. Nothing!

Auto: On the Axiom, you will survive.

Captain McCrea: I don't want to survive. I want to live.

Taken from Wall-E, emphasis mine.

I was watching Wall-E this morning (while playing WoW... yeah I know, I multitask wayyyy too much), and when this scene popped up, I couldn't help but look up and actually watch it. Quick synopsis for those of you who don't remember (or haven't seen it) **SPOILERS AHEAD**: Eve comes back from Earth having found proof that life is once again inhabitable. Although the Captain wants to head back home, Auto, the pilot's automated co-captain, was given secret orders to never return to Earth again. This results in, what becomes, the primary conflict in the movie.

This got me thinking: Am I just desiring to survive or desiring to actually live?

I must admit, lately, I have become pretty accustomed and happy with just surviving. My days have become super packed, routine, yet well-rounded. I have time to work, time to go to class, time to teach, time to spend with Elanor, time to pray, time to play.... Despite this enjoyable and relatively balanced lifestyle, I still find myself wanting more. It's pretty easy, I imagine, to slip into just being satisfied with all these things. I'm financially secure. I have an incredible job ripe with possibilities. I have an amazingly supportive and loving wife. I have awesome friends and a great church community. Yet, despite all these things, something in me still knows that all I'm doing is surviving.

At first, I thought that this must have to do with simply never having enough time. I miss those days when I had lots of free space to just take walks, to play until I'd much rather do work, to hang out with friends late into the night, to not have to keep thinking about the next thing I have to do. But when I thought about it further, I realized that even during those times, I still felt like I was just surviving. I suppose at first, I would feel more alive, but eventually I would reach a point where I felt the same trudging along.

It's kind of interesting. The world tells us that the more we do, the more successful we are, the more lives we improve, and the more progress we create, the more meaningful our lives will be. As beautiful and as poignant as Captain McCrea's words are, doing something instead of nothing won't truly lead him to life. He'll still be surviving... just distracted enough by the newness of it all that he won't mind the surviving.

Ironically, and unfortunately, the church (read: big-R Religious institution) tells us that the better people we are, the more we love, the more people we help, and the more people we bring to knowing Christ results in true living and not just surviving. Maybe there is a grain of truth amidst these ideas (I haven't ruled it out... yet), but everything inside of me says that if there is some truth, it truly is only a grain.

I am going to spend some time thinking and praying more about these things in the backdrop of my current busy lifestyle. I'll do some reading, some posting, some reflecting (probably over the course of the next few weeks or even months), and I trust that God will reveal more and more about what it means to live and not just survive. I have some ideas about what this kind of living could be related to: the spiritual realm (commonly understood as spiritual warfare), Christ living in us, abiding in His love, storing up treasures in heaven, afterlife... but, as you can tell, these ideas are a mess at the moment, and sadly (as well as ironically), I don't have the time or space (read: determination or focus) to delve in confidently and deeply.

But today is a first step. I didn't even realize that I was just wanting to survive.

Like, Captain McCrea, I want to live.