“These new things that feel so old”

“These new things that feel so old”

H,

I have been thinking of how quickly we have grown out of our innocent ways. We used to really weigh things, back in the day. It is was not mere morality; there was something so darn precious about the way we approached life and living. Now, we are less able to see things without the grey. I do not think that older means wiser. More often, it means more careful, jaded or cynical about the real hope of all things. We are more calculating, I guess, is what I am trying to say.

It is like this: when we were young we were always trying to stop ourselves from being impulsive and now we struggle with letting ourselves be a little less predictable. There is a sense of wonder in God that you cannot afford to lose. The things set before us, before everyone really, are so magnificent and metaphysical that we cannot live in stoicism and still have a full life of faith. We cannot focus on these new things that feel so old; the new disappointments that hark back to old failures, the new fears that we match up with old anxieties and the terrible idea that we are making no progress.

The pilgrim’s process is different. There are no external markers that we celebrate in the world today. A billion-dollar ministry is more evidence to our windy eyes than love, gentleness, faith or humility. We want the accolades and not the humiliation. Our faith wants the humiliation that is redemptive. Our faith calls for the falling down that is really standing up. No human eyes can see it.

We are perpetually attracted to pretty things. We are fools to the attractive and the pristine. We do not want that awful mess that only the grace of God can cure. We do not want to admit that we are in that awful mess that only the grace of God can cure.  We want to be independent of everything, even God. The mantra of the moment is self-sufficiency, self-love and self-fulfillment. It is not that there is anything wrong with all that ruckus. It is only that they will not take us where we need to go. After all that has died down, the greatest question of all remains human mortality. The absurdity of the finite life calls us to look deeper than the decades we spend on a mock up earth. There is a calling to something more. There is a mystery that rolls all across the universe. It calls to us in our most silent moments. It tells us to turn and look into the light. When we are done with all the acting and posing and pretending the world has taught us, that light is still above us, edging us home. It does not dim with age. It grows brighter through space and time. It will grow brighter in us if we let it.