Shadow Life

How odd that the more forms of communications the 21st century has created, the less we seem to say. Chatter fills the air and mind with both foul and fair words.

Daily activities that require direct involvement drain our lives of energy; choosing a contemplative life rather than a reactionary one takes precious time we do not seem to have.

When I left teaching some years ago, I set out to study my way through the Bible, not just because I had a generosity of time but to enrich my faith. I had no goal of finishing in a year. In fact, as of this writing after four years, I am only at the Psalms.

There is a luxury in admitting you know very little, for the task of learning—especially as a follower of Christ--is never done.

Decades ago, Henry David Thoreau made a relevant observation about fashion that also applies to modern life.

Why, he wondered, do the head monkeys in Paris seem to have more control over our everyday habits of dress than we do?

So it is with the madness of the world around us. **************

Babbling head monkeys try to determine the course of our minds, working constantly to coarsen conversation and alienate people from their faith.

"Why am I doing this?" we sometimes ask ourselves. The 21st century adult performs tasks routinely because we have to.

We often triage our time, pushing the most meaningful activities aside. The Economist calls this “time poverty” and a problem simply of “perception and distribution,” rather than an actual lack of time.

Often our spiritual needs are set aside in favor of immediacy, yet technologically, more possibilities exist than ever before to explore the Bible, its history and its spiritual depths.

In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts describes the shadow life one gets from reading ; this shadow life imprints itself on the mind's eye, lingering gently long after the book is no longer open.

Birkerts laments his young daughter's total immersion in a children's movie; though beautifully executed, the movie had spawned a thousand niggling distractions for his impressionable child, not aesthetic distractions, but commercial. Helpless in the face of such enticement, he wonders how reading can compete with the allure of the pretty plastic toys of this generation.

**************

And so it can be with the Word of God. As quick and elusive as a chipmunk darting to hide in a woodpile, images flick before us, competing with the written word, even this ancient living text of the Word of God.

When I immersed myself in this study, the first thing I noticed is that I lost a sense of surroundings and of time.

Both eagerness and urgency took hold of me; instead of asking how long I would study Genesis, I became interested in the original meanings of the Hebrew words; anything I did not understand I researched, even if it took a month to explore one chapter.

Most, I began to enjoy both the story and the stories of the Old Testament of the Bible, which is magnificent in so many ways and provides an oasis away from the clamor. This enjoyment, I found, led to a sense of God’s presence, often accompanied by tears.

I suggest this is because the Word of God is alive and powerful, cutting between soul and spirit.

In our world of sensory overload, something is always unnaturally aromatic, artificially colored or cranking away in the background. ************** Stillness is rare, particularly of spirit, and perhaps only then can we hear the voice of God.

Through a character in his prescient book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury exemplifies the shift of a society that swapped thoughtfulness for convenience: the zipper replaced the button "and a man lack[ed] just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.“

Conveniences have improved the quality of our lives, but perhaps they have also replaced moments of contemplative reflection with noise, thus creating holes of time that lack depth.

In contrast, Chuck Swindoll says the Bible is an infinite text, reaching across time and into the heart, a love letter to mankind from a gorgeous, majestic boundless Deity who loves each and every one of us, but Who is also a God of balance and order.

No time in history have the tools been so available to explore the depths of the Holy Bible than this present generation. To own rather than rent faith, to have active rather than passive beliefs, and to determine, as much as one can, what imprints itself on the brain is a gift that God gives to those willing to pursue His Word.

Thus in these later years of my life, I live with the shadow lives of Moses and Abraham, Joshua, of Elijah and Elisha.

They have spoken to me in a way I never thought possible, even after the privilege of living my entire life in a Christian environment.

The Father has gifted me with sadness—the Melancholy— something I have not really understood until my later years.

If only to touch the tassels of His cloak, reading His word heals the parts of me that are broken.

When I least believe in myself and in my most melancholy hours, these shadow lives sustain the framework of my faith.