phantasm (noun) - a shadow of reality

"The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal."
~Jorge Luis Borges

Why does an author write a story? That's an interesting question... and a pretty deep one. You might say that authors write because they can't help it. That for writers, there is no high quite like the rush that comes with words flowing from the heart, through the mind, and out the fingers. That for them, there is no way to resist the compelling struggle of finding just the right word, or the triumph that comes when a sentence is finally thrown down on the paper or screen before them, each word sought after, fought for, and hard won. And while that's definitely part of it, it's not everything. Not nearly everything.

Here's what I think. I think an author is a special kind of person. Not any more special than an engineer or a doctor or a businessman, only different. Engineers look at life and see a factory or a machine; doctors see a body; businessmen see life in terms of projects and deals.  In the same way, authors have a unique lens through which they view the world, and when they look around they see stories.

Engineers do work to make the machine of life perform better; doctors do work to make the body of life healthier; and businessmen do work to make the office of life run more smoothly. They use the pieces of the world that they see to make things better for everyone else.

Authors are the same. They see things in the people and places and things of life that need to be noticed: our well-being depends on it as much as on medicine and machines. We need our hearts and our spirits to be cared for as much as our bodies… and authors do that. They have the tools to put those elusive pieces of Truth into words that can be read and consumed by the other people, the doctors and engineers and businessmen.

And I think the reason that people are compelled to use their tools is because they were made by the hand of (and in the image of) a creative (and creating) God. God is an author: he spoke words and created the story of the world. So when authors get an urge to write, it’s because they see bits and pieces of God’s Truth in the world around them. They have that creative spark inside them too, and they want to use it to create stories that show these glimpses.

That’s not to say that every book and poem written actually does this. Secular authors don’t acknowledge this, of course (though sometimes they stumble on a beautiful little piece of Truth without  intending to). They create for the sake of “art” itself: and art for art’s sake too often twists truths instead of reflecting them. Also, because sin taints every aspect of the world, some written words are false, and turn beautiful things into warped, ugly versions of themselves. But that isn’t what writing is intended to be. Writing is meant to be the pieces of Truth authors share because they were given the ability to see them, the way other people are drawn to use their own gifts.

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has the answer, it sings because it has a song.”
 ~Maya Angelou

for (preopsition) - in support of or in favor of

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to His word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.” -Dietrich Bonheoffer

I’ve been given a fair share of negative-sounding labels: anti-gay, close-minded, etc. It makes me seem like a really angry and tight and impassionate person, because I’m “against” so many things. But ask anyone who really knows me, and I think you’ll find that’s not the case. And really, the labeling thing goes both ways. To be FOR something means you have to be against something, so if you’re pro-gay marriage, you’re ANTI-traditional marriage. If you’re PRO-choice, you’re ANTI-life.  

It’s funny, but you hardly ever hear the term “anti” being applied to the more liberal-minded people… and I think that is part of the reason conservative beliefs are so often viewed as restricting. Like I said, it goes both ways.  And when you understand this, you can start to realize something else, something that is often overlooked.

We’re getting hurt, too. The Christians.

See, when we turn the tables, we realize that the “anti-Christians” are belittling the very things that we Christians build our lives around. The beliefs they toss around as “jokes” are actually very precious to us. But for some reason I just can’t figure out… that’s okay. Christian beliefs and values can be thrown aside and trampled on. The things we hold dear and sacred and breathlessly beautiful can be mocked, hated, scorned. And then we are told that WE’RE the offensive and insensitive and close-minded ones.

I wasn’t “offended” when I saw someone post an anti-traditional marriage (excuse me, pro-gay marriage) status on Facebook. I don’t see eye-to-eye with that viewpoint (and that’s another discussion), but I love the person who posted it very much, and I recognize that she is entitled to her own opinions. No big deal. But it was what came after that, in the comments—the slurs, the crude language and jokes—that cut to the very quick of my soul.

And that’s okay?

No. It’s not. It’s as wrong as anti-gay slurs and crude jokes.

