Even God Lets Go

Dear Aug,

Yesterday was a beautiful day, playing baseball with the kids and cooking outside. Wish you were there! We had chairs out there watching the picturesque scene of the blue sky and green grass. All of us were sitting there in a moment of silence. I started to think about the inevitability of my death – that no matter what my consciousness of the world around me and of my family, I would disappear. Maybe soon, maybe later, but I have no control or no way to change the course of events in front of me.

At that moment my only regret was not being with my kids. A hawk came into view, and Anna said “Look at that,” and the moment was gone. Now the question is, what I do with that information?

Max

Dear Max,

I am so moved by your email. In some strange way the more beautiful something is the sadder it is. The scene with you and Anna touches me deeply. It touches me precisely because it was so fleeting. It is now gone, irretrievably gone, and the sadness this causes you is so beautifully expressed between the lines. This is the tragic beauty of life. Without the ephemeral nature of all things there would be no beauty. That is why a real rose is so much more beautiful than a plastic one. Beauty is all about the moment. And its intensity is directly connected to the pang we feel as we realize that we cannot hold onto it.

I go back again and again to something my mother said when she was bed ridden and waiting to die. Over her bed was a narrow window. She couldn’t see out of it but suddenly she gazed up at the sun light pouring in. “You know August,” she said without taking her eyes off the sunlight, “I spent my whole life with my head in a newspaper. Nature and travel never interested me. But, my God! – everything is so beautiful now. I want to go everywhere and just gobble life up with my eyes. And now I know I never will.”

I’ve thought about that scene so often. I know that despite the fact that I’ve worked hard to really live, I will feel the same on my deathbed. Yet, I wouldn’t trade that moment with my mother for the world. So beautiful, so achingly beautiful. I only wish I’d been man enough at the time to have thrown my arms around her and wept in her arms. And now I know I never will.

But take heart, oh Arjuna! I was especially struck by the end of the movie American Beauty. In a way, the whole movie is about this theme (that is why it is called American Beauty – which is the name of a type of rose, by the way). At the end, Kevin Spacey’s character speaks to us from beyond the grave. He tells us that from that perspective he sees the world in all its beauty so intensely that sometimes he thinks he can’t take it. Then, he says, he remembers to just relax and let it all wash over him. The movie ends with the call-out to the audience that is so beautiful and sad. Spacey says, “You don’t know what I’m talking about. But some day you will.”

I think American Beauty is hinting at the way God sees his own creation. He is infinite and infinitely creative. He creates effortlessly and continuously, for, as Thomas Aquinas pointed out, creation is not a static model. God is creating everything and sucking it all back into himself continuously and forever in an endless series of NOW! NOW! NOW! He holds onto nothing because he knows he is inexhaustible. He holds on to everything because he wants to feel the beauty of his own creation. So, what do you do with the information Anna imparted? Love and let go of God’s creation, just as he does.

August