( )

A long time ago, when I was in college, I liked to take long walks in the woods. I was very fortunate that the college I attended was situated in the midst of miles of thick forest; one of the trails followed a creek running through a long ravine terraced by many waterfalls. In the Autumn of my freshman year, I had seen shoeprints in the muddy trail, and the imprints were very distinctive--Bass brand shoes, the slender print of a girl's shoe. I followed the steps as far as I could, past the waterfalls, until they disappeared somewhere up the ravine. I had a strange notion that I'd find that girl eventually.

Not too much later, I did meet a girl whom I dated for years and eventually married. I discovered that she had a pair Bass shoes with soles in the exact pattern I'd seen. Over the years I forgot about this juvenile fancy I'd had... a whimsical aside hardly worth mentioning parenthetically. Maybe I'm hopelessly sentimental, but I've always been convinced that I found the girl who made those footprints.

We met in April, the time of year when the polliwogs hatch out and leave the water as young frogs. The peepers make their first feeble croaking sounds in the early Spring, and they multiply until it seems their cries are numbered as the leaves.

It's early April now. I live up the side of Cougar Mountain, and there are streams all around. The reedy croaking has been growing stronger every night. That sound brought with it all these memories--because, inside us, sound isn't just sound. An entire world is waiting to spring to life, and certain sounds are a song, bringing past moments back to life.

Now the parentheses have closed. I lost her recently, and it took me quite some time to realize all the stupid and vain things I'd done to poison the relationship and alienate her. I shouldn't be surprised that it suddenly closed shut on me. Parts of our lives pass into subsequent phases, and we usually don't pay attention, so it doesn't seem like anything has ended. We have an illusion of continuity when really, our world is ending every day, a gentle apocalypse unfolding like cherry blossoms. We don't think of it as death, but we live with a kind of ongoing death, which is part of life itself. Not until life ultimately reaches an irrevocable end do we even start to consider that our part might be over, and we ourselves must make an exit somehow.

At the end, we're tempted to say "I wish" or "if only," but I won't say that. I got my wish. It took decades, but my "if only" happened, over a very long time. I'm grateful for that. I write this today because we met on this day, April 19, 1980.

A long, frustrating, sweet, difficult, passionate, and devoted history lay between those parentheses--quarrels picked, hot, messy afternoons painting rooms, roads explored, conversations far into the night, apartments chosen, clothes tried on then worn till threadbare, groceries shopped and brought home in brown bags, writing projects ending not in publication but only in ellipsis... but it would take 30 years to tell the whole story.

How Deep Is Grief, How Far Is God?

As I previously commisserated on Lent in last April's Can't Wait to Sin, I must be the world's worst Lent participant.

Especially this year, when the commitments are things like thinking positively and staying focused and clear of distractions. (On reaching out to help others, perhaps I haven't done as badly.) But in falling down, I learn about my deeply held beliefs and where I stand with respect to them. For example, I believe that God wants the best for each of us. He wants us to be happy and fulfilled according to our potentials.

When I stop thinking positively and indulge in nostalgia, I learn something about the purpose of memory, and I've made the following observations:

I wonder whether God, being perfect and not being able to act incorrectly, created us so that he could understand free will and failure. And He incarnated in order to understand our struggle and suffering.

God also needed a way to record events. Living things record events, whether consciously or not. Trees record fires and volcanic eruptions in the rings of their trunks. And we have a superb ability to store far more complex memories. We record through our senses, and God helps us bumble our way through, with all the attendant messy emotions.

I have been working through a family crisis, where many memories come crashing over me, and do not allow much respite. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by grief. Certainly, God is silent. The work of His hand may be apparent in all things, but God often seems very distant.

We have to accept that bad things are going to happen, terrible things. It has been asked over and over again why this continues, and the answer is that God doesn't break his own rules. The universe was created as an ordered system; like Dharma, if a physical law were violated, there would be no law, and chaos would reign.

This is not to say that we simply accept tragedy and misfortune--this is why we struggle--we're expected to work through our travails. I'm working through my own. Elie Wiesel said that human problems are like an ideal gas that expands to fill each person's psychic space. This is why each person's problems seem to be the greatest problem in the world--for that person. Keeping this absurdity in mind, I look around and wonder at the grand scale of disaster, economic and geologic, of the recent past. Why it is all happening now, we don't know. We do know that catastrophes tend to cluster. Whatever the reason, I cannot fathom the depth of suffering--I only perceive that I don't have real problems. Everything I have and love was not wiped out by a tsunami, for example. I simply have challenges.

Even though I keep saying it, I keep forgetting that God ultimately wants us to turn to joy, and probably wonders why we don't seize on His compassion when it's offered freely. Though I believe in it, I have to say, the compassion is a silent one. It often seems indifferent and severe. The silence is a great mystery; it can break one's heart.