What if I told you that other worlds are real? What
if I told you that there is more to life than routines and to-do lists, more to
language than syntax and commas, more to the tree on your front lawn than bark
and leaves and photosynthesis, more to beauty than what is in the eye of the
beholder? Would I sound crazy or would you nod your head slowly because it just
makes sense?
“There
is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”
–Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The day was overcast, the clouds leaden and bulging.
You know the type of day. It’s the type of day when you walk around with your
shoulders hunched and your head bent low. The type of day when time slips past
in slow-motion. I was curled up in the corner by the window, my knees drawn
close to my chest and a faded green book resting against them. Tree and Leaf, it was called, by J.R.R.
Tolkien.
Via Pinterest
As I gently closed the book, a solemn reverence kept
me silent and still. I leaned my head against the cool windowpane, thoughts swirling.
For the first time in the many years I had lived in that house, I looked at the
old oak tree that spread its shade over our front lawn. Now, that oak tree was
a very normal oak tree. Trunk, branches, leaves. The works. It was like any
other oak tree. But as I sat there staring at the tree against the background
of the grey sky, my perspective shifted ever so slightly. For a moment I
recognized that the tree was not just a tree. There was more to it. To my eyes,
the edges of the leaves appeared to be outlined with a distant glimmer of
silver.
Startled, I tilted my head to look into the sky.
Even then I saw that impenetrable blanket of clouds differently. I saw them not
as the sky, but as a veil. Staring up into the fluffy folds of the clouds,
colored in swirled shades of grey, I could imagine that if I poked a hole into
the layers, the clouds would dissipate, dissolving in shreds. Behind them, I
knew, I would find not the blue sky but another world. Or perhaps more of this
world than was commonly visible or acknowledged.
When I blinked, the moment had gone. My surroundings
became ordinary once more. But I had not forgotten what I had seen. The
shock—the thrill—of it still tingled inside me. While it did, I hurriedly
scrawled a few words in my notebook, trying to process what I had encountered. I wrote:
It’s like there is a world beyond
this one…It’s a place just beyond my reach.
It wasn’t the first time that I felt such a thing.
It certainly wasn’t the last. In the past months, I have finally encountered a quote
which gave that feeling—or awareness—its proper name.
A Curious
Thrill.
"I felt a curious thrill, as
if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something
very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it,
far beyond ancient English." --J.R.R. Tolkien
When I
read this quote, I nodded my head slowly because it just made sense. It seemed
to me that Tolkien had (once again) said just what I was feeling in a way that
I probably would never be able to communicate myself. I had felt at various
moments throughout my life that there was something—in a strain of music, a
sunset, a smile, or (especially) in a beautifully wrought sentence—that lay
beyond my comprehension and experience. I could feel myself reaching and
grasping, trying to weave my fingers through the trailing bands of mist to
grasp it. But I never could get a grasp on it. In an attempt to describe this
feeling, some might employ the words enchantment
or mystical. That’s not quite
right, I think.
These
curious thrills, I believe, are remnants, reminders, and glimmers. Of what?
C.S.
Lewis calls this sort of sensation a longing
and I believe it is an apt description.
We live
in a fallen world, a world that is not as it was intended to be. As Lewis would
say, “We were made for something greater.” I believe that this knowledge,
whether or not we are immediately aware of it, exists within each of us.
Sometimes, we encounter a thing, a place, a person, a sound, or we are just
overcome by a realization that reminds us of that Something Greater for which
we were created. It calls to that restless spirit within us that longs for the world to be made right,
for the day when all is restored and made perfect. It points us to the Truth.
It is then that we are overcome with the sense of A Curious Thrill.
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Those
curious thrills, I should add, aren’t just about things beyond or mysterious or
remote. They are about life. They are about the here and the now as well as the
swirling past and the murky future. They are about children and adults, birds
and flowers, thunderstorms and waterfalls. They are about peace and war, work
and play. The curious thrills are about the ordinary and the extraordinary, all
at once.
So join
me, will you? Let us seek out these curious thrills together. Let us remember
who we are. Let us go Further In and Further Up.
Let us seek out the adventure
that is sent to us.
