This life can be so mind-boggling, so utterly overwhelming, that language fails. In a sense, language will always be inadequate to express what we deeply feel and surprisingly discover. But today I’ll try to form a few thoughts about this wildly beautiful and at once deeply disturbing life that we live: mind-bogglingly glorious and also intensely pain-filled.
This past summer I once again visited the medieval city Steinau-an-der-Strasse in Hessen, Germany, famous for having been the childhood home of the Grimm brothers of fairytale renown. Whenever I’m there, I walk over to the centuries-old well built into the thick city wall, in modern times contained with pipes, the medieval stonework the same, its steps leading down to the pool, the very one where my mother, as a refugee in the aftermath of World War II, washed the family laundry. 
This double image of family history is extraordinary to me, the double image of trauma and peace: the picture of my mother kneeling here, cleansing clothing in this very spot, and decades later me standing here with my husband as the water continues to flow. Quiet marvels in a long story. The wonder of it all is that we get to be alive on what Madeleine L’Engle has called this “swiftly tilting planet.”
I marvel too when I consider how the Berlin Wall was built when I was a little girl, and how today I can hold a piece of that once formidable barrier in the palm of my hand. 
When I pass around this rock to my university students, some gasp, “This is history! History!” and some ask, “What was the Berlin Wall?” It is amazing, is it not, that while many of us did not expect to see this wall gone in our lifetime, it went. Today I’m privileged to show this rock as an illustration that paradigms change. Just when we think some things are fixed, will continue indefinitely, they vanish. We ought to be careful, ought we not, as to how we navigate paradigms. The unbalancing through paradigm change, while often disturbing, can be healthy too. I’m reminded of walking on the unevenness of cobblestone paths.
Living as I do on Canada’s West Coast, the cobblestone streets of Europe enchant me. And they’re not the easiest things to walk on. The ancient stones are so well-worn that you can easily lose your footing, step awry into the gaps between stones, slip when you thought your stability was a sure thing. Walking these paths where many feet have travelled requires a certain wariness to maintain your balance. 
You’d be a fool to just march on as if you owned the road, as if the unaccustomed road would shape itself to your desires, as if the smoother pavement you’re used to walking on is everywhere. It isn’t. But wearing comfortable shoes while treading gingerly on old, cobbled paths helps in rebalancing. And in the rebalancing, it also awakens in me enchantment—the wonder that I am walking where people over the centuries have walked. I catch my breath, realizing anew that I have a small part in a long story. And this should give me great pause, to consider what their lives might have been like, to consider which paradigms they understood that have since shifted or even disappeared altogether, to listen to their words as best as I can. I’d be a fool to not care about what they can say to me.
A medieval well, a historic rock, cobblestone paths—these all astonish me, fill me with awe. These images sit somewhere alongside my perplexity over the frenzy of this world, in part owing to racing technological advances (oh sure, we like some of them). But today, especially as we are confronted with what we often call the growing normalization of hatred, my perplexity grows. It boggles the mind. With grief I consider, for example, how I went to school with the children of Holocaust survivors who began a new full life in Canada, and a few decades later with my Jewish friends I fear the rising anti-Semitism in our beautiful country and around the globe. This grief is compounded by the underlying idea that violence against people with whom you disagree on political and/or religious grounds and/or lifestyle choices is considered justifiable by the hate-filled. When words become bullets, bullets follow. And who is not guilty of having entertained cruel thoughts, spoken evil words? Some words can kill; others give life. Words can destroy or foster goodness. We get to choose which it’ll be: all day long we get to choose which kind of words we’ll speak, and it matters, it matters greatly.
In this mind-boggling life, where the simultaneous experiences of beauty and grief can feel like mental whiplash, I wonder how best to live. Whether our lives are perceived as long or short—and they’re all short in view of world history and especially in light of eternity—I wonder how to rebalance in order to be and do what I am called to be and do. When someone bursts out, “They killed him!”, and another says, “I got kicked in the gut!” time seems to have stopped in that split second, and the earth under me wobbles a bit more. How do my lungs begin to inhale hope again?
When a colleague asked me at the start of this autumn semester what I was hoping for, this picture came to me: I was hoping for a helium balloon in my spirit that would rise above the Oh no, look at. . . . As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote so tenderly to his son Michael during World War II, “There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet. . . .” 
A small image of the helium hope came to me along a walkway around McMillan Lake on my campus, an old swing from a willow tree beckoning still. Also the words of Psalm 24 on this same pathway begin thus: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. . . .” Stopping to reflect on such things steadies me some. A few other recent experiences point to ultimate Joy.
When I consider that the newly conceived grandchild did not get to see the light of this world, and is now with the Lord Jesus, I experience peace beyond understanding which softens my layers of grief. Flowers from a dear friend remind me of what they say: the veil between this life and eternity is very thin. I believe it to be so.
When friends can celebrate a book launch, as we did the other day for Stephen Dunning’s The Perilous Times Saga, rightness is restored to a significant measure in the midst of other things. (Recommendation: once you read Suzie and the Magic Turnip, you can hardly wait to read the next volumes.)
When I hear the music behind me on a neighbourhood walkway, and suddenly see the skateboarder zooming past, singing melodically, playing his guitar—such balance, such beauty, such fearlessness—I exalt. Am I dreaming? Am I awake?
