Poe: our favourite morbid American poet and a doctrinal summaries paper

”The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” [E. A. Poe]

It’s a bit morbid, granted, but I’ve been thinking about this statement a good deal over the week. I have an app on my macbook that gives me quotes from Edgar Allen Poe every time I scroll over the particular desktop where it is located. Some are more amusing than the one above. For instance, I just glanced back and read this one: ”If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.” It is so true! Annoyingly true!

But as I said, I’d been thinking about the death of a beautiful woman, and considering why that would be a rather poetic thing to consider. Let’s be honest, Poe was a bizarre individual. He wrote beautiful, imaginative poetry and narratives. Some of them are haunting simply because they are so well described and the reader can easily envision the words he tells. I remember having nightmares in high school about The House of Usher. (There is a reason I don’t watch horror movies.)

But there is more to the quote than Poe’s obsession with analyzing, describing and memorializing death. Think of the classics we read in high school: The Killer Angels, Anthem, Animal Farm, Asher Lev, etc. Granted, not all of those listed have death at the focal point, but there is a sense of darkness in all of them, something that pervades the stories and something that we desperately read over and over and over.

I just finished a paper from my Doctrine I class. It’s a doctrinal summaries paper. [Thrilling title, I know.] In essence, I had to choose six doctrines and give three different perspectives on each. If you know me at all, the three theologians won’t be difficult to guess: Wayne Grudem, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Integrative. I wrote on the Trinity, immanence vs transcendence, general revelation, scriptural authority, the imago dei and the transmission of the sin nature. If you don’t know what all those are, or you simply don’t care, bear with me. I won’t give you the 22 pages I’m handing in on Monday. Promise.

The imago dei (image of God) and the transmission of the sin nature were the two most difficult doctrines for me to work with.  I think it’s because the compassion in me wants to hope for the best, to pray we aren’t as warped and distorted by sin as Paul claims. But I’m a fairly strict Calvinist most days and last night I whispered to my new nephew that he was beautiful, handsome and perfect–except for being totally depraved. He giggled as I nuzzled his cheek and clucked my tongue and my father roared in laughter. Some of us, I muttered, are obsessed with being theologically correct, even with a nephew who can’t hold his head up.

But it’s true, you know. Did you see that man run the red light on your way home from work last night? Did you hear about the dictator killing his own people? They are broken, ruined by the fall. Yet, there isn’t only that. Did you hear about the people who ave money to Blood Water to build wells for people they’ll never even meet? Did you see the way that teenager held the door open for you as you walked out the door with too many things in your hands?

There is this awkward tension between the goodness of humanity, the reasoning, the grace, the mental abilities, the beauty we can create, the impulse to create and hope and dream–coupled with the tendency to fight, to destroy and use our abilities for creating new, more efficient ways of killing each other, for gaining power and ruining the earth. It is not as though every human being is as bad as they possibly could be. Total depravity simply says every aspect of human nature has been compromised.

Coming back to Poe, we must remember that there is, despite the complications, still beauty in the world. Today the earth is bright and flushed with colours because of the thunderstorm last night. The girls I nanny giggled today, making faces, playing peekaboo and when one cried the other hugged her and found a toy to comfort her. “You’re okay, Lil’” she said, “mommy will be home soon. Don’t cry.” There is tenderness among humans that can not be explained except for our high position, bearing the image of an intrinsically good and relational God.

Poe says the death of a beautiful woman is poetic.

I think he could have said the death of anyone with beauty is poetic. There’s something in human nature that recognizes the problem of death. We see that this is not how things were meant to be and it is most clearly reflected by the death of beauty. In a strange way, we see our depravity, our hopeless state when darkness swallows up fleeting glory and beauty. This isn’t how it was meant to be, our soul whispers, and then we put words around the phenomenon to try and understand it.

In the end, Christians have a sense of hope. We look forward to a time when the image will no longer be distorted and we will not give birth to another crooked generation. Instead, the imago dei and humanity will be renewed at the end of days to our former glory. At that point, in our ontological reformation, we will only produce that which is good, holy and pure as we were originally intended to do.

