Parchment

I was sorting through some letters I wrote (I keep copies of that sort of thing for future reference); here is an excerpt from one of them dated January 15, 2004:

“I’m not here this isn’t happening. “ moans Thom York in Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely.” As if denial is the best way to escape, but then maybe the title is double-edged. Will not a denial have a withering effect upon the soul, does not reliance upon a lie end in death? And so my ears are bathed in this sorrowful, yet piercingly elegant melody–and I am in a somber mood tonight. Dostoyevsky has been read, and his mastery of the tragic attempts to overwhelm and subdue all who read to its heart of beautiful despair, but I won’t have it.

Because all this suffering and hardship that he depicts are only beautiful because they mimic something greater–the ultimate profundity; the sacrifice of Christ. Is it because of Christ that the disturbing beauty of loss has always fascinated us? Are the dark and the tragic magnificent because the Greatest Event in human history was darkly tragic and magnificent?

And yes, a selfish people do recognize the beauty of sacrifice; so we have generations of sickly and pale artists who weave pictures of despair, sacrifice, and sweet bitterness, but they only have part of the story.

For though it is true that life must succumb to death (ah, mustn’t death even be desired in a particular sense?), the second life may never be destroyed. “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.” (Jn 11:25) And we have this hope, for the stone was rolled away and our God is alive–and we live too because of His sacrifice.