Tag: longing

Posted on

golden hour

My wife is taking pictures again, and the golden hour is upon us – in more ways than one, because at the height of summer it occurs immediately after the kids’ bedtime. She is roaming the acreage of my childhood home, kid-free, capturing north-central Indiana with its meadows and sloping forests. The sky is a ripe nectarine, fuzzy orange fading to lavender, and the sun sinks his teeth into it, splattering juice in slow motion.

My mom comes in from the garden, where she has been harvesting early tomatoes and tomato hornworms at the same time. She scrutinizes the former and grimaces at the latter. We set aside one chubby hornworm to show the kids tomorrow; the rest are damned to the smooshy place for their sins against tomato-kind. My wife sets her aperture and snaps shot after shot – Mom carrying the bushel basket, greens and reds, close-ups of marching caterpillars.

Linnea is scrolling through her evening memories on the wide grey porch, swaying on the swing, and I’m tapping away at my keyboard when the epiphany occurs.

Blinking lazily, the first firefly of the night makes its regal ascent from dirt to sky. As I watch it rise and fall, I am aware of others in the periphery of my vision. They rise like mist from the fields until the evening is scattered with their phosphorescence. 

As if responding to an inner call that only the recently put-to-bed can hear, our three eldest children suddenly appear at the screen door, harmonizing oohs and ahhs. 

“Fireflies!”

They’re out the door before you can say “goodnight,” belatedly yelling back to us porch-dwellers, “Can we catch some?” They are skipping barefoot in the grass, disrupting flight patterns. My wife and I glance at each other. The prospect of tired-out kids sleeping soundly until morning is within our grasp. We wordlessly agree to let them romp a little longer. Summer will not last forever.

Nadia and Kai have caught fireflies before, both to keep as glowing night lights on their bedside table, and for the sheer joy of catching something and letting it go free, no strings attached. They have learned to cup their hands to avoid snuffing out any unfortunate soul by this time, although Kai still periodically appears before me, triumphant, with glowing smears on his hands. For Percy, however, this is the first time he’s really been able to participate, and he is so excited he can’t stop shouting.

He clumsily snares one and exults, “I caught one, Daddy!” before it narrowly escapes its doom and zooms into the sky. The ones he catches seem to fly away faster than others. He is unperturbed and trots away after another. Nadia, coltish at six, runs up then. She may have more years of experience with fireflies, but that doesn’t quench her joy in them.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy!  I just saw a firefly…” she pauses for dramatic effect and widens her eyes, “…land on my dress!” This is the child’s prerogative: to be utterly blessed by six little legs clinging to a nightgown. I tend to brush these things aside, adult as I am, with my diminishing capacity to perceive and appreciate true blessings. Maybe I should look closer at the mysteries of crawling things. Or maybe I’ll let my kids keep reminding me of them.

The whole planet is glowing now with the different magic of early evening. The sun is nestling under the covers, leaving only a few streaks of magenta staining his pillow. The march of the fireflies starts to mirror the procession of the stars, appearing one by one. When I focus on one the others wink at me.

A recently-sung (and apparently ineffectual) lullaby plays in my head. 

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are…

My wife adjusts shutter speed for low light and the camera clicks in slow motion.

Maybe it’s because I’m hopelessly nostalgic on the best of days, but in that snapshot moment, I’m transfixed by it all. Here are my children, chasing insects through the same field I chased insects through twenty years ago, against the same sunset, in front of the same house. The world is repeating itself before my eyes, and I want to record it so I can play it over and over again. I don’t think for a moment I’m alone in this as a parent. We all want to bend time to our wills. How does a single second hold so much weight? 

Perhaps a solitary grain of sand in the hour glass is also infinite. After all, a day and a thousand years are the same to the One who set them in motion. If He takes such care to pack them both full to bursting with purpose and meaning, shouldn’t we weigh them out well? They flit away from us like fireflies, but their fleeting nature only serves to capture us further.

My children are spinning wheels of gold against the darkening green of the lawn, their bare feet shimmering as they traverse the back of the earth in pursuit. I wonder sometimes if angels laugh at us, these inane little creatures that run around catching even tinier creatures just to let them go again. Why are they so entrancing to us, these little glowing things? Why do we love to catch them and study them? Where does that light come from? Look closer, maybe we’ll find out. But if we somehow did, maybe we wouldn’t enjoy catching them so much.

I beckon to Nadia to come and see the tomato hornworm we caught. She clambers up the porch steps and peers over the edge of the terrarium. “What is it?” This is a tomato hornworm. He eats tomato plants, and soon he will make a big fuzzy cocoon, and then he’ll turn into a giant fuzzy moth. She turns inquisitive eyes to me. “How does he turn into a moth?”

