i love what isn't true

I am reading a really incredible play by one of my favorite people- his name is Tom Stoppard.  I love him solely on the merits of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but I am now reading another play of his called Arcadia, and I love him even more.

I know, as I read, Arcadia is going way, way over my head, but since knowledge is a step by step accumulation, I think I am just grasping the first step of Stoppard's ideas and knowledge, and it's kind of blowing my mind.  Check this out (it's a scene from Arcadia where a young girl is talking to her mentor, Septimus)-

THOMASINA- When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas.  But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again.  Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before.  Do you think this is odd?
SEPTIMUS- No.
THOMASINA- Well, I do.  You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS- No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever.  This is known as free will or self-determination.

 Okay, so after you read that, did it start to bother you that jam can't be unmixed from the rice pudding?  Did it make you think of things like a piece of wood shattering and not being able to go back to the way it was before?  Of thoughts and actions that will never leave you, but that mix into who you are?  Of relationships?  Of chaos and atrophy? The jam in the rice pudding is still the most apt imagery- you just can't extract the jam from the rice pudding anymore.  It's now one thing, or it's a broken thing; ah, the world we live in...

So I have been thinking- the only way to make something whole again, to take away its trails of chaos, is to make it new and to start fresh from the beginning.  If you want rice pudding that isn't pink and has no jam in it,  you have to make a new batch.  If you want a piece of wood that is whole and complete, you have to start with a new tree.  But what if we want to be freed from our ideas and our thoughts and actions that are all become chaotic?  Is there a way out?  What about with our relationships that have spiraled into a red-jelly meteorological chaos?

I wrote a poem while having these thoughts.  It is not all the way organized, but I love it.  So I present it to you in its incomplete and rough form-

If there is one less witch in the house tonight
It will be called "progress"
If one wrinkle is consumed by the marble of your brow
It will be called "improvement"
If every star in the sky collapses into the castled cosmos
It will be called "our chance"
If, at the end of the day, our little fires burn so low
It will be regarded "safe"

Liturgy, spent in chaos, cost
The token-inertia of this only-
"I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum"

And I thought, this must be order,
As I crashed through the room;
Ugly Anglican mirrors crushed the cradle
And I couldn't reverse the chaos.
Our chance came when we again reached the head
And stood forward in the arc of progress
But though we searched, there was no improvement
And so what regard had we for safety?


 This poem begs a lot of questions.  Is progress really removing what we call evil or do we just not understand that every one is supposed to mix together?  Is staying young and hiding our age really an improvement?  Is old age and atrophy good because it's a part of the natural order?  "Our chance came when we again reached the head" is a reference to the image of the snake eating its tail and continuing on for eternity:

And so, when the stars are all gone and the earth is gone will it all start off new and fresh again, at the head?  Is safety truly just being really careful and being cautious of what we mix into our souls (I have started to listen to Kanye's new album.  Should I avoid it because it's full of discontent?  Or is that something that is in the universe and part of chaos that needs to mix in my soul?)  Where does religion and where does what I believe fit into this notion of the jam mixing into the rice pudding?  Does it slow the mixing down or does it contribute to the inertia of the mixing?  What should it do?  


And the way the poem is set up is fun.  It establishes definitions for terms like "progress" and "safety" in the first half, and then in the middle of the poem, time happens- "I run the spectrum/ I run the spectrum/ I run the spectrum."  At the end, the definitions are approached again.  Did the definitions really fit the terms they were attached to?  Did the head of the snake really represent the new beginning for the universe?  Since innocence is gone, can we ever have it back?  Will things start all over again new?  Will we be any further ahead or is the course the same over and over again?  What is my role in the course?  What, really, is progress?


The more I think about all of this, the more it establishes the need for Christ.  Chaos just does not go away on its own.  Really.  It just keeps going on and on.  And I think chaos can be divided up into two kinds- the physical kind, which is the way the big universe and the little, molecular universe work.  That is the process of a sun forming, growing old, expanding, and exploding into space forever and ever mixing into the universe.  Christ creates worlds- he is the active creator that fights all that atrophy and destruction and chaos.  And then there is the kind of chaos that is a personal chaos.  It's our lives.  And were it not for Christ's intervention, our lives could not do anything but keep spiraling further and further into chaos- "And our spirits must have become like unto [the devil], and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies in misery..." (2 Nephi 9:9).  Without Christ, if we made a mistake, that would add more jam into the rice pudding.  We would try to reverse the jam, but we just can't- that would be like trying to stop the destruction of the sun.  We don't have the power to reverse time and its effects, and the more we learn and experience and see and do, the more chaos is in our minds.  I think Christ has a lot to do with the organizing that chaos, and He does that by truth.  Truth helps everything fit correctly in its proper place.  It gives light to our understanding.  Without Christ, our lives are chaos.  There must be a force and a power to balance the chaos.




And now here we are.  I hope you made it to the end.  Here is your reprieve and breath of beautiful air.  Please listen to "Kin" and read the lyrics.  They are a wave of peace.  I think they are from the perspective of our loving God.


I love you, too.




(PS.  I went on a blind date this week.  I made a bunch of new friends this week.  I registered for classes.  I went to church here and, miracle! liked it.  I am making strides and bounds.  And please enjoy the Christmas song on my playlist.  It's my favorite.)