When I recall the young girl at the beach this summer coming up from the flats of the low, low tide, cradling in her arms the shells she has collected, her face all aglow with a beautiful gentle smile over her treasure, I come awake again to the thrill of Splendour in this world.
So, in all things that gobsmack, outright boggle the mind, both through terrific evils and through the greater good all around, I canter along on my life’s path. Sometimes I slip, sometimes I fall, sometimes it’s all I can do to stand, but at all times I am held by the One who holds everything in his utterly capable hands. With Julian of Norwich, I speak her claim of the Great Hope: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Thanks for reading, for listening.
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Watch for my December blog: “Reading the Last Chapter.”
If maturation hasn’t fully happened by now, when might it? I do like Walter Hooper’s hearty dismissal of the idea that C. S. Lewis’s attitudes toward women changed from early sexism to increasing egalitarianism, especially through his marriage to Joy Davidman in later life, which goes like this: as if Lewis “did not know what life was about until the age of fifty-eight.”
I recall that pivotal moment in the department store when my eyes first spotted the chair and I made a beeline for it, plunked down into it, and started rocking away, marveling at this chair that was just my size, perfect in every way, and smiling up at my parents in the firm belief that the chair was mine, mine, just waiting for me. I wasn’t getting up any time soon, not until it was clear that this chair was coming home with me. There was no doubt in my mind that this was my chair, though I kind of knew I was getting away with something when my confidence resulted in my loving parents smiling down at me and then buying the chair. (No, my insistence on things didn’t always work, thank goodness. . . .) This child-sized rocking chair is a sweet memento of the childlike wonder and joy that I long to keep alive always. I admit, I had to dust the chair off somewhat just now, something I should really do more often. Yes, the intention to fan the flame of childlike wonder over the decades is no easy feat. Joy is too easily displaced by the grime of unworthy thoughts.
(Yes, you might recognize this loose paraphrase from Lewis’s The Four Loves).
The statement raises important questions. Am I seeking affirmation from others when instead I need to give love? Can I love people more without requiring a return on the investment? The idea is tricky because it could easily slide into vanity, aloofness, but the intention is that as I become more secure in knowing that I am loved by God, I can deepen, heal, grow stronger. And out of that better place I can become more loving.
It’s my privilege and my pleasure to teach some of my favorite authors like J.R.R. Tolkien to university students. More often than not they come to me as ardent Tolkien fans. Sometimes they wonder, “Was he sexist? Maybe racist?” and such questions make for much needed discussion. (Essentially, my position on these two important questions is “No. No.”) But not once have I met a student who doubted the author’s love of nature: of trees, trees, and of all green growing things. This celebration of the natural world, together with the indomitable courage of hobbits, elves, dwarves, and wizards against the forces of darkness, inspires hope. Middle-earth is worth fighting for. There’s something sacred at stake here.
The phrase, “And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,” from John Milton’s elegy “Lycidas” lingers in my mind as only a sorrowing beauty-filled thought can. Daffadillies, daffadillies—what lovely sounds to have roll off the tongue. Such beauty, and yet, yes, with such beauty, tears. Whole cups of tears, tears to overflowing.
“Weep no more . . . weep no more,
This would explain why the Canadian poet Al Purdy’s poem “A Handful of Earth” resonates with me. He writes,
Then he adds with a laugh, “My dears, you must not take yourselves so seriously. Why should school be easy for Charles Wallace?” Taken out of the context of the story, Blajeny’s response might seem uncaring, even cold, and possibly dangerous. But it’s clear in the story that this is not the case. The fact is that Blajeny cannot make Charles Wallace’s problem disappear. There is no magic wand. But Charles Wallace is learning to adapt and defend himself, and the once ineffective school principal Mr. Jenkins grows in moral character to the point where he looks forward to dealing with the problems in his schoolhouse. Unlike Meg’s small view of what this Teacher’s purpose is, Blajeny has arrived for the far greater reason of guiding his students into discovering the nature of their battle against evil, and therefore for strengthening their readiness to meet it.
Now that school or college and university has begun for many of us, I am left pondering Blajeny’s core challenge again: “Why should school be easy?” If I vote for “easy,” what am I looking for and, if I got it, would that be good? If I vote for “hard,” what should that be and why might that be better? Obviously, these questions can take us in several directions—the topic is that important. But for today I’d like to focus on Blajeny’s challenge: school should not be easy.
In his essay “Learning in War-time,” C. S. Lewis compares the educated person to the well-travelled one. He writes, “A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” Lewis, like others, was worried about the outcome of modern education based on moral relativism. Unlike the old idea of education founded on objective moral truth which is the basis for our freedom and intrinsic human worth, summed up nicely in the phrase “Veritas, Libertas, Humanitas”— Latin for “Truth, Liberty, Humanity”—a modern idea of education founded on moral relativism is the soil for enslavement and dehumanization. Lewis argues that moral relativism not only leads to inferior learning but opens the door to elite controllers who will work to reshape the masses to conform, and so enslave, to the agenda of their era. (See his book 
.) Does this sound like an overly harsh judgment on much of modern education? Maybe, or maybe not?
The everlasting country where the old are young again and where it is impossible to experience fatigue, fear, or sorrow. Where all is well again, where the best of each country lives, and where our stories will truly begin. With others, I long for this Great Beginning, the New Day. Meanwhile, with others, I cherish memories and glimpse new pictures of summer that warm my heart:
Monika Hilder 