Hello, Friday my old Friend. I do wish I were not awake. So that’s too bad. Guess I might as well give in and face the fact of my own sleep-deprived existence.
One
Earlier in the week (was it this week?) I strung together my thoughts and feelings about that Washington Post thing about how we’re all afraid of death and that’s kind of a drag. I suggested that it would also be great to be afraid of God—go all in as it were. Actually, I don’t really remember what I said. Whatever it was, it must have been scintillating. I wish I had listened to this before I wrote it—Melanie Cogdill talking to Clay Jones about Symbolic Immortality Projects.
Two
First of all, listen to the whole thing. Second of all, oh my word I felt so convicted about my entire posture towards reality. Pretty much everything I do, probably, is a jumble of Symbolic Immortality Projects—I mean, maybe not everything, but too much. I’m not Kim Kardashian or Rachel Hollis, but I am a blogger and a mother, and that’s probably basically the same thing.
Three
Also, as I listened, it occurred to me that the Rachel Hollis view of the afterlife is some strange spinoff of a Symbolic Immortality Project. You are the thing that you are enacting and bringing into being forever. If you don’t work on yourself now, you will not get to be with yourself forever. This bears some more thinking about. I’m sure it’s got some kind of Ancestor Veneration Properties flittering around. If I had all the time in the world, and all the money, I would read up on the marrying and giving in marriage of the Prosperity Gospel to Paganism.
Four
Also, Jones talks about “fear of death” and how it is always there (which must be true if even the Washington Post has noticed it), even when you aren’t conscious of its haunting presence. It lives as a deep driving force that never need come to the surface until you are actually confronted with your own demise. It is there, whether you want it or not. The only remedy, Jones says, is to consider the glory to come, to ponder eternal life in Jesus. The way to escape the loop of your own self-glorification is to look at the glory of God, whose opinion is the only one that matters.
Five
Fear is such a tricky thing. I mean, what does it really mean to be afraid? I think the fact that we don’t see the effects of death, we aren’t confronted with people dying in the street (much…or, at least, only on the news) guarantees that a visceral, obvious fear of eternity is easy to ignore in the face of more immediate anxieties. Like, this morning, I’m afraid that I will go on having a headache for a whole day. I’m afraid that our state will be shut down. I’m afraid I won’t get all my work done. I’m afraid I will forget to remind a child about an important assignment. I’m afraid we will run out of milk and I will have to go to the store again, which I don’t want to do, because that would be a hassle. All of these lesser anxieties are a cacophony of fear that prevents me from seeing the true fear of my own eventual unremembered life as the river of humanity rushes on.
Six
Rachel Hollis, chattering on about her life of suffering, distracts me yet more.
I want you to know that what’s always been good will always be good: the smell of coconut sunblock, a five-year-old showing you the spot where his front tooth used to be, a home-cooked meal, when your love kisses that exact spot on your neck, a grandmother’s handwriting, a job well done, the kindness of strangers, the human spirit, an Appaloosa horse, the ritual of your faith, laughing until you pee your pants a little, holiday dessert tables, first birthday parties, a perfect cup of coffee with a view. What’s good will always be good, and one of the most awful, beautiful things about the hard seasons is that unless we experience hardship, we never truly appreciated and remember the good that was always good.
Missing from this list is the good fear of eternity and God, who is good in and of himself, and who will go on being good though all the coconut sunblock be burned up forever (as it should). “The ritual of your faith” should include some kind of wakeful existential moment where you realize that the fear was appropriate and just, that your life is not yours to control, that if no man remembers you but God does, you will have gained something that can never be lost.
Seven
Anyway, I’m going to spend the rest of the day in some kind of obscurity, I hope—not updating all my socials and trying to figure out how to become someone important. I’ll leave that for Sunday, maybe, when I log back online to tell you to go to church. Check out more takes!
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