I don’t care what you believe about homosexuality, or feminism, or abortion, or healthcare, or whatever hot-button-issues I’m missing. I don’t care if you’re atheist or Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or you believe in aliens. We’re never going to agree on everything. Which is fine, because having different opinions doesn’t mean we don’t respect each other.  

I’m just trying to love you like my God does.

But please, don’t put me in a stereotype. I’m a Christian, yes, but come and ask me about what that means. Ask me why I find certain things so offensive and so heartbreaking, when they’re just funny to you.  Ask me why I’m for the opposites of the things that you’re for.

I bet we’ll both learn something.

afterimage (noun) - an impression of a vivid sensation retained after the stimulus has ceased

I’m sitting, suddenly, after an ungainly, sliding scramble. The chair rocks, just a little bit, as the gap between my weighted-down feet and the ground stretches wider and wider. As someone who is constantly battling a fear of heights, I should be nervous, but I’m not. Not really. 

In front of me, the sky glows behind the mountain, and I’m gliding up and up and up, right toward it. It occurs to me that this might be what it’s like to go up to heaven. Then there’s a burst of light and I have to close my eyes, because I’ve come far enough along the lift that the mountain isn’t blocking the sunset anymore, and the insides of my eyelids dance with spots of color. When I open them again, the chair is floating past the signs that warn riders that the end of the lift is coming, so I push up the bar and scoot forward on the seat. Then I’m sliding again, like I was at the bottom of the slope, only gracefully this time, going down and around the hump where the ski lift ends. 

The snow grates under my skis, icy now that the sun is going down, and I snowplow to a stop, taking a breath before the race downhill. When the air is about to be rushed from my mouth, dragged by the chilled wind before I even blow it out, I take a few seconds of calm while I can. Then it’s all a speeding thrill of trying to steer and trying to look like I know what I’m doing and most of all trying not to fall, and it’s only when I reach the bottom that I notice my cheeks are aching with cold.

A few runs later, the sky behind the mountain has wrapped its warmer hues in a blue so dark it’s almost black, but under the gathering clouds, the blue blackness is thick, not sharp. Once again, my body smacks the seat; the chair rocks; the ground falls away. This time, as I glide up, there is no sun bursting over the peak onto my face, spotting my vision orange and pink. This time, I start to think the words one more run.

And this time, when I swing around to face the slope, I stop so abruptly I almost fall over. Way, way down below me, past the lodge and the parking lot, the road vanishes into the dips and swells of twilit mountains. And beyond that is a city I thought I hated.

From here, it’s nothing more than a dimple in the purple hills, invisible except for the glitter of yellow lights, looking like so many fireflies. There is a warm haze around it where the lights met the darkness, and for a moment I doubt that this treasure of a sight really is the city I think it is. The blue-black dark presses closer around me, and for a minute, I am stirred by a sense of longing, like a faded Eden wish-

and then it is gone. And I shiver, and the city is itself again, and I push off down the slope toward it. But later, as I drive home that night, I see a glimmer of the jewel-city from the mountain among the sullen and the dingy and the ordinary, like a ghostly afterimage on my heart.

character (noun) - the distinctive nature of an individual

The second time I stood inside Grand Central Station was much different than the first. Then, it was the wee hours of the morning on a holiday, and I could stare around to my heart’s content, taking in the tall ceilings and sweeping archways as long as I wanted. The next time, it was 5:00 on a Friday, and if I would have looked up for a second I would have been swept away by the swarming rush of people bulging around me. As I stood tucked against one wall while Eric got our subway tickets, one hand clutching my purse and the other wrapped around the handle of our little suitcase, all I could do was watch the tide of people passing me. 

Stories. Thousands of stories.

If I could sit down for an hour with every single one of the people I saw in those few minutes, what could they have told me? What stories were they living? The young man with the scarf and the guitar… the woman with the spiky heels and wild hair… the wispy old man with the square glasses and green cane… what adventures were they all racing off to?

Then Eric came back, triumphantly flourishing two loaded Metro cards, and we joined the sweep of stories flowing through the station, cramming into subway cars, pounding up stairs, and spewing out into the streets of the city.

