That Which the Heart Most Desires

You searched through all the world for it.
You couldn't see that you already had it.
There was only one way you could ever see it for what it was---
You had to lose it.
So I took it away.

Reflecting on Small Invertebrates

Today I was watching little red mites crawl around on the concrete in the warmth of the sun, and it dawned on me that there is such a huge variation in sizes amongst the small invertebrates that are such a familiar part of our backyard landscapes.

Those mites are about half a millimetre long. I thought to myself, "Just think if you were a little red mite. An earthworm would be a thousand feet long!" It's true. Earthworms are very normally 200 times as long as red mites. There isn't any living thing on earth that's that much bigger than us! That's three times as long as the highest redwood. Imagine the Bank of Montreal Tower lying on its side, squirming around and eating dirt.

Now think about how big we are. Multiply your actual height by 3 000 to find out your "mite height." By that calculation, I'm about 19 000 ft tall, which is roughly the elevation---above sea level---of Mount Logan, Canada's highest mountain. Do you feel big now?

We live side-by-side with these little invertebrates, yet we experience the world in such completely different ways. A little slab of concrete is like an enormous parking lot. A shoe is like an asteroid. Do they think that we're gods? We come crashing out of the sky without warning, and we thunder upon the earth like walking mountains, crushing inferior life forms beneath our feet and not even realizing it, cutting down mile-wide swaths of thousand-foot forests with our push mowers. We have more power than they could ever imagine. We are so much bigger, so much more intellegent, so much more powerful that we really couldn't care less about them; they're only here for such a short time and then they're gone. But it's really a matter of perspective, isn't it?

Now as I sit here the seriousness is setting in. What if some one really was that much bigger than us---that much more intellegent, that much older, wiser, more sophisticated? Would he have any reason to care about us? I mean, really, why should God care about us more than we care about a mite? It isn't a fair comparison, of course. We're just fellow creatures along with the mites. But God cares enough to make and sustain us and the mites and everything else. And God wants to spend time with us. He cares so deeply for us who are so small. Maybe you don't think mites are worth thinking about. God's perspective is different; he doesn't see things like we do.

Reflections on Understanding

Today’s thoughts and theories are tossed into tomorrow’s rubbish heap; but one might yet hope that some day a tramp will pick through all that rubbish and uncover something of true value.

Truth is one indivisible entity; it is the sum total of everything in the cosmos—every atom, every burst of energy and pulse of light, every thought and every feeling of every living thing throughout the entirety of time. Every part of the truth is connected to every other part. You can not understand anything completely unless you understand everything. The truth, therefore, is contained in the fulness of all things. Because the unity of the whole is broken, true understanding is impossible. No one can discern the whole truth about anything on his own. The discernment of each person is meant to complement the discernment of all the others. However, sin has destroyed the unity of the whole of the cosmos. No person is connected to the whole. Each person’s discernment is limited by disconnectedness and by the misunderstanding which this causes. If all people were connected by respect and by appreciation for each others’ gifts as well as for God and the creation, then a collective understanding of truth could arise, and many things could be discerned which now remain matters of dispute.

In order for us to understand things better, we should strengthen our connections to as much of the cosmos as possible, and we should train ourselves to be aware of the interconnectedness of the people and things around us. I have found it to be beneficial to meditate on the possibilities of connectedness in simple objects around the house, or in a park. Who made them? Who used them, and who will? How might these objects have related to these people, and how does this tie all these people to me? We can foster our connectedness to others relationally. By serving other people in Christian love, we come to appreciate them and learn from them, and we can share in their discernment and they in ours.

This is a poem which I wrote last spring during a difficult time of personal wrestling. Although I don't entirely support the perspectives that I have voiced here, I believe that this is one of my deepest and most profound writings. It explores the restless search for hope in the midst of an apparently overwhelming emptiness and apathy. Enjoy :)


Weary From Walking

Weary from walking,
Long having wandered
Dusty desert roads,
Looking for what had been.

Searching in emptiness,
Seeking after something
Taken away too soon,
Too cheaply.

Haunting dry desolation;
Not knowing how or where.
Those who were there have gone;
They have forgotten.

The next hill,
The next valley,
Nothing but rock and sand.
Futility.

Eroding resolve;
Being beyond the end.
Abdication to apathy;
Awful silence.

A dove drifts through the sky;
In her mouth she carries a leaf,
A sign for a new age.
It is dry and brittle.