a kingdom built of seeds

Now, finally, I really had lost all desire for change, every last twinge of the notion that I ought to get somewhere or make something of myself. I was what I was. “I will stand like a tree,” I thought, “and be in myself as I am.” – Jayber Crow

Who told you that you must get somewhere or make something of yourself? Who told you that you must be more than what you are? (This gratuitous burden.)

Go ahead. Try to match the noise by which you are surrounded. Perhaps already your voice is hoarse. Your arms are tired from being raised too long towards heaven. Your neck is sore from an uplifted face and your eyes burn from perpetual alertness. You never stop. You never rest.

And you are so weary.

Your body aches from the burden of trying to get somewhere or make something of yourself.

Someone told you to run the good race and fight the good fight, but they never gave you permission to rest along the way.

You are the perpetual shadow of someone you should be but cannot become.

And you are so weary.

Where are you hoping to arrive? What are you hoping to accomplish? Who are you hoping to become? Why are you so desperately attempting to lose yourself in order to become who you are not?

Who can blame you for being angry, exhausted, disappointed. You’ve been placed in a race you can never win, set towards a destination you will never reach.

I will stand like a tree, and be in myself as I am.

—

I wish I would have known better. But, of course, I did not. You only know what you know; you cannot know what you do not .

Where I could go, who I could be, was placed before me, neat and clean, clear-cut and tidy. It appears to work for those around you, and you secretly wonder, “Why isn’t it working for me? Is there something wrong with me?” Do a little more work, try a little harder, put forth a little more effort. Still, nothing.

You start glancing around, ahead. You begin to see beyond the once sole option set before you. Then comes guilt, shame, fear, anxiety. You’re smart and you know the rules. If you break them, you pay with the price of your soul.

But then, like a child learning to walk, you stand up on your own two feet. You let yourself wander a little, then afar. Here is a whole new world, opened up to you like a flower in bloom.

I will stand like a tree, and be in myself as I am.

—

I return to the gospel according to Jayber Crow.

“God loves Port William as it is,” I thought. “Why else should He want it to be better than it is?”

…[T]here was no longer with me any question of what is called “belief.” It was not a “conversion” in the usual sense, as though I had been altogether out and now was altogether in. It was more as though I had been in a house and a storm had blown off the roof; I was more in the light than I had thought. And also, at night, of course, more in the dark. I had changed, and the sign of it was only that my own death now seemed to me by far the least important thing in my life.

And so how was a human to pray? I didn’t know, and yet I prayed. I prayed the terrible prayer: “Thy will be done.”

I finally knew…why Christ’s prayer in the garden could not be granted. He had been seeded and birthed into human flesh. He was one of us. Once He had become mortal, He could not become immortal except by dying. That He prayed that prayer at all showed how human he was. That He knew it could not be granted showed His divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality, His mortal love of life that His death made immortal.

If God loves the world, might that not be proved in my own love for it?…[A]ll the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart.