The Past, and Longing of the Soul

I want to take time today to write about the past. Not necessarily my past, though my past affects who I am and what I write; this past I write of is more the abstract idea of past, and how it should be thought of. Far greater minds have handled this in greater depth than I will ever go into in my entire lifetime, but that will not dissuade me from sharing my thoughts. I cannot tell you what will be the result of these thoughts, much like the astronauts did not know what to expect from the moon by only looking at it. Only by treading on the moon did they feel it and know it more fully. 

No one can escape their past, you cannot run from who you are. The past is the chain and ball shackled around your ankle that you must take with you everywhere you go; some pasts are more burdensome than others, but you are terribly misled if you think you are the only one with baggage, the only person who feels the paralyzing guilt or shame or regret that so often accompanies the past. We seem to go around our world with this suspicion that every person we meet has their world swept and put in order; but there are few thoughts more selfish than thinking that you are the only one who is affected by the curse of history, and many atrocities have occurred as a result of this belief. One example: the French and British were upset at Germany because of the First World War, and being the victors they decided to unfairly force Germany to sign the crippling Versailles treaty, as a result Germany lost its national dignity and pride and turned to Adolf Hitler to bring them back to power, thus starting the Second World War and the Holocaust. Thousands of unnecessary deaths happened because the French and the British thought they were the only ones who had trouble during the First World War. Of course, that is a bit different than the individual past we all face, but it proves the point that others face painfully unforgettable histories as well.

I once wrote, "Linger in the past, but not for long, for the past will tie you down while the future carries you away." This still holds true, and as the older I get the more I realize how much deeper that line goes. It is not wrong to "linger in the past", in fact, I believe it is a necessity to look to the past to find answers. The old apothegm "history repeats itself" implies the past is a valuable teacher to not make the same mistakes our predecessors did. The problem with the past however, is that it is a much like a swamp: the further you go in, the harder it is to find your way out.  "The past will tie you down" explains the enticing power of the past to cloud the mind, blocking off the current surroundings while filling it with visions of the past. In this fog, the mind is kept prisoner, while it slowly decays into a nostalgia and melancholy that is crippling: a potent depression. In The Odyssey, this is portrayed by the Lotus Eaters. In Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem about the Lotus Eaters creatively titled, "The Lotos-Eaters", he writes this line:

"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

The past will forge in the mind a sweet dream of what used to be, or in this case what could be, but instead of pushing on towards the dream, it seems better to sit and create a fictional world. This is the danger lingering in the past creates, but the worst part may be that time never stops ticking. The future will soon come to present, and if one is caught up in the past then there is no hope of betterment in life. Be careful of nostalgia.

However, the past can sometimes be a golden ray of light to the hopeless wanderer, though this ray of sunshine comes not in light, but in word, one untranslatable German word in particular: sehnsucht.  I am not the first to stumble across this word, and certainly am not the only one to relate to its definition. In what could possibly be the best Wikipedia page ever, it says this:

"Sehnsucht represents thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences. It has been referred to as “life’s longings”; or an individual’s search for happiness while coping with the reality of unattainable wishes. Such feelings are usually profound, and tend to be accompanied by both positive and negative feelings. This produces what has often been described as an ambiguous emotional occurrence."

Hebrews 11:13-16 provides in part a Biblical summary of this longing:

"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city."