In that day, we will not need death to remind us that something is missing. Because in that day, it will be missing no longer.

Good Friday

I would love to post something brilliant, deep and full of wisdom for the somber day that we woke to.

Unfortunately, there are no brilliant words of wisdom that come to mind….

The wind howled last night, during my OT Prophets class and she pushed my little Hyundai to and fro on the highway as I made my way across town. It was a long day, an exhausting day. I returned home to children in my apartment learning the story of God who died 2000 years ago. I snuggled under a blanket next to one of them on the couch and stared blankly ahead at the walls of our hallway. I finally made my way to bed, with flannel sheets to keep out the draft of my window beyond which the skies still blew in stormy rage.

It’s like the world knows. Like creation knows. She’s groaning. Waiting, hoping.

And I, with a hot electric pad clutched to my abdomen, I fell asleep to the sound of the wind beating against our home of brick and mortar, the sound of the earth screaming against the injustice of it all.

Today, the wind still blows, warm and dry. What was it like, to stand in the courtyard and listen to the trial? What was it like to watch the procession, the bloodied path to the city’s outskirts where the scapegoat had always been sent to die, bearing the burden of the people’s sins as he wandered into the desert beyond the camp. What was it like?

Tonight, we go to service, and we’ll remember the day that Jesus died. It’s black and dark and somber.

It is, in many ways, the darkest and most beautiful time of the year.

O sacred Head, no wounded
with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded
with thorns, Thine only crown
How pale thou art with anguish,
with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish
which once was bright as morn!

What Thou, my Lord, has suffered,
T’was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Saviour!
‘Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever,
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee. 

death

It’s winter-time. Sierra and I painted pictures of trees. We talked about how leaves fall off of trees during the winter, because things die. But I also reminded her of the summer time and how the leaves will come back, because things will return to life after a long sleep through snowy winter months.

A few friends have had grandparents struggling with health lately. This is not foreign to me, but I think I have been more distant from the deaths of the elderly in my family because of physical space and we always had a forward view of death.

This was something spoken of in a recent class. We were discussing the Last Supper and the implications of an eschatological meal when the culture in which Jesus was born was sort of obsessed with mealtimes.

And this was said:

when we face death, we must remember the meal, the fellowship, and the party.

It’s the party with the best wine, the best food, the best people around–the ones you’re close to and the ones you’ve always wanted to meet. This, my professor reminded us, is how we must view death.

It doesn’t do away with the sorrow and the lament. We weren’t supposed to die. By all means, lament and mourn and wail. Grief is normal and natural, it is important. But we have to remember that just like the trees which die during wintertime, death is necessary to bring on the next life.

The End of Childhood

That’s what they said while we waited in line for near four hours and then another two and a half in the theatre. They wore costumes and did their hair. They came into our theatre and pretended to fight each other–putting on a battle of dodging and weaving that was fairly worth the watching. They shouted it as they sat down and scattered about and munched on popcorn and hummed the ever present theme music.

“this is the end of my childhood.”
This.
Right here.
Starting at 12.01 on July 14th for 2 and a half hours.
Our mutual and cultural childhoods ended.

Or, as Daniel pointed out: our childhoods ended when the book came out several years ago and we all read the hard and beautiful end of Harry Potter’s battle with evil that threatened even the non-magical world of Muggles.

Yeah, that’s right. I was at the midnight showing of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows pt 2, where ended a long saga that has dragged out since fifth grade when my mum told me I wasn’t allowed to read anything that suggested of witchcraft and almost wrote the teacher who had introduced them to our class.

And with the battle of Hogwarts, with the dream at Kings Cross Station, with the final horcrux, and with the dead lying on the floor of the Great Hall where they had been sorted so many years before…my childhood supposedly died.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. It’s a bit melodramatic. It’s a bit of a pathetic view on our joint (and separate) childhoods. But let’s be honest. Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon.  You may like him or dislike him, but when I say his name you see Daniel Radcliffe and those taped glasses and you know your opinion on the matter before I’ve even finished his name.

