When the Sky Draws Close

1. Someone once said that, given an absolute choice of two things, I almost always manage to find a third. I've long considered this one of the truest observations ever made about me.

2. I detest being called 'Mister Waters' -- by anyone of any age for any reason. It does not communicate respect. Respect is calling me what I wish to be called. My name is Edward.

[Note: A few old friends do still call me 'Ed', but this is only because they met me when I was trying to shake off the 'Eddie' of my childhood. 'Ed' was a transitional compromise.]

3. Apart from necessarily formal occasions (weddings, funerals, etc) or costume events (Hallowe'en, Twelfth Night, Renaissance Festivals), I wear essentially the same outfit every day: Blue or black jeans, sturdy walking shoes, and a long-sleeve shirt of dark grey, black, or navy. It's a deliberate gesture of simplicity in a life where simplicity is all too rare, and it suggests my respect for some of the ideals of monasticism.

4. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor moderate, nor generally indifferent. My sympathies on specific issues fall all along the spectrum. As this has the potential for needlessly antagonizing almost everyone at some point, I avoid discussing politics.

5. I first saw Cindy sitting in the back of a room where I was singing during my freshman year of college. Drawing on the vast experience of having gone out on one date in my entire life, I thought, 'She's cute, but she's not my type.' -- I'm an idiot.

6. I have always found competitive sports mind-numbingly boring and don't really enjoy competition in any context. I also don't like weapons. I regard the automobile as the most disastrous invention in human history, potentially even more destructive to the world at large than nuclear arms. I have never defined myself by my day-job and have had otherwise close friends for years without knowing what they did for a living. I 'saved myself for marriage', and anyway never clearly understood how sex took place until a biology course in my second year of college. I did most of the housekeeping (and some cooking) for nine of the first dozen years of our marriage, and it was my suggestion that I continue to manage at least half the chores once we were both working outside the home. I still commemorate not just Cindy's and my wedding anniversary, but the day we met, the day of our first date, and the day we became engaged. I am sentimental to the brink of neurosis. I find nothing so cathartic as a good cry (though generally in private). 'Beauty and the Beast' is my favourite classic faerie tale, Disney film, and American television serial (CBS 1987-90).

... So I rather resent people presupposing anything about me based on male stereotypes.

7. I had my first three cups of coffee over the course of a week in my early teens. They were also my last. I didn't enjoy them and saw no reason thereafter to take up the habit. I discovered tea, however, around my last year of college, about the same time that I began to realize how many of my long-time favourite books, films, legends, musical works, foods, and even furniture were British in origin (albeit more representative of an earlier era). It would still be another decade, however, before a couple from South Africa (yes, Ian; I mean you and Quirien) finally taught us how to prepare tea properly. The rest is history.

8. What George MacDonald's Phantastes was to C.S. Lewis, The Lord of the Rings has been to me. My parents tried heroically to make a reader out of me, but it was not until my fifth-grade English teacher began reading aloud from The Hobbit at the end of her classes that a book genuinely ignited something inside me. I persuaded my mother to buy me a copy which I devoured almost overnight. Then, discovering it to be a 'prequel' to a larger work, I ploughed through J.R.R. Tolkien's three-volume masterpiece with more enthusiasm than true comprehension. Since those days I have read it at least a dozen times, on my own or aloud to Cindy; I own cassette and CD copies of the BBC radio serial (not to be confused with the appalling 'Mind's Eye' version); I have read much of Tolkien's other work, both fiction and scholarship; and, despite the eventual blossoming of my interests in many subjects and a personal library of over 2000 books, the great epic of the End of the Third Age of Middle-earth remains at the core of my literary world, and has permanently and profoundly shaped my perspective on life and my understanding of joy, sorrow, hope, sacrifice, humility, courage, beauty, loyalty, devotion, and the simple, homely pleasures and gifts the modern world too easily throws away or ploughs under.

Like many, I felt betrayed by Peter Jackson's cinematic version, not because he inevitably adapted the story to perceived film requirements, but because he completely changed the fundamental spirit and motivation of every major character save one. Patience was reinterpreted as lack of confidence, loyal friendship as accidental encounter, bold resolution as the product of trickery and manipulation, and selfless wisdom and virtue as low self-esteem. These were not the people I knew. In Tolkien's hands, however, their great hearts had 'baptized my imagination', nurtured my soul for nearly half a century, and set me on the path to becoming a devotee of books and of the English language.

9. I love Cindy. More than anything in this world. Folk far worthier than I will ever be rarely find such happiness, and I count it as nothing short of a miracle that I did. My marriage has taught me the deepest gratitude -- to Cindy and for Cindy. In a song I wrote for and sang at our wedding, I said, 'Because you're joining me, I know I never really was alone.'

