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C.S. Lewis Addresses Desire

We desire what we have never known.

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.

We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter…

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.”

Ours Is A Story of Repair

Ours is a Story of Repair

Ours is a story of repair.

We came to it broken.

Torn images, missing scenes.

You remember a red butterfly.

I remember yellow angel trumpets.

We wanted honey.

Bees were everywhere.

And they stung, never the same bee, never the same reaction.

We made our own hives and stored our questions.

Did the daisies pop up on their own, or did we plant them?

If our stories aren’t the same, which one is true?

I remember baby ducks hiding from the heat under the cactus.

You remember seeing your breath in the cold morning air.

One of us remembers a blue-belly lizard dead in her pocket.

Yet another, standing on a stool by the kitchen sink washing mother’s hair.

We pretended fairies were as real as butterflies and pansies had faces.

Did we run away, climb out an open window or were we yanked out by desperate DNA?

Who crushed the wings of the Song Bird we couldn’t name?

Even now can we bear to own our part?

We did a lot of spinning.

We quit pointing fingers.

When we were at our best, we prayed.

Stories opened their arms to us.

We ran to capture every word.

One story and then another and another.

We found God in places we felt alone

We named all that could be named.

We surrendered our pasts.

We became the good endings of our dreams.

We learned… if it isn’t good it isn’t the end.

Who God Designed Me to Be

Song of a Bruised Camellia

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I’m not the flower everyone thinks I am.
I am not the flower.
I am not her.
Not that one.
I am another one.
Whether I’d like to admit it or not, my fragrance is not the one most preferred.
I’m not that fragrance.
I’m not her.
I am another one.

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, my petals are not those pristine orbed pillows
Prompted out of hiding by the dappled shade of spring.
I am not a gardenia. I am a camellia. People often mix us up. Gardenia spreads her blooms from spring to summer, but I am different. My blooms appear among the first bloomers of Spring and then they quickly fall to the ground and bruise under everything and anything close and prevalent. Especially air.

It’s true I live in a region where once a year an entire festival is held in my honor. It is a ghastly affair (if you are a flower) during which an enormous spectrum of all varieties of my kind are placed in exotic vases or mounted on creatively altered apparatus so as to reveal their most stunning profiles. The flowers are hideously ranked according to the tastes and expectations of fickle viewers.

This shouldn’t surprise me.

It happens to everything in the created order. Gardeners are not immune to falling into the same traps the whole of society forces upon them. What makes it particularly difficult is my inability to change myself into that other flower. Even if I could, I imagine the confusion would be repeated by those who were unable to identify me in my original state. I have succumbed to the pressure before. Deciding to proclaim myself a this or a that, rather than saving my efforts to be fully who I am based on the genealogy given to me by my Maker. It was a disaster.

I am the flower God designed me to be.

I am His Flower.
I am His Her.
I am His one.
I am the fragrance God breathed into me.
My breath is from God.
I am His.

I bruise easily.

I am short-lived. The very air around me presses in and leaves a mark. I was not designed for competitions but rather to be loved and to bring beauty into the world. Not for beauty’s sake alone, but for the sake of turning people on their heels, for bringing them up short and making them stop and ask how is it that such a dainty thing could come randomly into existence? Given my short blooming season, I understand how my value could be overlooked, but even when my blooms are dormant, my glossy leaves make magnificent nets for the sunshine and extraordinary mirrors for God the Master Gardener. Nothing was spared in my creation to reveal a tiny, teeny facet of the abundance of God’s astonishing resources that were lovingly expended for me.

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I’m not the flower everyone thinks I am.
I am not the flower.
I am not her.
Not that one.
I am another one.

Grandmother Thanks Little

The Woodcutter’s Daughter

Long before the Grimm’s brothers shut down their law firm,
and owned up to their art,
I shuddered swiftly from shadow to shadow,
the big bad pursuing.
To where? For what?
All I knew was to hide or keep going.

Yours was a story slipped from God through me,
through my mother,
through her mother
through the mother before,
erupting first through Eve.

Just like Eve, I hid behind the moon white gardenias,
longing with bruised desire,
waiting for its scent to keep its promise
and return us to the garden.

Distracted by my longing, I forgot everyone else, especially you,
the sweet and innocent Woodcutter’s Daughter.
selectively listening, strung out by half-baked understanding
throwing the Woodcutter’s wealth to the false fires
of what kept me cold and hungry.

But then the Grimm’s caught wind of our story, arrived
just after big bad hid his fangs in a rumor,
stuffed his claws in a lie and delivered his most persuasive speech.
Seeing me worry-weak, settling for lesser than less,
they sent you from The Woodcutter’s hearth
and into my world with your luscious basket
and the red hooded cape I forced you to wear.

But for your timely pleas, your child-like cries for help,
your unfaltering dependence on The Woodcutter, I
would have been dead consumed, our story lost in
legal practicalities.

Thank you.

Intents and Purposes excerpt (pg. 3)

Yellow.
The suitcase is as close to yellow as any other color.
For a surprise,
the sisters wrap it with ribbons.

The brothers scratch blessings
in its yellow side.

The lovers latch arms.
This is why they think
they are strong, why they believe they have power.
There is strength
in their arms.
They embrace everything. Lift much.
Carry more.
The way is surprisingly rough.

She doesn’t mention the presence of hills
Ignores the ruts, sees only small declivities,
no ditches, no peaks, certainly no cliffs.

The road narrows, erupts with trees.
An unexpected wind sweeps down.

Avoiding the wind, she runs.
Years of running begin.
To slow her down, wild animals appear.
Wild animals distract her.
She dare not stay, dare not linger.
Wild animals can never be tamed.

Birds. Far off, now closer.
Finally, alarmingly near, in her face,
her hair, frisking her shoulders.
Infantry of feathers.
Battalion of beaks.

Intents and Purposes (excerpt pg. 2)

She knows nothing.
Less than nothing.
This is what she knows.
She has agreed to what
she does not know, to what
she believes will be easy.

Something black.
Something white.

Knowing she knows nothing
happens later. This is now.
Now she does not cry.
She leaves her weeping behind.
Behind is where
her weeping remains.

A ring is slipped on her finger.
A circle of gold.
And then on his, his hand is
also captured with gold.
Pictures are taken.
Pictures help with
remembering.
Nothing is needed
to help them forget.
Forgetting is easier
than remembering.

Between them is a suitcase.