I was talking with a friend about this recently. We both had seen the movie and we were analyzing not  only the film itself but also the experience. I went to the midnight showing. There literally was a battle staged by teenie boppers dressed up and scurrying around the front of the theatre shouting “Crucio!” “Expelliarmus!” and “Engorgio!” (I’m not sure what use an engorgement spell would be in battle, but I heard it). Finally, the evil side filled with Death Eaters and a man who had painted his face to look like He Who Must Not Be Named fell to the ground and we cheered for the victors.

Seriously. I clapped. I clapped excitedly.

Kyle went to a showing where no one but he clapped during the movie–not even when Mrs. Weasley screams at Bellatrix LeStrange “not my daughter you bitch!” and then battles the murdering witch until Bellatrix falls to the ground, dead.

How could they not cheer at that moment? It’s brilliant!

I clapped at some stupid teenagers wearing black robes probably borrowed from an older sibling’s high school graduation. Kyle’s audience didn’t respond at all.

And then, as we talked about it, we came to the point of discussing why people in my audience cheered. Why we waited in line from 530 on that night. Why we were willing to go to work the next morning despite not getting home until near 3am. Why people dressed up and ran from theatre to theatre putting on battles.

Harry Potter is a brilliant series. I love them. I read them for the first time last fall and blew through them in barely two weeks. That’s about 4000 pages, or 1,084,170 words. And I’ve re-read several of them since then. But I don’t think it’s just Harry Potter that is like this. I think there’s more to it than that.

Stories like this teach us. They remind us of who we were supposed to be. They remind us of things we were supposed to do: standing up against adversity. Being willing to die for what we know is right. Recognizing that sacrifices must sometimes be made (and yet–acknowledging the pain of those sacrifices!). And also just remembering that sometimes we simply have to fight. People aren’t drawn to movies like Harry Potter for the special effects, they aren’t drawn to Braveheart so that we can relive that time period, and they’re not drawn to Star Trek just so we can see bizarre looking creatures out of someone’s imagination. They’re drawn to it because deep inside of us we are longing for a story where there is a battle to be fought and we want to know, deep down, that good will win.

.

I think we all knew what was going to happen to Harry in the end. I think somehow we knew he had to die to defeat Voldemort. And I think we knew that Dumbledore wouldn’t make it. We were suspicious of Snape but we knew, we knew he had to be good. He’d had so long and he’d done no wrong! And we resonated with Malfoy because he was caught. How can you not become a Death Eater with parents like that? But how can you remain a Death Eater when it means killing the boy at school who saved your life? Good will out.

.

We cried when we read about Harry dying.

But we were proud.

.

He met his death with honour and bravery.

He met his death willingly.

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He was like Aslan who was willing to die for the people he loved though he had done no wrong.

And that is what we both loved and mourned.

No one should die for that, because no one that good should have to die at all!

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There’s something in us that longs for such things.

In America there is a longing for meaning–and meaning is found in such things.

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We like stories of bravery because we want the chance to be brave ourselves.

We like stories of sacrifice because we want to remember that something is worth sacrificing for.

We like stories of danger because we want to know that this placid life isn’t all there is.

We like stories of love and heroism because deep down we long to be rescued from this hellish world.

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Because deep down we are all longing for the story that has been told and known since before time.

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Don’t you think? I cried for Harry dying in a similar way to how I cried on Good Friday. Your heart breaks in the book as he looks in the Great Hall and says to himself that no one else will die. No one else will be sacrificed for him, or more aptly said: no one else will be sacrificed for the great evil that has overtaken the world.

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For you and for me, that great evil is no Voldemort.

That evil is you.

That evil is me.

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My sin yelled crucify louder than the mob that day.

Maybe even louder than your sin (for I’m a noisy, petulant child).

And Jesus died.

And he came to life.

And he rescued us.

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His blood, like the blood of Lily Potter covered us from the curse of sin.

His blood, like the blood of Lily Potter was a covering that could not be broken.

His blood, like the mark on Harry’s forehead was a seal and sign.

His blood, like the mark on Harry’s forehead said that we were bought and paid for.