It’s like dissolving from the inside out, having all your cells rearranged, and coming out of it alive and with wings. If you cut open cocoons to see what’s inside before they’re moths, you’ll just find goop. Somehow that goop (tellingly made up of imaginal cells) becomes an adult moth within a short period of time. I tell her this in less words.

Her eyes widen. “Wow!” And she flits over to tell Mommy this new secret. Mommy responds with satisfactory amazement. Nadia giggles a little at the response and nods knowingly, then flutters back to the fields to chase more fireflies.

Knowing things seems to be much less compelling than enjoying them.

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.

The moments, the lights, the stars, my kids, everything is constantly shifting, and the breakneck speed of parenthood allows for little relaxation and less contemplation. When I’m rooted to the porch swing, when I’m stunned into silence, when the world creaks on its axis and the universe winks in my periphery, everything becomes precious and I want to cradle it and never let go.

There are names for this feeling based on which direction you look down the timeline — “nostalgia” for the past, “wonder” for the present. In future tense, Lewis called it sehnsucht, a deep longing for a place we’ve never been to. I see glimpses of it here, everywhere, because this world is only a shadow of things to come. It is mystery and wonder and familiarity all wrapped into one, and it always slips away from us all to quickly, like the golden hour. But it’s here right now, for a moment, as I watch the day fade around my children, who are chasing down illumination in the fields.

I know many who think of this sort of feeling as sentimentality, who believe that it is useless when it comes to keeping up with the incessant demands of the daily grind. How does this wonder fend off the brutality and hatred teeming in every corner of the world, or stop a bullet, or tear down a wall, or advance a kingdom? It would be easy, and it has been, for me to be embarrassed by my love for fireflies and sunsets. What light can a single firefly actually give? What good do any of these beauties and longings offer in a world gone to hell?

Much good, for the faithfulness of God frames each snapshot, the humor of God winks back at us, the mystery of God wriggles out of our fingers yet again, the love of God paints the sky for nothing more than sheer enjoyment of its beauty. We write and paint and sing and dance because we can’t get enough of God. And we long for the day when there will be nothing between us and Him.

Nights like these align our hearts to wonder at Him again, when circumstances and self fall away and the naked surprise is revealed. We see again, through His creation and care for us, that God is involved and present and working for our good and His glory. These nights repeat what my soul needs to hear over and over: “Behold, I am making all things new.” And we sit on the periphery and let the longing to be made new ache within us and our children, and we come away ready to fight again another day.

So my wife and I watch the fireflies and stars and children rising and falling on the breeze for several more minutes. Then we get that familiar twinge of parental responsibility and call to them across the lawn, “Time for bed!” We eventually succeed in tearing them away from it all with the promise of breakfast and more wonder in the morning. Nadia knows the drill by now and is content with the opportunity to stay up later than normal, and Kai is happily thinking about cereal now. My wife, camera dangling in a loose grasp now that the memory is safe, ushers them through the screen door and lingers, languid in the dimming light, watching our younger son. Percy is still utterly transfixed by the fireflies.

“Can I catch one more, Daddy?”

Twinkle, twinkle, little star…

“Just one more, buddy.”

He reaches out to one, chubby toes glinting in the sea-green undergrowth, and his face lights up. He cups his hands, as we’ve taught him, and gently captures the last firefly of the night. He runs to me to show me his catch, and just as he arrives it slips out. It’s been pressed down, shaken together, and now it’s running over his fingers, slipping away into the twilight with a final glimmer.

He looks at us and squeals with laughter, enthralled once more because it escaped him, as all mysteries must. 

How I wonder what you are.

(photography by Linnea Wheeler)

Posted on

the longing of the wind in the willows

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is perhaps my favorite book, or at least in my top ten. I rarely re-read books, but this one is an annual read for me, and only recently did I think to analyze why I love it so much.

Over the years since I discovered it, I’ve grown to love the characters, the settings, the language, and the respectful grace Grahame imbues into his story. But the thing that brings me back time and again to this book is not just the characters but the longings they experience — longings that resonate within me more profoundly on each read. The twin longings of journey and home draw me in and create the central joys and tensions of the book, but a third longing soon takes their place.

Mole is our entry-point, from the very moment he departs his home at the summons of the upper world. Through his eyes we encounter not just the wild excitement of new environs, but the great gift of camaraderie to be had with those who are rooted in the land — the poetic Water Rat, the curmudgeonly Badger, and yes, even the flagrantly conceited Toad — and ultimately the power of home and journey upon embodied creatures.

