On Earth as in Ireland, Pt. 1

Part 0 (The Dream) — Part 1 (The Fog) — Part 2 (The Hike) — Part 3 (The Colors) — Part 4 ( The Flu) — Part 5 (The Flowers) — Part 6 (The Cathedrals) — Part 7 (The Rest)

When I first spoke to Cassie, she had just returned from a mission trip to Haiti in 2011, more than a year after the 2010 earthquake (when less than 10% of the rubble had been cleared and less than 20% of required temporary housing had been built). And maybe because of all the poverty, all the suffering, all the orphans, or all the tragedies she couldn’t wrap her head and heart around, or maybe for some reason completely unrelated to Haiti, she had fallen in love with the book of Ecclesiastes. That’s the book of the Old Testament declaring, repeatedly, that everything is vanity, futility, meaninglessness, or, translated more literally, everything is a mist or a vapor. Everything good and everything evil under God’s sun comes and then goes without the world appearing to be any different for it. That is everything—every pleasure, every pain, every triumph, every loss, every life, and every death. They are all mist on the wind, blowing over the earth.

In Florida, mist is some thin wispy spray you see hanging maybe a couple feet off the ground on a few rare mornings. In Ireland, it gets to be a bit more than that.

The coastal fog rolls through the air, covering everything in mystery and a beauty of its own. That vapor is almost tangible—while it’s nothing more than air, it swallows you, it wraps you up, and it makes your world smaller. When it surrounds you, only the immediate space around you seems to matter; everything else vanishes. It billows in swiftly, then blows away even faster. When it clears from the coast, what once was obscured by a dense white curtain opens up to a massive stage of rolling green hills, sheer cliff faces hundreds of feet high, and water every shade of blue and turquoise crashing into the rocks below.

When Cassie came into my life she wrapped herself around me. She covered me in love and in joy. She made only the space between us matter. And when she left the world suddenly appeared so much larger and open than it had before—and not in a way I wanted it to. Its been frightening at times. I knew I would have to make decisions for myself, not for two; I would have to make decisions by myself, without my other half to help; and when I did decide on a new path to take in this terribly large world, I would be walking it without a partner at my side.

I was happy in my shrouded path, where laughter could fill the closed-in space. It was where Cassie could sing a song and it would echo from my ears to my heart. But now I stand on cliffs, where laughter is carried away by the howling wind and songs are swallowed up by the sound of the crashing waves below. Where I once could see nothing more than my next step with Cassie, now all I can see is God’s creation stretching before me in every direction—full of life, of beauty, and of options sure, but also full of pitfalls, of adversity, and of roads that will run out.

Sometimes the fog comes down. Sometimes it gets blown away and you realize you’ve been wandering in a world too big for anyone besides God to make sense of. I suppose Ecclesiastes’ author would say there is a time for each—but only a short time, because everything is only a mist after all.

It was always my prayer that God would show me something beautiful. I always wanted to see his glory in creation and to look at how great, how incredible he shaped the world to be. But if I’m being honest, as the fog lifted while walking the Cliffs of Moher, looking out at what I knew to be just a small piece of God’s creation, I wanted the fog to cover me again. I wanted to hide in its gentle embrace, as all the distant trails and choices I would have to navigate without Cassie disappear again behind its white walls.

P.S.

Our tour guide out to see the Cliffs was a wonderful guy. His name was Bud. He asked us to write a limerick, as he has been asking everyone on his tours. He said he plans to put them into a book for charity. As a bonus, I thought I would include mine in the post:

Mine and Yours, by RP

I found the way to my Ireland as I pray you to yours,

Yours with more of the sun you love to grace its shores,

With taller mountains and deeper rivers

To hold high your spirits and carry swift your fears.

I grieve in my Ireland, but there’s no tears in the Ireland you dreamed before.

And if you haven’t guessed by now, the idea of “Cassie’s Ireland” had been in my mind for a while. Hopefully I’m not overloading the blog with this theme so far. If you’ve already read this much, thanks for bearing with me for these first posts!

Part 0 (The Dream) — Part 1 (The Fog) — Part 2 (The Hike) — Part 3 (The Colors) — Part 4 ( The Flu) — Part 5 (The Flowers) — Part 6 (The Cathedrals) — Part 7 (The Rest)