.

It was juvenile, perhaps, to sit for 7 hours at a movie theatre and to cheer for children fighting a battle that probably began before they were born or old enough to read the books which tell of it.

But, more than juvenile, it was human.

Because each human longs for the glory and heroism of God.

passing home

I told Jesus last week he could take me home. I wasn’t depressed. Just felt done. I had dropped a friend off at her house, stopped at the bank where I saw Nate from afar and paid a whole $15 to my credit card. I was headed back to “work” and the sun was so hot the road simmered in the late afternoon. I was humming a merrry tune on a Christian station and I just had this passing moment where I felt finished. “you can take me home, anytime,” I thought or prayed or said–I’m not entirely sure which.

Yesterday I was hiking with friends and we trekked through a shallow stream with deep holes that soaked up to my thighs as we scrambled moss covered walks on our way upstream to the waterfalls. And then we climbed the waterfalls–on the high steep bank covered in graveled sand. It was steep and it was a high perch where we crossed over and back down to the rear of the falls. I had to make Daniel come back for me. I was stuck, frozen in place in a precarious position with my barefeet gripping anxiously at the angled hillside. I held Daniel’s foot and scrambled for a tree root. But then, I turned around, thinking to scoot across on my rear. Almost immediately I lost my footing and slid forward a few inches towards the edge. “Shit!” I squealed. And Daniel called to Shawn to grab me. I swore again and then muttered to myself, “I told Jesus he could take me home, but I didn’t mean to go like this.”

Shawn laughed as he helped pull me across. “It’s not such a bad place, I can imagine worse places to die.”

I looked down at the water crashing happily over the smooth worn rocks into the shallow poool below. For a brief (and somewhat morbid) moment I imagined myself lying at the bottom of the rocky base, eyes vacant and soul flitting up to the wide blue sky. And I glanced at the banks marked with trees and the high rocky ridge above and felt the sunshine blazing across our backs–there are far worse ways to go.

Of course, I made it across with Shawn’s help, slid down the other side and washed off in the water with Stacie before we concluded the hike and headed out to Sonic for malts and slushes.

But I’m still done with the world. I shared a meal with a friend recently who had first come into my life as a perky and innocent young woman eager for success and full of great big dreams. But the woman I saw across the table from me at that meal was broken and empty. She’s watched her life be ripped away from her–by a terrible series of managers, two boyfriends and lately her family has almost disowned her. She’s putting a good show on. She almost convinces you that she’s okay. She wanted to be with him that night, though its cost her so much. She’ll be put to rights with her family in a few months once she straightens out some details. She’ll even find a new job soon–except she hasn’t applied for any.

I hurt for her. She’s had everything taken and she doesn’t even know Jesus to hold her together. And she’s not the only one. I have loads of friends like her. We used to joke about corrupting students at school who’d been homeschooled before arriving at college. It seemed amusing to those of us who went to public high schools and even at 17 or 18 had friends who were alcoholics and drug addicts. But now, I’ve watched people be corrupted, and I don’t like it. It’s painful and messy and the worst part is:

there’s no coming back.

Once the damage is done, it’s over. You can’t undo it. There’s healing, for sure. But there’s no complete healing htat takes it all away. Jesus is good and Jesus heals the broken hearted. But he can’t give my friend back her virginity and he can’t give another friend back her childhood with a father who wasn’t abusive or alcoholic. And he can’t give back the cousin (and brother) who died when the van wrapped around the tree. He heals, sure enough. But Jesus, I thought, I’m so done here. I’m done watching the world go to pieces and having to stand at the side watching it tear itself to apart. Just take me away.

I know I’m still here though, so apparently I can’t go home. Not yet, anyway.

And it’s not as though I’m going to throw myself into traffic. It was just a fleeting moment that said…I could be ready. And I wouldn’t necessarily mind. In fact, it might just be the best thing ever.

{and I told her you went wandering down the halls of the hospital crying, 
“oh sweet Jesus, just take me home.” And I’m sure it was
bad then, but it’s a good laugh now, you know?}