I love all my children, living and dead. Each day I pray for one of them and for my son-in-law, but when I pray for Edmund Saint John Reynolds, the prayer is different. He was born into Paradise and I held him just once. He missed the pain of this world, evidently not needing the school of souls that is this life, and so went to God and glory.
We will meet, but I miss him.
Death is unbeatable, unbribable, not quite unbearable. This world is not my final home: there is a should be in my heart that what is cannot satisfy. There is no basic desire that is not satisified in God’s good cosmos and so I have hope.
We will meet, but I miss him.
Sometimes, I see him in my dreams: Baby Edmund who would be in his twenties now, not at all an infant. In reality, he went to God and is as he should have been, fully happy with God. I ask his prayers, this pure soul. He will not make the mistakes I made as a young adult, how I mourn my twenties, as for Edmund, the waters of baptism were Jordan’s stream.
No human can be born in innocence, for the very least they have us as parents and so enter into a world we have made. We found an ocean and filled it with plastic. Yet we also have eternity in our hearts and have built beauty in cities like Houston, images of the Jerusalem that is to come. The waters of baptism take some from the image we have built to the reality we were imitating.
There is great hope that my son, my better in God, is waiting for me. God keeps every good, every joy, every person who says “let it be done unto me according to Your will” safe. Once I was asked: why are most humans conceived, unborn? God knows for sure, but I suspect they had nothing to learn in this life and so went to God. The cosmos is vast and some bright day contain all these beings, on this planet or others, that have looked Godward and said “yes.” The world to come will be super-abundant with life, joy, and goodness.
We see this world that Is, of which we are a mere shadow, best in our hearts, our dreams. We see that world when we see the poor sent empty away and say “Oh no! This is wrong!” We see that world when we see death, pain, and suffering, some we have called, and cry, “Lord have mercy!” We see that world in our dreams of a better time.
It is, was, and for us is to come. For Edmund, what is a dream to his mother and to me is.
William Blake, half-mad, wholly prophetic, saw the pain of experience. We sin and are sinned against and all we can do is cry for justice with mercy. Yet there is another land, one we see dimly in our dreams, an image of reality where ought is:
THE LAND OF DREAMS
Awake awake my little Boy
Thou wast thy Mothers only joy
Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep
Awake thy Father does thee keep
O what Land is the Land of Dreams
What are its Mountains & what are its Streams
O Father I saw my Mother there
Among the Lillies by waters fair
Among the Lambs clothed in white
She walkd with her Thomas in sweet delight
I wept for joy like a dove I mourn
O when shall I again return
Dear Child I also by pleasant Streams
Have wanderd all Night in the Land of Dreams
But tho calm & warm the waters wide
I could not get to the other side Father
O Father what do we here In this Land of unbelief & fear
The Land of Dreams is better far
Above the light of the Morning Star
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