Later that night, we sat in a café near a Whole Foods grocery store, sharing some ice cream. It was crowded, of course, and people all around us were eating, so it was a while before I actually noticed the peculiar meal the man a few tables away from us was enjoying.

You know Clarence, George Bailey’s guardian angel from It’s A Wonderful Life? That’s what this guy looked like. He had a bag of buns and box of several sticks of butter on the table in front of him. Very methodically, he would take out a bun and tear it in half. Then he’d slice one half, cut a chunk of butter, and sandwich it between the bread. Once he’d eaten that, he would cut another chunk of butter and smear it across the end of the unsliced bun, then eat it. After two buns, he put what was left of his meal into a bag and stood, buttoning his long jacket. Then he left, and I watched him go, perplexed.

Why? Why eat that? Why in that strange, deliberate manner? And why in the café? Why not take it home? He was too clean and well-dressed to be homeless, and he didn’t have the beaten-down air of someone without job or family, either. Over and over, the same question spun through my head as Eric and I finished our ice cream.

What was his story? 

Was there some strange, sad significance about his chosen meal and manner? Was it a hopeless tryst he kept, or the last meal he planned to eat? Maybe there was some reason from home that made him pause to eat it then: perhaps it was a strange act of spite directed toward an unhappy wife.

I didn’t get answers from the bread-and-butter man, of course. And I didn’t get answers from any of the other people we saw in during our weekend in New York City, either. Not from the man standing across from us on the subway, wearing colorful pants with faces all over them. Not from the tourists taking pictures in Times Square, laughing and talking loudly in heavy southern accents. Not from the dancing street vender we bought kabobs from, who knew all the words to the Black-Eyed Peas song “The Dirty Bit”. Not from the owner of the bagel shop where we ate lunch among paper menorahs and dreidels and “Happy Hanukkah” banners. And not from all the women we passed who all looked the same:  wool coats and tall boots, wool coats and tall boots, wool coats and tall boots.  Over and over again, the questions stumbled through my mind, badgering silently.

What is your story? 

It wasn’t until a man in Times Square tried to sell us tickets to a comedy club that something else occurred to me.

“It’ll be fun!” he said, talking fast as we tried to slide past him. “Great date night, even for a gal with a coat like yours.”

Now, I know bright blue coats are not exactly city fashion, as most people seem to prefer more subtle, neutral colors: black and brown and grey. But this man’s insult to my favorite jacket stopped my writer’s brain from taking notes on the characters around me long enough for a new thought to lodge in my head.

He was people watching, too… and he thought I was a curiosity! Suddenly our roles were reversed: I was the character, he the writer taking notes on people. On me! What questions would he have for me if he had an hour to talk with me? Would my real story match up with his guesses? Maybe, in places, but I doubt he’d guess all of it.

The man with the flyers probably saw me and thought, “Tourist”. When I refused his brochure, he may have been able to guess from my accent that I’m not a native of the east coast. I was holding Eric’s hand, so he knew we were a couple. But he couldn’t have come close to guessing the deeper things, the ones that really define who I am, any more than I could for any of the characters I took mental notes on.

Really, I know that he didn’t give a darn about my story: he was probably just trying to get the attention of an obvious tourist long enough to persuade us to go to his show. But now, seeing myself as the object of another’s people-watching entertainment, I knew there was no way he could have guessed every detail of my life any more than I could know the thousands of stories I bumped into that weekend.

I don’t know the bread-and-butter man’s sense of humor. I don’t know who the singing, dancing street vendor is in love with. I don’t know what the bagel shop owner’s hopes are for the future (does he want to own that bagel shop forever?). I don’t know if all the women in wool coats and boots, wool coats and boots, wool coats and boots are hopeful or depressed, healthy or sick, spiritual or unreligious, dreamers or cynics. But I know that their stories are as multidimensional as mine, and I cannot just laugh at the man on the subway wearing the pants with faces on them. His soul is as rich as anyone’s, capable of the same growth, full of the same beautiful potential… and I just wish I had an hour to hear a little bit of his story.

amazed (adjective) - filled suddenly with wonder

Color. Bits and pieces of color, their edges blurred by the speed at which I passed them. That’s the first thing I started to notice, once I’d settled into our bike ride. 