This longing is present in every human being, though many are oblivious to this longing. C.S. Lewis is the greatest academic mind responsible for the most, though few, thoughts on sehnsucht, but even he did not fully realize what he had discovered. Sehnsucht describes a longing buried deep beneath the dirt of the daily life and troubles, but there are times when it is felt more than others. I believe it is unearthed for a time when the cold sting of death touches a life near to your heart. I felt this when my father died, and as the years have gone by I realize more and more the power this discovery has. The day my father passed away, I remember laying in my bed for much of the morning, paralyzed. My thoughts were stars dotted across the sky that I could not put into constellations; but as I lay there, I found myself realizing mortality. My grandma and step-grandpa had passed away before my father, so I had seen death's face replace the familiar one in my memories with the one in the coffin, but there was a certain abstractness that shielded my adolescent mind from the full view of death. I was thirteen when I thought about the concept of death and life in depth for the first time, and I assure you it was not the last. In my father's death, part of my soul was exhumed for a time, and I glimpsed into the longing I had for an eternal something possessed by a certain vagueness. I can never know fully what lies behind the shroud of this great mystery while I walk the earth, but I will never stop trying to knowing this mystery more.
I find sehnsucht in life every so often, because there are some things that are such a part of me that for a short time I find myself thinking of a far-off country, one where I know I belong. I hear it in the violin piece of Vivaldi's Spring, I see it as the snowflakes fall thickly in the cold morning air and land softly on the pure powdered ground, when I see a father put a hand on his young son's shoulder and drawing his son nearer says that he is proud of him, the soft crunch of the leaves underfoot as the scent and smoke of the campfire drifts away in the wind, reading George Gray by Edgar Lee Masters, recalling a storm lazily float across the sky of Montego Bay as I watched from a distant mountaintop, and when reading Frodo's soliloquy at the end of The Return of the King. This longing reaches each and every sense of the body, and at times will make me quake and weep as my soul shakes off more and more dirt revealing more of the yearning I have for a land so close, yet so far away.

Sehnsucht belongs to every human, but many do not understand what it truly means, even in simple terms. There are pieces of the past that are important to this desire, and there are things yet to come that will make us realize it more. C.S. Lewis put it this way in "The Problem with Pain",

  "All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand." 

As a reader, you cannot understand my sehnsucht like I can, because it was made for me, but I urge you to seek your own longings in your life. Write them down, tell them out loud, and maybe they might provide you more comfort, or maybe they will cause only more longing. Just always remember: linger in the past, but not for long, for the past will tie you down while the future carries you away.

Comparisons from the Dish Room

I hold a splendid job in the university dish room, which I would like to point out that it is not as bad as it is made out to be, but I could think of far better ways to earn money. One of the (few) things I enjoy from doing this job is that it provides mindless work, which gives my mind time to wander into the pathways of itself. Tonight offered such an opportunity, and my brain tends to see everyday items of the world and create either imaginative scenarios or applicable life lessons, depending on the mood I happen to be in. Tonight the dishes began to form themselves into people, while the conveyor belt portrayed life which slowly drifts along while pulling the willing and unwilling at the same, constant speed into the unknown. The conveyor speed in this illustration represents time, of which clocks remind us that it always goes at the same rate, but depending on the circumstances, time might seem to move faster or slower. Time flies when you are having fun, which is probably why my one hour and forty five minute shift of painfully sweating in the steamy dish room might seem like forty five hours and one minute. What I would not give to get a fan blowing on me as I stand there.

There comes a time in my shift where I am comfortable enough with what I am doing to think of other things. My shift on this particular night saw the plates become as people to my minds eye. I realized, as I so often do when I decide to journey out of my shelter (physical and mental), that behind every colorful plate lies a story. Why did a normally healthy person decide to get pizza and ice cream on this night? Why did this person get a salad? It is questions guided under the phrase "dig deeper" that prods myself to ask more questions. Is this person eating good tasting food because they are upset? Which prompts the further question as to why are they upset? There is always an explanation for things, and anyone who does not think so is as dull as the steak knives used in an insane asylum. There is always some story behind the daily lives of everyday people, and whether the stories are humorous or serious, important or unimportant does not matter so much compared to the weight of knowing other people.

The idea of deeper meanings becomes important when faced with challenges in meaningless toil and actions. "The benefit of the doubt" seems to, in a cliche way, summarize what I am trying to say, but the problem with cliches is that they lose their meaning when thoughtlessly uttered, not so unlike saying "in Jesus' name, amen" at the end of prayers, but that is another topic altogether. "The benefit of the doubt" is attempting to reign in in a few words the thorn in the side to the moral justification of humanity: patience. To give the time to think through why someone was speeding past you, or cut you in line, or did anything that ever has yanked your chain, is to already be doing better than seventy five percent of the world (this is an educated guess, and by educated I mean up to the education level of a freshman in college). To put it plainly, you would want someone to be kind to you when you are having a rough day; and even when you are having a not so grand day, there are a great deal of things happening in the world to far more morally innocent people that are much worse than your circumstances. I am treading into territory I was not planning on going into, but I need to clarify. There are times when what life throws at you is harsh and undeserved in the sense of whether or not you did anything morally bad, but life is not driven by a force dedicated to making things fair for all, I know just as much as anyone. Some days you are having a bad day, but do not think by attempting to bring others down to your level you will gain any lasting satisfaction. Tread on this earth lightly.