In “Dolce Domum,” Mole is completely mastered by the smell of his old home, a longing so potent in supposed opposition to his friendship with Rat that Mole breaks down and weeps. He has “lost what he could hardly be said to have found.”

Here the grace of Rat is revealed – that he would affirm Mole’s home in such a way that Mole himself is brought to realization and acceptance of the grace of going home. They tidy, they feast, they welcome others in, and then they rest. In the end, it is not the quality of the place that makes it meaningful, but the familiarity of it…

“[Mole] saw clearly how plain and simple–how narrow, even–it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

Rat, however, is assailed by an opposing longing. From the start, Rat is the sensible (if sentimental) one. He is Mole’s fast friend and guide. It is the tactful Rat who introduces Mole to the river, to Toad and Badger, to the basic layout of all that he needs to know and understand of this new world — up to a certain point. When Mole asks about the Wide World, Rat immediately shuts it down.

“That’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please.”

Of course, in “Wayfarers All,” Rat is seized by a nearly impenetrable desire to migrate out into the Wider World. The migratory tendencies of little creatures are not denigrated here, but there is a sense in which it would be against all natural reason for Rat specifically to answer that call, regardless of its peculiar persuasion and beauty. Here Mole extends grace to Rat, speaking of the beauty and delights of home, and leaves Rat, pen in hand, to turn his poetry to the hearth instead of the pathway.

These twin longings are for all of us. The longing to go, the longing to stay –  they war within us as only they can, within those who live in the tension between pilgrimage and home. We are set in a place designed to be our home, but marred by our willfulness. And we are journeying ever nearer to the distant shores of Heaven itself – that which our home, this earth, could have been.

In equal measure, we see the pull of home and journey in Badger and Toad. Mole’s first encounter with the Wild Wood emphasizes its fearsome nature, but even here, there is shelter to be had: Badger’s simple, rustic home. It is a haven for all those lost in the snow, a den very similar to its owner in its rough-about-the-edges practicality. Badger is philosophical about the origins of his home.

“People come—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

Badger is a practical creature, and his home is exactly what and where it should be. The allure of it comes not from its trimmings or tidiness, but from its enduring nature. A true home is loyal. It is a place we can come back to and know it will be the same.

 

For his part, Toad is the antithesis of enduring. Each new obsession of his involves motion, from taking his home on the road in a canary-colored cart to his disastrous motor vehicle escapades. We are carried along with him (like his long-suffering friends) on adventure after adventure, willing to put up with him because he makes life so darn interesting.

When in the depths of despair, however, it is the smell of home that lifts him from his stupor and breathes new life into a singular purpose: to return to Toad Hall.

The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.

Say what you will about Toad (and there is plenty to be said…) but his motivations begin and end with longing — the longing to adventure and the longing to return home after said adventures. Upon his sodden return to find Toad Hall invaded by ruffians, it is not solely Toad that takes it back but his company of loyal friends, all of whom are utterly convinced of the necessity of reclaiming his home.

Each character may reveal new aspects of these twin longings, but it is in the central chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” that we discover a third longing, one which generates and eclipses the others.

The call of this third longing can be found throughout the book, a through-line from the very first chapter: “with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.” In “The Piper,” we discover the source of this whisper.

Rat and Mole are out searching for a lost otter cub when the call comes to them.

“Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity.

“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worthwhile but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it forever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

“Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.”

The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. “I hear nothing myself,” he said, “but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.”

The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.”

Grahame unfolds for us here a sense of Someone beyond these animals who not only sustains and protects them, but creates unimaginable beauty to draw them to Himself. His parting gift to them is the grace of forgetfulness — that rather than remember the fullest longing they have yet received and pine away for heavenly reality, the fullness of it would pass from their minds and linger only in whispers in the reeds.

We too, encounter this longing. We who are in great need of a Savior have a Savior who comes to us and reveals Himself, and grants that we would ever be longing for full communion with Him, and ever experiencing it in only in part. We long to journey to Him, and we long to rest in Him, our final home, because in Him is perfection. Only in Him are we truly satisfied. For now, we only have glimpses that create in us a thirst for more.

So we sense Him in the company of saints, in the Word that nourishes us, in fresh and recurring displays of His creative glory, in our own creative passions, along the path and beside the hearth. We are Mole and Rat and Badger and Toad — forever sniffing out the source of longing, often errant in our passion or conceit, fiercely protective of those places which carry the burden of that longing. We are always drawn to Him. We are always seeking Him. And in this longing we find hope to face our days.

This is the gift of story, and the gift of The Wind in the Willows – to stir that longing up within us and to let it slip away again, leaving us breathless on the edge of wild adventure, sending us home into our familiar places, full of faith that someday, someday soon, He will return again and longing will be overshadowed by reality.