Our theme for the month of March is “light.”

Eden is an enigma: sometimes so light on her paws I don’t hear her approaching behind me, more often such a mess of clumsiness or ball of irrepressible energy there’s no mistaking the sound of her galumphing bound as she skitters through the snow, in the mud, or across the hardwood floor. I’ve long thought (and probably expressed too often) that we could learn a few things from our four-legged best friends. I think we tend to tread too lightly, too often. 

***

We have seemingly endless euphemisms around all things medical. Maybe it’s to keep the thought of mortality at arm’s length—maybe we subconsciously feel it will keep the fact itself at bay. We tiptoe around death with a painfully light tread, lest we awaken and invite it to pounce. We know our lives here are fleeting, but it’s the sort of knowledge we don’t care to call up that often—as if mortality were a somewhat shameful secret, like your most embarrassing moment or least comprehensible fear. Whatever the reason, there is a refreshing camaraderie and familiarity that crops up among those who shun this unspoken convention. 

A smattering of Strydhorsts are nurses, farmers, and hunters, and their candor helps them relate to the dying in ways we wary, light-stepping onlookers couldn’t get right for the life of us. Their stories are their own, but suffice it to say they bring astute wit and earthy banter to the circumstances I would awkwardly and all-too-lightly sidestep—and their friends’ and patients’ lives are the better for it. 

I was witness to their talents in levity this last week, as we gathered to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday—“the last 88th birthday you’ll ever have!” as Dad said—and though we considered the sentence could possibly be just as accurate with the number elided, we shared a fond laugh. Thanks to a decades-old (but until recently undetectable) asbestos injury, Grandpa is dependent on supplemental oxygen to breathe, and the breaths are still laboured after getting dressed, or walking, or switching out the slim metal oxygen tank. It’s hard to know what to say, when time together is drawing to a close. I don’t recall now just what I said, only that it felt light and insubstantial—as though I were the one short of breath. 

I am both envious of and grateful for my family’s quick and skillful jocularity. Because of it, there was joking and laughter aplenty—just like every other visit I remember (and presumably all those I don’t—humour is highly prized at our family gatherings). Grandpa’s driver’s license expired for the last time this birthday, but that wasn’t about to dampen the jovial mood. “We’ve still got a few hours left,” my uncle quipped as the evening rolled around. “Want to go for a rip?” 

***

It is so easy—too easy—to consider Easter merely a celebration of the resurrection. It is that, of course, but there is no resurrection without that agonizing death; there is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. How many Holy Saturdays have I treaded all too lightly, hastening past the heart- and curtain-rending cry, skating over the despairing wait, eager to skip to the next chapter? The joy of the resurrection and reconciliation it empowers is all the greater in light of the unbearable weight—the enormous cost—that precedes it.   

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity …. Down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light.

—C. S. Lewis, Miracles, pp. 179–80

 Tread lightly around the descent’s depths, and you’ll miss the ascent’s enormity. 



1 Comment

  1. Kyric Koning

    I think people who only want to focus on ‘the good’ fail to realize that good doesn’t just happen without struggle, without sacrifice. These things create meaning for the good, make it richer, more potent.
    It’s not easy to unpack or digest, though. So maybe that causes some hesitation and aversion too.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

post calvin direct

Get new posts from Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth delivered straight to your inbox.

the post calvin