You can’t pay attention to that at first: not until you’ve found a rhythm for the pumping legs, for the breathing that turns to panting by the second or third slope. Not until you’ve managed to get a grip on the nerves heightened by adrenaline to almost-fear.

But after that… after that, you start to notice other things. Like the small, teardrop leaves smeared into the mud of the trail, so bright red they’re almost glowing. I think they would have spelled something, some mystery of the fall, if I had slowed enough to really look. If I had stopped to understand the meaning behind the brilliant contrast.

But I was past them before I really saw them, flying down the narrow, twisting trail. Here the path went up along the edge of a bank, and then it squeezed between two trees so close together my handlebars scraped some of their bark away, now it whipped down and around a hill.

And then I was reminded again of the ruby leaves on the trail behind me, because now I was rushing though a different kind of treasure. Here, the woods were growing up out of a bed of ferns that, last time I saw them, were the shade of green only growing things can be. But now, days into October, they were dying in a haze of gold. Not yellow-gold like aspens in the fall, and not brown-gold like dead, crunching leaves, but gold-gold. Gold like a wedding band. One that’s been worn a while and doesn’t gleam like it used to, but is all the more beautiful for its dimmed surface.

I almost braked. I almost pushed my bike aside, off the trail, and crouched down in the ferns. I wanted them to be all around me because I knew that if they were, the steadiness of their color would crumble under my cautious examination, and I would find a million more shades in every fringed leaf.

But before I could curl my fingers over the brake handle and back toward me, my tires skidded sideways on a wet, slippery root, shattering the gold vision like glass and forcing my attention back to staying upright on my bike. When I looked again, we were past. But for the rest of that ride, I saw color.

Green in the slippery moss on the dark logs I jolted over.

White, in the wispy threads of a spider’s web, spun in the crack of a tree tilted across the trail.

Blue, in bits of the sky glimpsed on the way up out of a ravine.

Orange in bright maple leaves, glowing like stained glass, lit by the day’s late sun.

And then it wasn’t just color I noticed. I wasn’t just seeing: I was soaking up more sound than just my own breathing, more than just the click and catch of shifting gears. I heard the steady rush of traffic whispering insistently on the other side of the fence, hidden from sight but so close to the tangled trees through which we rode. I listened for the crackle of underbrush that came when I startled a squirrel crouching too close to the path. And I smelled the rich, bittersweet smell of autumn: the decay of wet leaves, and the ripeness of a season of scattering out and gathering in.

We crossed a creek after that, and for a while I was caught up in the strain and whoosh of short, steep climbs and dips. But though I was focused on the ride, the sights and smells and sounds of the brilliant fall world around me washed over me in a delightful blur. I couldn’t tell you exactly what the mottled yellow oak leaves looked like, or how the wet, crumbling tree fallen along the trail smelled, or what the shrill call sounding in the distance was… but I was wonderfully aware of the beauty of the world I was in. The thrill of the difficult trail heightened my senses so I could notice these things, and it kept them precious by the haste with which it propelled me past them.

Has there ever been a fall like this before? Have those trees ever shuddered with that exact shade of red? And when was the last time the earth breathed out such an alluring autumn breath? The mix of sounds from people and nature soak the world’s ears in a harmony that, until now, this very moment, has been unheard. On this one adventure in this one afternoon of this one fall, I have been blessed. I have been blessed by the sight of this particular kind of vibrant grace, by the sound of this single note of quiet joy. I have been given the chance to breathe in the offerings of a kind of passing beauty that will never come again. And it makes me wonder, then, about the countless other graces and joys and beauties that are bursting to life in tiny explosions all around me. I only pray that I would somehow be made aware of them the way a bike ride has tuned me in to the glory of this fall afternoon.