More Than Are Dreamt of

Horatio:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 163–167

I love science, what Hamlet refers to as philosophy. Since philosophy means “love of knowledge,” that suits me. I make no distinction between wanting to know of the things we call science and the things we call theology. It’s all good.

And he is right. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any man’s philosophy. Science pushes the boundaries of knowledge continually, and with each step forward, truer mysteries of the universe deepen.

This is a difficult post for me to write on many levels. Some of you, dear readers, are going to think one thing of me, others something quite different. But what, in that play Polonius ironically advises his son (to better keep lies straight) I say earnestly: “to thine own self be true.”

Brenda called me in my class room just as the last of my students filed out for their lunch.

She was crying.

She wanted to meet me.

If I skipped my preparation period, skipped my lunch, I would have one hour, 24 minutes.

I went.

I’ve never seen her like that.

She was broken. Desperate.

When I got home, she was standing in the driveway. Her car was packed with all of her things. She had left John.

She wanted to come back.

She said all of the things I had wanted to hear from her. That she loved me. That she wanted to be my wife. That she wanted to grow old with me... and more.

That made me cautious. It was all the things I wanted. Was she saying the things I was most likely to respond to? Or was there something else, something more?

I told her I wanted to think about it. I wanted to pray about it.

She said she had been to the church. She had shared everything with the pastor (a good friend) and two women I trust.

I sent them emails, asked them if she seemed as sincere, as broken, to them as she seemed to me.

They said they were impressed. They believed her sincerity.

I told my friend, the monkish pastor, the guy who feels comfortable enough to tell me what he thinks, even when it is something I don’t want to hear, or is about what I am doing wrong, I’d like to talk with him, within a couple of days, face to face, not via email.

He replied there was an elders meeting at our church that night, ending at 8:00. I could come then.

I got there at 7:00. Spent an hour in the Prayer Room.

And we shared.

I reviewed the past year, my ambiguous feelings, my need for wisdom, for God’s direction.

My friend told of Brenda’s honesty that day.

We prayed.

I began to feel an urge to go talk to her. She is staying at her mom’s.

As we shuffled in our seats, preparing to take our leaves, I was reminded of something.

“Oh... One more thing.”

They sat back down.

“I want you to know that when I asked all of you to come and pray over Jeremiah, over the sense that there was something wrong, something evil, clinging to him, some darkness from Haiti prompting dark thoughts, dark actions, that from that moment on there was a much lighter feeling about Jeremiah. He stopped having those thoughts. He stopped having those nightmares.”

They were pleased to hear it. One of them said there was something he had been wanting to share for some time... something about the night of the fire, the fire started by Jeremiah.

“Brenda and I were in the basement, and she was ahead of me a few steps. She had gone around the corner and up the stairs, and was just standing there staring. She was staring at the fire. She wasn’t moving. Just standing there.

“I pushed her out the door. And then I turned around to look at the fire, to see if I could put it out or something. And of course I couldn’t it was too big. But I saw something.

“In the middle of the flames was a figure. All black. And I had this sense of evil. Of something malevolent.

“I went back later, after the fire was out, to see if there was something there, some feature of the building, or some object, that could have made that shape in the fire. There wasn’t anything. It had felt like I was looking at Satan.”

We were silent for a moment. This thing he saw... the flashes of evil I had seen in the shadows in Jeremiah’s room, the strange knocking on the walls there, the recording of Jeremiah’s voice on a neighbor’s answering machine that wasn’t him, rapid, evil, ugly words, articulated in a way he does not...

I cleared my throat.

“Brenda told me something about that night also. She said that when she was going down that hallway, just ahead of you, and got to that corner, she had an oppressive sense of evil. Something frightened her. She didn’t want to go on. But she went up the stairs, and there was the fire, and the sense of evil grew, seemed to just hold her.”

We thought about how many times Brenda has spoken about the fire, how it had affected her so deeply, changed the way she felt about Jeremiah. Changed everything.

My friend, the bookish keeper of our small flock, said he had always felt there was some unfinished business about the fire. That the church had not dealt with. That they had prayed with Jeremiah about it, seeking freedom for him... but they had never addressed the obvious toll the fire had taken on Brenda and I, especially Brenda.

And we thought about evil... We thought about the subject that none of us are comfortable with... we thought about the words in scripture:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. --Ephesians 6:12

“We need to pray over Brenda,” my friend said.

“When?” said another.

“How about now?” I asked.

I called her. She came.

We talked. We covered the previous conversations.

We prayed. Fervent prayers for deliverance, freedom. We prayed for protection. We prayed for blessings. We prayed for the breath of God to fill her.

And a lightness seemed to fill the room. A weight seemed to float away.

And there was something else. Three people have told me, people who have been praying for us, praying for wisdom, and strength, and healing for each of u as we go our separate ways, three people said that they each, that day, had sudden;ly felt they should pray for the miraculous healing of our marriage.

Earlier I had told Brenda that we were going to go ahead with the things we planned. The review of the divorce papers the next day at the courthouse. That we would just see how we had done with filling them out, that we would not have to do anything with them, but we had that appointment, we should keep it.

It was awful.

We sat in that clerk’s office. Sheet by sheet we went through the stack of divorce papers, signing in places, making small changes. It took a little over an hour.