The cups drew the attention of my wandering mind as well. The thing with all of the dishes, especially cups, is that they all go through the same dishwasher and are cleansed equally, but some look dirtier than others. This too is similar to life, particularly the lives of Christians saved by the grace shown on the cross by Christ. Each cup has its own disenchanting past, from being filled with only life bringing water to some repulsive creation induced by a peculiar yet brave college student. No matter how many times a cup is filled with water, or something addictive like Dr. Pepper or coffee, one time of being filled with a polluting substance might forever change the hue of the cup; so too with people. One experience might corrupt the perception of a person to the point where outwardly they look disgusting; the refuse of the world. Like the cups are still clean after washed, no matter how brown they look; people are able to be cleansed by Christ no matter the deeds they have done. As I have found though, the color does not change, but you are clean. Once Christ forgives you, it does not make your memories of the foul past disappear into oblivion. Your past is tattooed onto your soul and etched painfully into the rock of your mind, it will not leave you until the day you die. The beautiful truth about all this though is that you are still cleansed, the Bible goes so far as to say you are whiter than snow.

Learn to be aware to the sufferings of others, and if you are not in a position where you can encourage them, do not heap on more troubles. There is more to the earth than what is on the surface; dig deeper, learn patience and practice forgiveness intertwined with understanding.

My Recent Realizations

It has been quite some time since I wrote on here, and though sadly this post is not to benefit its readers by nature; but maybe, dear reader, by my thoughts and realizations you, may gain something applicable to your life.

I have always had the notion that to please God with my life, I must become a pastor. Unfortunately, for most of that journey my head left my heart out of the decision making. I reasoned out of my largely stereotypical Christian upbringing that becoming a pastor was good and pleasing to the Lord.(I am not criticizing how children are raised up in the church, and I am ever grateful for my youth, but there is a blandness and repetition to the stories of many children of my generation, "I was saved in Sunday school in second grade," etc.). It is indeed true being a pastor can be acceptable to the Lord, but I thought in my life it was the only way to make my life a worthy sacrifice to the Lord. So instead of questioning my "desires" for becoming a pastor, I left them mostly untouched as if debating before God my life's path would pollute my pure desires. One of my recent revelations was that even though being a pastor could be acceptable to Christ, if it is not where my heart was, therefore I do not think that it would be acceptable to God. You see, in my recent quandary over this, I have finally brought before the Lord what my desires are to become a pastor. What I have found is that my desires are not so much desires of the heart and out of passion for the church, but obligation. To me now, if I stay my current course, becoming a pastor would not be something pleasing before God. It would be like the animal sacrifices of the Jews which were made not out of heartfelt repentance, but from obligation. I do not want to waste my life on something I am not passionate about, even if that something is generally a good thing.

I see now I have a couple directions to take after I realized that, and most of them include patience and prayer. Those directions are determined wholly by God's will of course, but I know and am not afraid to share the possibilities. I could continue my current trajectory and become a pastor, but if I were to do this, my heart would have to be in it and it would be something made out of want and not obligation. The other major option before me (major as in large and also academic major. Clever, right?) is to study English. The reason for that is simple, I enjoy reading and writing more than most other things and those are two things I am extremely passionate about. Even if I chose to change majors, going to seminary and becoming a pastor are not out of the question though, I would just have another option such as becoming an English teacher or professor or a writer, if I so desired. One quote I read in a book recently spoke to me like an oasis in the middle of a barren desert:

 "I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily." - Martin Luther, Letter to Eoban Hess

So to change majors may not turn out to be a large change, but it is only something I must consider and I wholly believe God wants me to ponder these things in my heart. I do not believe God wants Christians to follow in blind faith the paths which seem religiously holier, but rather He wants mankind to pursue His will for life, and many times pursuing means questioning, not with doubt but with wisdom and faith.

Many might consider Abraham a huge cog in the beneficial nature of blind faith, but Abraham did not follow with blind faith. Hebrews 11:19 says  "He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back." Abraham believed not in blind faith, but in the power of the living God and his promises. So too with my life, do I want to believe in the power of God and the promises he has made to His bride.