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Journal of an Awakening
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90: Experience. Experience in a domain constitutes and enables a kythe with that domain. My Mom asked me if I had a universal adaptor for her tape recorder, and I pulled one and said, "Is this the right jack? If it isn't, I have another." She said, "I don't know, let me see." A short while afterwards, she called me over to look at it, because "it seems to have two prongs." I looked at, and instantly realized that it didn't need an adaptor. It needed a power cord.
I was mildly irritated, and was finally able to put my finger on something I'd felt. Answering her help requests with technology has the same feel to me as explaining things to a small, naive child who doesn't understand how the world works. She sees technology as this mysterious, unpredictable black box which works by magic.
I thought a little more, as my mother is neither naive nor childish. She is an intelligent and well-educated woman. What I realized was that I was not appreciating my own experience. Experience enables a person to look at the surface and see the depths -- and a port for a power cord does not look fundamentally different from what a port for an adaptor might be. I see a computer as having definite inner workings which work according to understandable principle; when the computer is malfunctioning, I think I have a chance of understanding why. If my Mom thinks that the computer is a black box (you can see what it does, but not what's inside it), I think of it as a white box (you can see what's going on inside, and try to fix it if need be). The way I look at computers might be compared to the topographical anatomy I was taught in my EMT class, where you look at skin and see the underlying organs.
You kythe more when you're interacting with a white box than with a black box, and that comes with experience.
91: Closing your eyes.
[Charles Wallace] closed his eyes, not to shut out Louise, not to shut out Meg, but to see with his inner eyes.
I closed my eyes when visiting my friend Innes's house, and I realized what I was doing, and why: to focus, to connect, to concentrate. This is why couples close their eyes when they kiss; this is why we have the custom of closing our eyes when we pray. The image of a blind seer is a part of myth and literature; when we close our eyes, we momentarily blind ourselves so we can see.
92: Mental illness. Mental illness is not exactly a purely negative thing. It is a difference that is ecological in character, with positive as well as negative aspects. This very dark cloud has a silver lining, sometimes a mithril lining. This is why people with mental illness speak of a gift -- something that puzzled me when I first heard it.
93: Mental health. If mental illness is a way of kything, then mental health is definitely a way of kything. Robin is a good friend and an excellent listener, and he radiates health. And Joel --
Robin once mentioned a theatre professor saying of his predecessor that with most people, they walk into a room and it's "What about me?" His predecessor walks into the room and it's, "What about you?"
I remember thinking, "I'd like to have a friend like that," and then, "I would like to be like that." A day later, I realized that I do have a friend like that: Joel. With Joel, it's "What about you?"
Joel is a very good kyther.
94: Watching or studying a kythe.
[Meg] found herself looking directly into one of his eyes, a great, amber cat's eye, the dark mandala of the pupil, opening, compelling, beckoning.
She was drawn towards the oval, was pulled into it,
was through it.
My brothers were playing, and I was watching Ben and Joe play. I became aware of an energetic character to the play, and then I recognized a kythe a split second before remembering the entry about play as kything. So I decided to watch -- and then I realized I was in the kythe.
95: Nature. To be out in the woods, or looking at night at the sapphire sky and crystalline stars, or listen to the sounds of a forest, or to play with an animal, or wade barefoot through a cold, babbling brook -- these are ways of kything with nature. (Taken from Innes Sheridan.)
96: Swallowing a pill. Learning to swallow a pill was a long and traumatic experience for me; for the longest time, I tried my hardest and just couldn't do it. The reason was precisely that I was trying my hardest: I was trying much too hard. When I finally did learn, I learned far better than most; I can now swallow several decent-sized pills on a sip of water -- when I was last hospitalized, the nurses remarked at how little water I needed, and told me to drink more.
In what is for the most people a minor learning experience, I came to really appreciate how easy swallowing a pill is -- to easy to force or accomplish by willpower. In this regard, it is not only an example of kything, but a symbol. Do, or do not. There is no try.
97: Mystical experiences. These are bestowed by God, and are not human doing; visions may come once or twice in a person's life, not at all for most people. When they do happen, they are a special moment of grace, and communion with God, and they can leave a person changed for life.
98: Massage. Being able to do backrubs is a good skill to take to college campuses. When you give another person a massage, you communicate with his body through touch, and relax the flesh, the body, and the person you are touching, more fully than he can himself. It is different from many other touches, in that it is not spontaneous or habitual; it is a special time set aside to connect.
99: Saying farewell.
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
-William Shakespeare
When someone's leaving, people say many of the things that they should have said long before but never got around to. Barriers come down. People realize how much others mean. They cry.
That is an obvious insight into saying farewell. What is less obvious is that these things can happen at any time. It is not so much that people can't normally commune in this manner and are specially enabled to when someone leaves, as that people normally avoid this communion, and when some leaves they realize how bad it would be to them at any point. You can tell someone how much they mean to you any day. I did something like this for Robin recently, as I stopped from writing this to think about practicing what I was preaching. He and I are both glad I did. One part of the barriers coming down is that sharing yourself is inherently risky, and there is less risk if a person is leaving -- if you share something that makes the other person think you are stupid, at least he'll be away. So people share more. If you realize this, you can share on ordinary days what you would normally share when saying farewell -- and grow closer. It might be a good idea to hold a farewell party for someone when he's not going away. The same may be said for a funeral -- there is something magnificent that goes on at a funeral, that doesn't really have to wait for a person's death.
100: Anything. Thursday night, I was at a band concert at Ben and Joe's school. Afterwards, when walking through the mass of people, there was a moment when I was looking down into a little girl's face, and as it passed I realized I was kything. There is a sense in which anything can be kything, if it is done in the right way.
Now we kythe darkly and through a glass. Then we shall kythe fully, spirit to spirit, even as we are fully kythed.
I look for books that are filled with the Romance; they come to me in the strangest of ways, but they are impossible to find. I started this journal thinking it was not very good... I have realized that I may be writing a book filled with the Romance, a scrapbook of the beautiful. It is not something that I could have even approached if I had tried.
Sunday, 12/5/99
I haven't been writing in the main part of the journal for a couple of days, because I have been concentrating my creative energies on the kything entry. I haven't really had a singular event to prompt a journal entry, but I wanted to put something in as an update on how I'm doing.
When I thought about what to write, I realized something. All is well with my soul. Of course I should not get cocky ("He who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall."), and this isn't the end of the growth God wants for me. But I am close to God. I am spiritually awake. It is in a way that would surprise me; I am doing ordinary things, and enjoying working on my creations. Ecclesiastes, even if it is the most pessimistic book of the Bible, says (2:24, 9:7, NRSV):
There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This, also, is from the hand of God.
Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do.
I am doing these things, and enjoying their blessings. It is nothing spectacular, at least not in the Hollywood sense, but Hollywood can be quite blind. I am worshipping God in the ordinary things that are not very ordinary at all, and I see in them what Baudelaire cannot.
Here ends the Journal of an Awakening. It ends, not for the reasons I anticipated at the beginning, but because the awakening has reached its proper end (both finis and telos): I am awake. I mean to continue to journal, but this journal has reached its logical conclusion.
Please pray for me, that I remain steadfast in the abundant life God has given me.
JSH
soli deo gloria
The Horn of Joy: A Meditation on Eternity and Time, Kairos and Chronos
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