Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Puddleglum and Life's Purpose

I cry and grieve and heave trash bags full of life's stuff to the front yard.
Awaiting a bigger dumpster to haul it away, where it will live unceremoniously as land-fill.

Stuff, after all, is what there is too much of.
Getting in the way of people, vision, callings.
But, true confessions, I have doubts. I question. I want comfort. I want a place of rest. I want beauty, if only in a couch these days.

I watch idealistic children, those we've raised, who have plans and purposes way beyond comfy couches, challenge me.
But I'm middle aged enough to question. Have we chosen well?
Did we really follow a greater calling?
Or are we lunatics?
If I blame him, am I off the hook? Do I have to participate in owning the crazy part of how we've lived and why?
Banking on ideas and prayer that sounds like we are people of the corn instead of mature, educated, thoughtful and deliberate.

doubts and questions. Yes. And my man answers that it's all about Puddleglum. How's that for an educated repsonse? The hope of what we live for beats all hollow the reality others have. Truly. I'm spared my own melancholiness by a children's story that is part of the DNA of our family so much that we all know the reference and refer to the character as a beloved member of the family.

And I'm comforted. I can rest. I'm assured. The reality is that I'm too timid to be a pragmatist. I need more. I need hope and beauty and comfort and the assurance that I'll see those I've loved again who have died. That there is a greater purpose than the mundane. That the stuff is secondary to the hopes and plans my God has for me.

Me and Puddleglum and my idealistic Man and our idealistic children and C.S. Yep. My people. Our hope.

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