crammed with heaven

We've been in Thailand for about 5 days now. Wow. Upon just a few hours after arriving, Adam and I both commented to each other how it wasn't until we were once again in the presence of natural beauty (blue skies, green vegetation, clean air) that we began to realize how starved our souls were for such beauty after living in a city for so long. 

Though it may seem trite to reference these oft-quoted poems, they continue to come to mind as we enter day by day into a more relaxed, less driven state of being. After all, there's a reason they're so often quoted, right?

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:
the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

Truth so far, in my book! a truth which draws
From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still
Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life
As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand
Shall overtake me wholly, and, on my head,
Lay down its large, unfluctuating peace,
-from Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barret Browning

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry

And, most of all, this e.e. cummings' poem I have loved since high school:

"i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

This is the longest vacation we have ever had.  I am coming to believe that the Aussies, with their extravagant love of holiday, may have it right. (I think they get something like 4 weeks of paid vacation per year.  Are you kidding?  This seems ridiculous to Americans with our workaholism Puritan work ethic.) When you only take a weeklong vacation, you're usually counting down the days remaining before you've even begun.  Two days in and you already feel like you're halfway over. When you have two weeks of holiday, on the other hand, I think there's a much deeper sense of restfulness that can be achieved. So many thoughts to share about the idea of rest (and my struggle with it), have been reading a great book by Mark Buchanan called The Rest of God.

And yet, even while I am finding myself slowing and relaxing more than maybe I ever have before, I can't deny a tinge of sadness that lies just below the surface.  Our first morning at the beach I was watching the girls playing in the sand and in the waves, shrieking and laughing and running. Delighting. I was filled with a tremendous sense of gratitude to God for this privilege, this opportunity. That we have two, healthy, beautiful girls. That they get to play on the beach in the morning sun surrounded by beauty. Who are we to receive such grace?  At the same time though, I had a migraine and was struggling in the fight for joy in the midst of pain. I was also keenly aware of so many close to us who do not have these opportunities.  Friends whose children are not healthy or are not even on earth anymore.  Our house helper and our tutor who have never seen the ocean or breathed clean air. (How many dozens of times have I been the seashore?) Why me? Why not them? I don't have answers.  It is easy for me to let these questions and the disparity of our lives steal the joy of the moment. But that's not what God wants for me, right? To not thank and not praise Him because of guilt? That doesn't seem to be a biblical trajectory.

Thankfully, He brought to mind two great images from C.S. Lewis.

First, the one from The Weight of Glory that Piper always quotes:
"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

It was a reminder of all that God wants to be for me. This taste of visible beauty is an invitation to pursue God (the Creator of it) for fullness of joy.  As Aslan says to Lucy in The Last Battle, "You do not yet know

But more than that, as I pondered the simultaneous presense of joy and pain, I thought of the last page of The Last Battle, "The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

One day there will be a holiday that will never end. There will be no mixture of joy and pain. There will be only joy. And it will be perfect. And so, as we wait for it, "we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God."

"What we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him face to face."