There is a spoken line in the Paramount Plus streaming series “1883” where Elsa says, “No matter how much we love it, the land will never love us back.” I felt that . . . to the core. In fact, it stirred up emotions that I’ve experienced most of my life. C.S. Lewis expressed it in his essay, “The Weight of Glory”. He said it this way:
For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.
Several decades ago, I, also, tried to describe the feeling in words. I called it:
Spring fever
In the air the approaching spring can be felt, and with it comes a deceiving hope which mocks every heartfelt desire. At first glimpse, Spring appears to be a gift from heaven, but upon closer inspection one realizes that her beauty is only a shroud covering a dream that died aeons ago in Paradise. At first all one sees is the illusory image created as the shroud clings to its continuous shapely form. And the fragrance of the anointing oils that permeate that burial garment still emit their enticing odors evoking memories of a place never visited and creating a longing to journey there.
As Spring fleetingly passes, you are aware that she didn’t take you with her. You feel betrayed. Hope wanes and reality sets in; the dreams, the passions, the desires that Spring stirred up were all the while never within reach. Why does she mock and torment us so? Is she roaming the earth like a disembodied spirit taking vengeance on the human race because her murderer was that first man? Or is she just beckoning us to mourn her death? To be gripped with such a mourning is unbearable anguish.
Is this all life is – a cycle of aspirations destined to be vanquished? Was it some cruel joke our Creator played when he placed within the human spirit and mind the ability to think and dream and long and then snatches away the thing we long for so that it is never within reach if it ever existed at all?
But I have to believe it existed once. I cannot accept what Freud said, that, “Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.” I won’t be satisfied with an answer that diminishes our dreams and hopes by calling them illusions that are separate from reality. The very fact that our minds are capable of conceiving “illusions” is proof that they exist or have existed at one time or will exist someday.
As for now, though, the whole creation seems to be in mourning for what could have been – a well-laid plan gone wrong. Yet, our hope is sparked by the fleeting glimpses of beauty that still remain, and we wonder, “can it ever be again?” Yes, we are mourning the death of a beautiful plan, but what precisely died? The earth? Man? Definitely that but even more, the Shining One, the Son of the Morning (Isaiah 13), the anointed cherub that covered the earth; that great creature that God said was perfect in beauty and full of wisdom until iniquity was found in his heart (Ezekiel 28). God had given him the honor of being our protective covering, but when the protective covering was found to be defective, the entire creation became scorched with sin. Now his moribund figure casts the shadow of death over us, and earth itself has become “the valley of the shadow of death.” We are commanded to take up a lamentation for this mighty being (Ezekiel 28). Every living thing has joined in the woeful cry.
We were robbed of the riches we were to enjoy. Eden has ceased to exist while thorns, thistles, and briers grow up instead. We are teased by an occasional “flower” that blooms in protest. Will any beauty or life be preserved from the ruins? Does life protest in vain? Is there some secret door we could squeeze through to get to the place where our higher and nobler thoughts originated?
Yes! Jesus is the remnant of life and beauty that is preserved to renew the creation. He is the secret door we must enter to escape the curse and to be part of the regeneration. He said he came “to comfort those who mourn and give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness that we might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord,” and that we would “build up, restore, and repair the waste cities and desolations of many generations.” (Isaiah 61).
“And as the earth brings forth her bud and as the garden causes things that are sown to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord.” (Isaiah 61).
What about the earth that now is and all those who refuse to mourn? They shall vanish like smoke and wax old like a garment and the moths and the worm shall eat them. They shall be consumed and melt away like a snail. (Isaiah 51, Psalm 58, Zech. 14).
“And I saw a new heavens and a new earth: for the first heavens and the first earth were passed away. . . . And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
Rev. 21
“Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
Matt. 6
These words are like a cool compress on the forehead of those stricken with spring fever.
