Virtute.org

It’s about time.  We only see time going forward.  Ask any physicist to tell you why time goes the direction it does.  They don’t know; how can they know?  Just one example of how only appealing to the observable is fruitless in the measure of our lives.

One thing we understand about God is that He is outside time.  He sees the whole.  Thus Robert Frost is incorrect when he says “nothing gold can stay”.  Though the “gold” in our lives rises and subsides and is gone, the beauty and truth of that gold is eternal.  The blossom is as beautiful as the fruit, which is as beautiful as the seed.  What Frost lacks is perspective; he does not comprehend Time.

My cat had a beautiful life.  From being a sickly little kitten to a cranky adult, right down to his last breaths in my arms, there’s beauty to be enjoyed and cherished.  Even the ache I feel with him passing is so laced with gratitude that it’s something to be cherished.  The fact that I miss this creature so much is evidence of the great gift it was to have him at all.

CS Lewis said that the anticipation and memory of an event are as precious as the event itself.  Quote from Out of the Silent Planet: “A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmân, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another.”

This life is bitterly, harshly, deeply hard sometimes.  The loss of my cat is a small thing compared to the griefs that this life can bring.  But it is an example of how even grief can be turned to joy when it’s seen in the context of truth.  This life is for us to have joy.  God sent me a cat to increase my joy.  How can I be sad when I know this, even though our time together is over?

It makes me think of my grandparents, too.  How much more precious were the times I spent with them now that three of them are gone?  The grief crystallizes and sanctifies the joy.  These memories spark a fierce love for them and a great yearning to see them again.  That I will see them again is clear in the light of faith and hope; we have the assurance.

We have to see the whole.  Within the whole of any life there’s much beauty. Then, when we realize that this life is just a sliver of time, we begin to wonder about eternal lives.  We can have joy today, joy tomorrow, and then Endless joy.

So those are my ramblings late on a Friday when I’m thinking about my cat. Now I’m going to go pet Eustace.