Timothy and Mary, part one

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this summer, it’s a deeper appreciation for the difficulty of translating ideals into reality, plans into action, the exciting and imaginative conceptual into imperfect and everyday concrete.

I think of the lines T.S. Eliot penned in “The Hollow Men,” chilling but all-too-true:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

And so I’ve been reflecting on the last two months, trying to discern where the shadow fell, and why.

I think that my capacity to dream -to hope- is greater than my capacity to enact, greater than my capacity for the elements that form the foundation for action: persistence, patience, faith, sacrifice, love…

And I think that to some degree my hope itself has been mis-founded, resting more on an overconfident estimation of my own ability than on Christ’s ability to form me as his disciple, that process I so frequently resist, that life-long journey I wish could be done in a moment. One day there may be such a moment, a “twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51, 52), but that day is not now, and I remain myself, imperfect and needy for the outstretched arm, the loving rebuke, the spirit of the cross: that mundane, everyday sort of resurrection. In short, needy for the wiser guidance of real love amidst all my dreams of heroism.