Читать книгу Beyond the Veil - C. N. Dudek - Страница 9

Rigel stood behind Nicholas. “You have been made clean.”

“I am an unclean man. Yet, a joy has sprung inside my chest. I have much to learn and much to do—much to receive.”

“That you do,” Rigel said. “We must go on. Let us walk.”

Rigel grasped Nicholas’ hand and raised him to his feet. Rigel led the way. The stars burned above. The Milky Way and other galaxies whirled in the ether. Nicholas gazed upon the living heavens above him. He saw lights of many colors flitting between stars and galaxies and planets. The planets were luminous, large, and majestic. Mars gazed red; Nicholas felt braver. The moon, bright and silvery. Venus, blue, brimming with joy. Sol radiating and illuminating. Jupiter in its regal raiment whirled in the distance, Nicholas’ heart yearned to meet the King of this world.

“Are we going to the King?” Nicholas asked.

“Yes, but we must walk through rough terrain first. Then we will reach the great city.”

Suddenly, bright light shone before them as though the sun had risen immediately. Nicholas looked behind him. It was the same, dark solar—stars and planets in darkness. But before him was light. It was like a divided sky Nicholas remembered seeing in Montana. Behind was a thick dark cloud covering miles of sky, brooding over the mountain—rain and lightning. But before him was bright, blue sky.

The day was hot. Before them lay a hilly land, dry and rocky.

They traveled silently as the atmosphere grew hotter. Nicholas surprisingly wasn’t sweating nor was he thirsty.

“This land seems familiar to me. It’s like the wilderness heading toward Jerusalem, except wandering won’t take forty years,” Nicholas said.

Rigel nodded.

They travelled on for a very long time. Nicholas’ energy was fading. His excitement of reaching a city waned and he shuffled on. His legs weary, his body ready to drop. “Rigel, may we stop. I feel like I’m carrying a millstone around my neck. I can’t take another step further.”

“Just up ahead. Once we reach the top of that hill, we only have a short distance to go from there,” Rigel said.

They crested the dusty hill. The hill was white stone and the wind whirled dust in a cyclone. Nicholas heard someone shouting, but couldn’t make out what was said. He saw a silhouette of what seemed to be a man in the distance.

“Who is that?” Nicholas said.

“Just a little further. It is someone whom you will cherish meeting,” Rigel said.

They moved ahead. The shouting becoming clearer. “Further up and further in,” the man said.

Finally they reached the man walking ahead of them, who was no longer shouting. The man wore a tweed jacket that was torn at the seams. It fit him rather comfortably, as though it was his favorite, most cherished coat. He wore a floppy hat upon his head and some disheveled trousers. Nicholas was reminded of one professor he had in university. The man seemed to fit the type. He ambled on as though taking a walking tour and Nicholas and Rigel happened to come alongside him.

“Ah, the atmosphere is too hot to be like Addison’s, but I can go there another day,” the man said. “And these dirty rags, I’d rather be dressed in clean linen again before coming before the King. But that has been arranged; I’ve been through the Jordan, through the refining fires. I’m just thinking aloud, sounding like a fool to this young gentleman. And how rude, I have not introduced myself. Clerk, N. W. Pleased to meet you.”

Nicholas’ heart leapt inside him, “Pleased to meet me? I’m more than pleased to meet you.”

“Well it is humility in the ranks. Humility is thinking of oneself less after all. I have had my share of pride. I am made new, white as snow—where it is a pleasure to meet newcomers,” Clerk said.

“Isn’t it marvelous to see the skies alive as the ancients saw them? It is full of joy here. The atmosphere, heavens, everything is pregnant with substance—not vacuous and cold like back where I was before coming here,” Nicholas said.

“This place is a marvel. I had hoped all my study of medieval constructs would have its culmination. Like all great art, we are directed to what the artist is saying, the poem itself, the painting itself, always pointing to ‘the other.’ But here all of art points to its Maker because here it is perfected. The poison of subjectivism, all the nonsense of the state of the artist’s mind when he wrote, is finally engulfed in the light of pure truth. All that the great artists were plying pointed here. Ah, the wonder. Truth, beauty, goodness, all right here. But enough about that. Wisdom, peace, and that elusive joy is what you seek (which you will all find here, you have noticed glimpses). He sent me to encourage you in your journey, not talk about me. I understand there is much pain, a rift between you and your beloved,” Clerk said.

“Yes, this is true. How. . . how did you know? The king of this land told you? I heard he knows all. My wife doesn’t love me any longer it seems. Or we’ve gotten bored. The curse of decadence the ennui and acedia of our age that we suffer. Or she resents me for working all the time. I don’t know, exactly,” Nicholas said. “But I have wandered as well.”

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. Do not harden your heart toward her. She may love you yet. Unless it is a selfish love not remembering the other, giving to the other as Christ loves His church,” Clerk said.

“But why does loving another bring pain and such suffering?” Nicholas said. “I’d rather be about my business, reading, star-gazing, writing than have to deal with the tragedy love seems to move toward—an end.”

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. In that darkness it will become unbreakable. The only place where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell,” Clerk said. “Agape is the best of loves. It forgets itself. Yet it makes the receiver (you and her) more than yourself. Agape: when the true God arrives, only then do the half-gods remain. Without God who is divine love (agape), the half-gods become devils or vanish. And it is us, you and me, we are God’s greatest achievement in creation—human beings made in His image and likeness—male and female. God’s divine love is what moves us to love others.”1

“’Batter my heart three-personed God. To break, blow, burn, and make me new.’ So it is the King who transforms the heart from inwardness to becoming like Him, in loving others as Christ loves,” Nicholas said.

“It is as Paul said marriage ought to be. It is the image of Christ and His church. Loving one another as He loves us—a broken, marred, wounded person. It is not one plus one equals two. It is one times one equals one with the mystery of individuality nonetheless. To love brings suffering, not because it is punishment, but because it cries out ‘something is wrong here.’ Christ makes us aware of our own shortcomings, our sin, and we can only fall at His feet and be restored—admitting our fallenness. Yet, like the King that He is, He welcomes His subjects back, ‘rise and sin no more,’” continued Clerk.

“How do I love her again—there is nothing left to give or to receive. My selfishness has engulfed myself—my whole being. I have worn her down with insults as the rain erodes a hardened stone over decades. Until it cracks and is split in two,” Nicholas said.

“You have confessed and must be restored. You are being restored as you journey on toward the city. You have been washed in water—leaving your dross behind as an oil slick. You are made clean, but there is fire and blood yet. As Elijah built the altar of twelve stones and the meat and blood were consumed in the fire on the mountain of Carmel, so your sin, pain, giving insult was burnt on the altar; you are being refined in this land—as small slivers fall from you: hatred, covetousness, self-pity, insult, slander, lust, sloth, acedia, fear, hatred, idolatry. These fall from you as you near the city. But your completion will not occur until fire and blood renew you in the room set aside for you.”

“What do you mean by all of this?” Nicholas said.

“I will lead you to the city and to this room. You will understand when we arrive,” Clerk said. “For now let us enjoy what is around us and what we will come upon in only moments.”