A rumination on love, faith and what we can be sure of

Today I was walking down to the train station for a late start at work (after a 15 hour work day yesterday) and ruminating on the things that I can be sure of in life.

I recently saw this illustration by Mari Andrews of 'Things I Feel Unsure About' as opposed to 'Things I Feel Sure About'. If I had my own list it would look a little like this:

Things I Can Be Sure About:

-My hair looks best the day after I've washed it

-I'm a sucker for crunchy granola

-Skirts and dresses over Trousers and shirts

-I like shoes that make a slight click when heel meets ground (they give me confidence)

-That God so loved this world that He gave His only Son, so that anyone who believes in His Son Jesus Christ will not perish because of the sin that we all commit and that justly merits punishment, but will have eternal life with God because Jesus has paid the price for that sin in His death on the cross.

-That God is faithful:

As surely as the sun rises,
    he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
    like the spring rains that water the earth.

-That I am so often unfaithful:

[My] love is like the morning mist,
    like the early dew that disappears.

Things I Can't Be Sure About:

-Whether the combination of peanut butter and strawberries or tahini and maple syrup wins the sweet toast prize for after dinner snacking

-Whether I'm actually hungry or not

-What I really think about my bond

-If my choices of optional papers for third year are what I really want to do

-Whether I'll be able to do a Master's course next year

Thankfully, I thought, the last two things I am sure of are enough of an assurance to outweigh the uncertainty that I have about small or seemingly big things. Jacob showed me Chapter 6 of Hosea when we were skyping some time ago, and sometimes during the week I search it up on my laptop and read it again. He said something so true about it - that it really contrasts our 'constant inconsistency' with God's unending faithfulness (a surety).

I thought about another conversation we'd had, and how I'd come to see from that that perhaps love isn't closest to a feeling or a series of actions but faith. Love - faith, both sometimes appear to disappear but are actually constant in their true forms. Love - faith, both intangible, both life-giving, both relational, both holding onto the now and hoping for and dreaming about the not-yet.

Love - faith, both nothing without assurance and certainty in some for or another. If you love someone unreasonable, knowing they do not return your love and that you will never be in love together with them, then that love is pain and frustration and destruction. If you have faith in something you do not actually believe in, which proves false and fleeting and unfaithful, then that faith is dead and useless. And so it is an unchanging, constantly constant and sure God which I choose to love foremost and to put my faith in. His assurance is my life song, his constancy my rock, upon which I build my faith and trust in love.

'The week we spent in Portugal...' - Lisbon

Last week I skyped Alex, a heady 2 hour call that had not a second of silence. After that call, my mind reminded me again how I hadn't ever written about the time we spent in Portugal, a trip born of a combination of essay fever and holiday fervour, flights booked late at night while sitting propped up on my bed, neither of us really believing that we were flying to Lisbon if not for convenient ryanair emails.

We stayed at Grandma's place for a couple of days, listening to Nina Simone while we ate our porridge and cooking an altered version of Biryani on the stove, and on the day of the flight we left before dawn, and listened to the dawn chorus as we drove to the train station.

We flew on a hot, dusty plane to a hot, dusty country, which grew cooler when we stepped out into the city. I floated on a feeling of anticipation that reminded me of Barcelona: the same sepia-tone, and also a slight and unexplained lonesomeness despite the lovely presence of Alex with me.

As usual, my worries (worry, loneliness, anxiety, disappointment, sometimes hard to distinguish) dissipated when we stepped out of the train station, walked past a juice store and the smell of croissants and got to our hostel. It was called the 'Poet's Hostel' and everything about it was perfect. The rooms were named after poets, Portuguese or otherwise, guest-made art hung on the walls, and there was a spacious lounge with bean bags, and very friendly desk staff. We put our things down and contemplated a nap, before deciding to venture out and enjoy the 17 degree weather (I wore a sleeveless dress for the first time in months).

Lisbon is certainly one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, blue and white tiled buildings, trams dinging by and cobbled streets that glint as if wet in evening light. We walked first to find food - very salty sandwiches - and then tried to find a fashion gallery (closed) and at last sat by the sea, and talked (as we always do) about everything and everything. Two lovers of The Waves, sitting by the waves, and Alex read out the first chapter of The Waves just as she had in Medwards' garden. (We are both suckers for perfect moments, even if self-created.) Then we walked along the beach - now a Prufrock moment! and had dinner at a place called AO26 that I still think about going back to every time I think of Lisbon.

The next day we took a train to Sintra. Sintra reminded me of Pan's labyrinth - 'A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamt of the human world. She dreamt of blue skies, soft breeze and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was, and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness and pain. Eventually she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning ...' The whole place seemed like the castle ruins were not quite laid to rest, but were alive and waiting for something.

There was a large well where water trickled and dripped down the walls as we went down a descending spiral of steps to its depths. When you looked up the circle of sky looked like the moon, apart from a tree branch slashing its silhouette against the milky blue. Then we headed into a dripping tunnel, which led us to a nearby pool. At one point we walked behind the castle walls, climbing over or alongside boulders.

You'd have thought that by the end of that day of clambering and climbing and exploring that we'd finish there - but we went to Belem, because there was an art gallery there that looked interesting. We stopped to get Alex a flaky custard pastry from the shop opposite the monastery where they were originally made by monks.

The Art Gallery itself was immense, and we were sorry not to have more time in it (although no regrets about the pastry or the lovely golden walk we had getting there) In one gallery, there were a collection of photographs of space. Not being very 'good' at 'understanding' art (questionable terms there) I stood in front of the photographs and wondered if photography was a lesser skill compared to painting, or sculpture, or drawing, because it was a machine working for you (although you of course in many aspects work the machine too). And just as I was about to turn away - suddenly - serendipitously - music. Music from the spheres, I like to think. And instantly my experience of the photograph was changed. No longer was it just an 'is' of space and stars. It was overwhelmed with possibility and energy. It made me think about heaven, and oblivion or fulfillment, of peace and uncertainty, and the process of getting over grief.

