It's a shiny blue day around Husborne Crawley. A real lark's on the wing - God's in his/her heaven - all's right with the world kind of a day.
Which of course leads me to wonder a little on the nature of the world. Those tadpoles, squirming so cutely in the warmth of the Frog Pond, will become food for mosquito larvae, other tadpoles, cats, and herons as their little lives progress. That Northampton Town won the first playoff semi-final means that Cheltenham lost. The midge that hovers over the Husbourne brook, dancing like magic in the strengthening light, is the trillionth to do so - and tomorrow will rest, like its trillion predecessors, in the gravel on the bank.
Such brilliance, yet transcience. Such joy, yet suffering. As ever I turn to the possibilities - a world of physics alone, where death and life are mathematical outcomes of probability, and futility the utter end. Or a world apparently created by a whimsical God - one capable of giving us the laws that mean I can walk this earth knowing that, mostly, I can walk around without suddenly falling straight through - where I can, from one minute to the next, be assured of my continuance. And yet one where those same laws - acting, as it may be, through a stray encoding error on a gene, can produce a cancer, or a dreadful and fatal condition in an unborn child. A world where my freedom to heal lies alongside the opportunity to kill.
And I'm going to go with that whimsical God. I'm going to believe there's a deeper Magic below the prosaic surface. I'm going to assume that, random and scary though this life is, the point is buried in there somewhere. I'm going to believe that today's clear blue sky above my head is a way in for a comet, and a protection against cosmic rays - and is a reminder of a Protecting Veil above us. I'm going to assume that our hope and futility meet at a cross made of wood on a hillside under a darkling sky. And I will be amazed, and awed, and apprehensive. But I will not be afraid. At least, not all the time.
Oh the paradoxes of life in this world. 'God saw everything he had make and it was good' - exactly how it is all good remains a mystery when we come up against the dreadful stuff. I love your assumption that "our hope and futility meet at a cross made of wood on a hillside under a darkling sky". Yes, I cling to that too.
ReplyDeleteThe cross gives hope, but not an easy hope. The kind of cheerful 'everything is wonderful in it's own way' hope becomes worse than meaningless when the really bad things happen - which they do.
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