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----- Original Message -----
From: Debbie Sawczak
To: 'Lance Muir'
Sent: March 15, 2006 21:41
Subject: A few lines from Gilead I am currently reading it, and it's wonderful. In case you don't know or have forgotten, it's a letter written by a dying father, an ordained minister, to his son. Whether we will be looking back from heaven (as so many Christians believe) or from a renewed earthly existence, I think the following is true of this present life: "I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only the lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try." …because it will all have been part of the dance; or, in Wrightian vocabulary, it will all have been part of the same drama even when we are in the six, seventh, and Nth acts. That is why Luther would still plant a tree. That is the triumph of redemption. Even this life will always retain the indescribable dignity lent it by the Incarnation, which will go on being The Song forever (as numerous hymns, not to mention the Revelation of St John, maintain). It's enough to make one weep, isn't it? D |
Title: A few lines from Gilead
