THE THREAD | All that remains is encounter

You place things into boxes. You label them according to types and degrees. And in a year of so much suffering throughout the world you take the thing marked Not Able to Travel and place it in the box labeled Not Suffering. In a year when you had hoped for more travel, perhaps even travel across an ocean, you are in fact restricted from travel. To travel is to risk exposure, to risk spread. So you lock down. You shelter in place.
 
Yet nothing restricts you from traveling across the ocean of memory. Nothing keeps you from visiting those essential places once again.
 
So once again you exit the train that has finally pulled to a stop in London. You step onto the platform, see her welcoming smile. You approach her and embrace. You’ve crossed the ocean and entered another country to locate yourself once again at home in her arms. You locate her at home in yours. She has been waiting for you in London for several days. Delayed flights and missed connections further widened the months-long canyon of time stretched between you. You are engaged to be married and spending this time apart. You are both finishing college—she is studying philosophy in England and you are taking theology classes in the Midwest. Philosophy, the pursuit of man’s mind. Theology, the pursuit of God’s mind. The two of you, lost in thought. The two of you found here, locating each other on a train platform.
 
You take her hand. She leads you to the hotel where you unload your luggage and spend an hour resting in each other’s arms. Then she says to get dressed. She has something to show you. So you rise with whatever curiosity and courage is needed to go along with someone who offers up a mystery. You follow her through the streets, and she leads to you across the Millennium Bridge and into the Tate Museum of Art, through the lobby, down a long corridor. Close your eyes, she says. She blindfolds you and takes your hand.
 
Where am I? What is happening? The not knowing is complete. You walk.
 
She guides you by the hand into what you suddenly feel and know is a very large room. The voices of others swirl and echo across distances in several directions. She stops you. She places her hands on your head and removes the blindfold. What you behold is not painting or sculpture, but the creation of a space, an imagined environment.

You stand in an enormous hall with charcoal-colored floor and walls. The ceiling is a mirror, which stretches the room twice as tall. There is a haze—a mist rising from the floor. And the sun is risen high above you. It commands your attention. The real sun cannot be stared at directly without risking your eyes. But this sun allows and invites the act you are compelled to do above all else: Stare directly into its light. It truly is massive. The room is filled with sunlight, but the sensation is not so much that the sun illuminates, but more that everything is immersed.
 
The mind of man and the mind of God dissolve. All that remains is encounter.
 
You encounter something like a new gravity, like being pulled to the thing itself. Not by its light all things can be seen, as if the point is not to place a spotlight on human affairs but instead to give you the sensation felt by the tips of tree branches and the edges of leaves. The feeling of draw-ed-ness. To be drawn toward while reaching. An act of receiving and an act of praise at once. Here in this large hall, here in this field of scattered people, there is a common language in the hush.
 
You sit with her. You rest. You recognize that it is not each of you that fulfills the other—only that you in turn face each other to offer and absorb something of each others’ grace and courage and truth and forgiveness, and then face forward shoulder to shoulder with a synchronous inkling toward this world, a desire to run headlong into this next season of life with so much unknown, desire to make the best of it. To seek good work. To know suffering and what is not suffering. To think long and hard about what the good life consists of. And then to cease thinking. To reach, to be drawn, to travel and taste and see and learn how to pay attention. To be here now together.
 

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What I'm listening to: Anais Mitchell's Young Man in America, Moby's Live Ambients
What I'm reading: William Stafford's Selected Poems


 

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I'll be taking a break next week. I've really enjoyed the chance to share these weekly letters, stories, poems, and songs with you over the past six months. I plan to keep going. But this feels like a good time to pause. Thank you for all of your responses and notes back and forth during this odd season of life. And thank you for reading. 

Peace,

Andrew



BUSKER JAR:  If you feel interested in supporting my writing projects this year through patronage, I would certainly welcome it. You can use my PayPal (andrewjohnsonkc@gmail.com) or Venmo (@Andrew-Johnson-45954). Thank you!