Modern Nature

Oh, what a world this life would be/Forget all your technicolour dreams/Forget modern nature/This is how it´s meant to be. (Modern Nature, Sondre Lerche)

Just finished reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. What hope and simple eloquence Jean-Dominique Bauby managed to grace his readers with in spite of locked-in syndrome, a condition that essentially trapped his healthy brain in a paralyzed, decaying body. He wrote by painstakingly blinking his left eye, spelling out words with a special alphabet.

There is such joy in simplicity, in valuing the most simple and mundane events. Driving down a road. Coincidences. A smile or laughter among friends and strangers alike. Fragments of the thread of life that connect humanity in all its frivolous drama. Things that encourage us to fly by grounding us in the poetry of reality.

Yesterday at church I went to the alter. But words failed me, no understandable ideas were forming. Only a yearning. And after searching through Psalms for the phrase "One thing I ask," I found Psalm 27 this morning:

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life...

Dwell. I desire ONE thing alone, to dwell with God. Not work, speak, sing, praise, act, stress, agonize, laugh, or weep. Dwell. That word connotes contentment, peace, an inner joy not found in any frantic action or confused pondering. My desire is to do for God by dwelling with Him. That closeness. If that is the yearning of the deepest part of myself, it is no wonder I am discontent apart from Him.

I don't understand. I don't get it. But I must dwell. Live life. Cherish every tear, whether born of laughter or of grief. Because I dwell with Him, I see His beauty radiate in the literary genre that is the human experience.