It rained just as we got to the train station, and was still drizzling when we went back to A026 to get dessert - chocolate mousse for Alex and an exquisite strawberry cheesecake for me (again - still dreaming).

A metaphorical, unchronological, one-sided account of Dubai and Jordan

No dates. No days. Does the sun ever really set in the desert?

Dubai is heavy hot.

The cold tap produces warm water. Heat rises from the water to caress your skin before you want to be touched.

In an artist's studio there is a tile you can touch, pictographic braille that made me illiterate when I closed my eyes - line, circle and point merged into one under my rough, insensitive fingers. Words that usually drop easily into my mind like smooth pebbles into a clear pond become murky or disappear.

There is no water in a desert.

Later with eyes open I remained illiterate, unable to read the curves and dots of Arabic, unable to read the curves and dots of a smile and your eyes. Were those creases care or amusement? Or both? I deemed you unreadable, the desert an empty blank.

Our minds were blank too, we couldn't remember the words we sang every week. We practice fear. 'My soul doth magnify the Lord...' The nervousness is in some ways natural. 'And my spirit doth rejoice in God my Saviour...' But when we practice happiness I shout 'BLESS THE LORD' and it is with real joy and not thespian affectation. More lines.

We talk about how we could never live here, this exotic place with so many shards beneath the glass, a world away from what you describe as your ordinary life.

There is no water in a desert.

Moments later David tells me about how we know so little about space, how we perhaps know even less about oceans, which in some ways can never be fully known, being an utterly fluid medium. Moments later we are lying on a trampoline, the soft give of the net beneath me, the  little leaves prickling the skin on my back, the heat rising off my face and body is familiar, a fragment from childhood. I see four stars above, and a moving light which must be an aeroplane. We talk about the hidden things in people, the depths we never know about them, the things we are just beginning to appreciate as they leave. I suppose people are like oceans, moving and changing and little known.

As we fly from Dubai to Jordan the aeroplane's wing turns from dusty blue to pink to yellow. At one point it falls directly on the seam where the sun's colours fade out, making it appear like a great cosmic eraser, smudging the sunset's brilliant kodak stack of colours into a grey blue that we leave behind us.

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mud-cracked houses

                                If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water

Things are different in Jordan. Perhaps I have learnt from Dubai that with enough oil and money and the crazy vision of the very rich, you can have water in a desert. We danced along to a fountain show in blazing sunlight. We raced about like five year olds in a water park, slides that shot water – all in the desert.

 “Come, all you who are thirsty,

    come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,

    and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

    and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Give ear and come to me;

    listen, that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

    my faithful love promised to David.

[...]

You will go out in joy

    and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

    will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

    will clap their hands.

Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the Lord’s renown,

    for an everlasting sign,

    that will endure forever.”

Isaiah 55

Finally, finally, from a distant myth to an immediate reality we reach the desert. The bus was coated with a thin film of sand, which clung to us as well when we stepped out into the desert. The paths the jeep went down were almost unreadable, only slightly lighter sand than the mountains themselves, and we soon alighted and continued on foot, a brief moment of heat and then a plunge into a cool green-blue pool. A pattern repeated, punctuated by the presence of tadpoles, frogs and the most brilliant pink desert flowers. The act of jumping into a pool is easy, even sliding in from a height of about 7 metres is easy unless you think about it. The thought of it is a terror that sits beside you with arms tight around your chest, and the whole choir cheered when Katie plunged in. The last jump is the highest, and I have to pause before letting go. But every time you fall it is the same - exhilaration and joy, flight, fall, impact and the million million bubbles the spring up around you, enveloping you safely and delivering you again to the bright, white desert world.

As we drive away I see a patch of melons, and a patch of tomatoes. I think of the tadpoles, the flowers, the tiny frog I scooped up that walked with webbed feet over my hands and which you wondered over. There is life in this desert and the land cannot stop living. It makes me hopeful, and amazed, and I tell you how wrong we both were. Our lives are not ordinary - we have lived and we are living and will live extraordinary lives, whether we try to or not. I for one have been through the desert and jumped off a cliff into an unknown pool and still live.

I once saw a television programme about the desert. The programme sped up time, the desert burst into life. I watched as colour erupted extraordinary.

I stepped off the plane feeling dry again. I read the words 'The truth has to be melted out of our stubborn lives by suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, nothing tells us how things really are, nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.' (The Oresteia, Aeschylus) I do not want to be back in this hot, heavy land. I do not want to leave the cool water and prayer call of Jordan.

An imitation of the desert pool is found in Joanna's swimming pool, but I leave at one point and turn somersaults on the trampoline until I can land them, and then I do five because there is an urgency that is taking hold of me at the thought of imminent departure.

You tell me that you read that the present it the closest thing we have on earth to eternity, this encapsulated moment, a bubble with all ends joined together. When I walk with Emily she reminds me that I can just ask. There is no time like the present. There is no present like the time. And I am painfully aware of how quickly it is running away from me. So I decided to stop it. By 10 o'clock.

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)

We watched two fountain shows before the third one. And almost proverbially, by the time the third show came on everything was different, and I don't think I saw much of that fountain show at all.

I write, you write, it is not perfect in many ways. I had two drafts before I sent my first letter, and there are things in the second letter I wish I'd re-written. I am never satisfied with my writing, always satisfied with yours. It is difficult not being with you, but if there was anything at all I learnt from Dubai and Jordan, it is that even in the desert there are pools, there are water parks and fountains. One does not die of thirst, all it takes is patience, and the practice of falling.