10. I am a Christian, but I was not really raised as such. My highly intellectual parents were becoming sceptics at that time, and what experience I did have of church up till my early teens was sheer boredom. Nor was I persuaded to faith by any sermon, religious literature, or 'personal evangelism'. I can only say that, for as far back as I remember, throughout a very melancholy and lonely childhood, there had always been a Presence on the edge of my consciousness. Eventually (and somewhat abruptly) that Presence drew closer and, through a series of circumstances, pointed me toward the Church and gently affirmed the foundations of traditional Christianity: The trustworthiness of Scripture, the unique divinity of Jesus, and the truths of Atonement and the Resurrection.

Thus, I am not a Christian because of blind faith in archaic texts and improbable testimonials, nor because I ignore the complex and often painful realities of Church history. I trust the Scriptures, with all their difficulties; I follow Christ, with all the outrageousness of His claims; and I embrace the Church, with all its human failings -- because God, the Creator of the cosmos, made Himself real to me first.

(Copyright © 2009 by Edward Waters)

A band of common labourers
heard the angels sing.  (Luke 2.13-14)

A handful of outsiders
saw a heavenly sign.  (Matthew 2.1-2)

A man near death
saw God's promises come true.  (Luke 2.25-32)

An aged widow
long shut off from the world
heard the news with joy
and began to spread the word.  (Luke 2.36-38)

The mighty, the influential, the arrogant, the proud
saw nothing whatsoever,
heard nothing
save strange rumours,

As the Master of the Universe
came among them.

            *  *  *

'God has chosen
the foolish things of the world
to shame the wise ...
the weak things of the world
to shame the strong ...'  (I Corinthians 1.27)

Wishing you this Christmas
grace in your weakness.

            *  *  *

HE MAKES THE NATIONS PROVE
THE GLORIES OF HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.

(Copyright © 1994, 2006 by Edward Waters)

THE LOST CHILD
(a parable)

By Edward Waters
(Copyright © 2002)

            One day, while visiting a strange city, a man discovered a small child living in a back alley.  She was filthy and foul-smelling, crawling with lice and dressed in rags that barely hid the skeleton which passed for her body.  Her only shelter was an old corrugated box set against a wall beneath a fire-escape.  Her bed was a pile of damp newspapers.  And most of her food, such as it was, came from a large dumpster at the front of the alley near where it opened onto the street.

            That was where he first saw her, climbing out of the rusty metal vault, her arms full of rotting scraps.  When he started toward her she dropped everything, fled to her box, and hid as best she could in the shadows of its recess.  The man followed, but stopped a few yards away.  All he could see were her bony toes and ankles, and her huge eyes as they caught what dim light the alley allowed.  He tried to speak to her, but she only began shaking with terror.  So he left.  He returned a short while later, however, with real food and several blankets.  The child still would not come out, but the man set his gifts on the ground and left once more.

            The next day he was back and noted with satisfaction that the food had been eaten and the blankets taken.  He had brought more food, which he set down as before.  He stayed only briefly, but he did say a few words of greeting in a kind voice, and this time the girl did not shake.  She remained in her box, but she simply watched him in silence.

            This went on for more than a week before the man earned some show of confidence.  Eventually, however, the child began to come out and take away the food while he was still present, as long as he kept a safe distance.  He always spoke to her, and though she never answered, she seemed to understand something of what he said.  After two weeks she would even eat the food where he laid it, and allow him to talk at greater length while she crammed whole handfuls into her mouth.  He told her stories, about what he did for a living, the places he had been, and the wonders he had seen.  And sometimes a look would come into her eyes, as if for the first time her imagination was beginning to venture beyond the dirty brick walls surrounding her.

            By the third week, he would see her at the mouth of the alley waiting for him.  As he approached she always retreated into the dark passage, but when he rounded the corner she would be standing before her box expectantly.  And now, though obviously cautious, she would take the plate from his hands.

            Then one day, as she ate, he began to tell her a different kind of story.  He said that he was her father -- that, when she was so young she could barely walk, she had been kidnapped.  A ransom had been demanded and paid, but she was not returned.  Eventually the kidnappers were caught and punished, but by then the child was no longer with them, though they insisted she had been alive when they last saw her.

            Ever since, the father had searched for his lost child, following every trace of a lead until, after years, he had come to this alley.  And now that he had found her, he was ready to take her away and give her a new life -- one where she would have a home with a real roof overhead, and a warm bed to sleep in; where she would have plenty to eat, and always be loved.

            But as the man spoke, the child's eyes grew wide with fear.  Suddenly she dropped the food and scurried back into her box.  She grabbed up the blankets and threw them out onto the ground; then huddled in the corner, trembling violently.  Now nothing he said could calm her.

            She could not comprehend a real home or a warm bed, plenty of food or being loved.  What she did understand was that this stranger wanted to take her away from everything familiar.  As pitiful as it was, this world was her idea of safety.  She preferred what she knew over his unbelievable promises.

Beyond Entropy

By Edward Waters
(Copyright © 5 August 1992)