“Well, that’s it,” the clerk said. “All you have to do is have your sons sign the forms that they do not contest you won’t be getting child support, and then file them upstairs. Just turn in the packet and pay $381.”

Those papers lay on the floor between the captain’s chairs in the van on the drive back to Canby. Those papers lay between us.

She wants to move back in.

But... I feel very clearly that I should not let that happen.

But...

I also feel very clearly that I should not file those papers.

What the heck is going on?

I am certain that this past year I was supposed to forgive Brenda. Keep taking her back. This wasn’t some wishful fantasy on my part to try to hold the shredded remains of my marriage together (though there was some of that). It had been clear direction, the deep sense that it was right, what my Lord wanted of me.

I didn’t understand it. It seemed that I had been asked to be hurt, over and over and over.

I told Brenda once, when she was complaining about how good deeds we had done had not paid off for us, that she obviously didn’t get it.

“Look at this past year. This year has been hell for me. It has not paid off for me. So why do I feel I was supposed to do it? I think it was not for my benefit. It was for yours. I think that someday you will look back on what I did this year, at my forgiveness, my steady love, and understand a little better about forgiveness, about love, about undeserved grace. Someday this past year may be what helps you to find God, to understand the great love He has for us.”

At that time it was also clear the time had come to let her go. It was time to begin the divorce. It seemed clear to me God did not want me to take her back, though she asked a couple of times. She was to live with her choices for a while.

But now... today... that feeling is gone. Instead, I feel something else.

I feel the echo of the words I said over a quarter of a century ago...

“I vow to love and to cherish, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to forsake all others, until death do us part.”

What?

WHAT?!?

Yeah.

My vows.

Those are the words I hear.

And yet... it seems clear that I am not to let her move back in right away. It seems clear we need time apart. We need to break the pattern of the actions and reactions we have always done... the seeking to prove ourselves right, to get our way in even small, insignificant things.

It seems clear I need to grow up. I need to bear the burden of running this household. Of working during the day, and then cooking and cleaning, and doing laundry and paying bills.

It seems clear we need space to grow a little... both of us... that we are like plants that have become root bound in our pots. We need a little space to grow deeper roots, to send out new branches, to be who God wants us to be, and learn who we are... ourselves and each other.

And it occurs to me... what a strange thing. To be told to continue to forgive, to continue to take her back, while she continued to deceive me, betray me. To be told to stop... to let her go... to let her live with her choices... And now, frankly, as strange as it sounds, to forgive her again, and stand in the door of our home, and, lovingly, tell her to dive into the river, to wash away the pain and guilt, To let herself flow with our Lord, and that I would be alongside her. I would join her. I will walk into that river, and wash away the crud that clings to me. To take on responsibilities I should, to say “No” to the projects that distract me from my family.

And that when we are both ready, when we have been washed, and we have dried, and are ready to relearn our love... to walk through the door of our home together... even as the boys move on.

And... there is the toxic catalyst lying in a cupboard at work. In the large stationary store envelope, with its proper seals, carefully filled out forms and check marks and explanations and notarized signatures. The divorce papers.

I possess a tool of destruction. I can, with a 15 minute drive and less than $400, have this marriage end within a week.

It is more authority I should have.

It is true I would not do it as long as I thought there is a chance for things to work out, that she was in agreement. It is true I would not do it without clear instructions from my Lord.

But the ability to do it whenever I wish is a loaded gun lying within the room of our marriage, the room that has begun to unexpectedly have a light shine in it.

She is wearing her wedding rings again. I have not put mine on. I think that I am being told something about that.

I pause because it would mean I capitulate. I pause because it seems insane to open myself up to the hurt she can cause me, and my sons, again.

But... I am the Lord’s servant.

I wrote recently that I was his, and that all He need do is tell me, and I will obey.

This is almost harder than anything else I have done.

But this is not a thing of emotions. I have written of how a part of me is a watcher. It observes how I feel, why I feel, trots out the psychology and experience I have and explains myself to myself. And in the last couple of days the watcher within me has taken control. I have not let my feeling dictate my actions. I have cautiously, methodically, listened and prayed, and pushed the part of me that tends to fall easily into emotional responses, deep down into a quiet corner, and I have looked at my heart.

I know God is real.

He is more real than I.

I know there are forces of evil in the world. It is a topic I shy from. I especially avoid thinking about the chapter of my life that included living in an ashram, being associated with Kali worshippers... Yes... Kali... For those who know what I refer to, that is more than enough said. For those who don’t... please don’t look it up. Just let it lie. It is a part of my life that came and nearly killed me, and I was delivered from through a miracle, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Ever.

But...

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. --Ephesians 6:12

I love science. I have a deep faith, one that makes me feel that my beliefs are stronger, deeper, more real, crossing more dimensions of time and space than my physical body inhabits.

And there is more.

There are things that cannot be explained. And there are wonderful things in the process of being explained. I am so excited about the Hadron supercollider! I am thrilled at the mapping of dark matter and dark energy in distant galactic superclusters. I am so excited to learn more of these new theories of quantum gravity!

But... those are the things of men. Those are the mental gymnastics of men. And there is more to all of this than being a man, of being mortal.

There is also obedience.

I’m wary of the path that seems to be opening before me. But the light of my shepherd, the Shepherd, is shining down that path.

I will obey.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

(FYI: The above picture is created by writing out prayers with Sharpies. Different colors of the letters, words, forms the image. Click to enlarge.)