Living – sethlewis.ie

The Treasure Chest at the Train Station

One morning as my wife and I were waiting for a train at our local station, I cast my eyes over the familiar utilitarian scene with its phone-holding inhabitants and I noticed something I had never paid attention to before. On the far side of the tracks there was an unassuming yellow-plastic treasure chest. I could see a padlock on it, but the latch was in front of the lock, ready to open. On the front it had large, black letters openly declared its contents: “Grit Salt”. I realise that this may not sound like treasure to you, or interesting or surprising or exceptional at all—and that’s just the point.

The Best Way To Resist Temptation

Temptation is an enemy that greets you like a close friend. It always wears a warm smile, always knows what to say, and always laughs with that mischievous “won’t this be fun?” twinkle in the eye—until you give in. After that, the spark of excitement begins to fade, chilled by the steadily encroaching cold of condemnation until it freezes hard into an icy, straightforward demand: Feed me. And again, this time shouting,

FEED ME.

NOW!

Becoming an Interesting Person

The ad popped up and promised to help me become an interesting person at parties. Should I be offended at what my algorithm is implying?

It told me the best way for me to stop being boring is to use an app that summarises the main ideas of popular books. With a tool like this, I could get all the key talking points quickly and efficiently, and always sound thoughtful and informed. Would people be impressed? Perhaps. But I’m not going to buy the app. I think the ad made at least three major assumptions about becoming an interesting person that are just plain wrong (besides the assumption that I’m obviously boring at parties, which I hope is also false).

Searching for a Sign

“God, please give me a sign”, I said quietly, as I stepped outside.

I was in the middle of a confusing situation. I didn’t know what to do, or how. I couldn’t see how anything could work out well. I wanted to know that God was near, and involved. I wanted to see a display of his care, and power. I’m not sure what kind of sign I was looking for, exactly—a sudden bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky? A rainbow ending at my house? A rare bird landing on my shoulder?

The Genius of Dirt

It’s everywhere. It sticks to your hands in the garden, and clings tightly to your shoes until the moment you step inside, where it promptly falls onto the just-cleaned floor. It stains the knees and elbows of children’s clothes, collects on the sides of cars, and turns into a sloppy mess in the rain. Dirt.

Does Heaven Move More Slowly?

The area we live in is booming. The fields are growing houses, and there are rivers of tail lights flooding the little roads that used to flow freely. As I sat in the car, waiting again, I thought about how the people who lived here in generations past used to get around. It was walking, mostly, at the pace of people or animals, and even with the traffic my car is faster than that. On the other hand, I know that walking is healthier, and also when I walk I often bump into people I know and we might have a friendly chat—which isn’t possible when we only glimpse each other through passing windscreens. All of this got me thinking about a question I’d never considered before: what kind of transportation will we use in Heaven?

Glorious Defeat (a poem)

In our midweek Bible studies with our church we’ve been discussing the book of Hosea, and this poem is based on one of the themes we found there—a theme I’ve experienced in my own life as well.

Glorious Defeat

I raise my eyes
to my opponent
standing in the way
towering above my head
and shining like the day
I size him up
I shake my fist
I’m impotent
yet I resist
“Why?”
I shout out my complaint
though my own voice
sounds small and quaint
“Why are you here blocking me?
Move aside, now! Let me be!”
He doesn’t budge
his sword is drawn
he’s ready now for action
his eyes are burning hot
with an unsettling compassion
and with a voice
like rushing water
larger than the world
he answers with a knowing smile
“Child” he says
“My child”—is that really who I am?
“I only stand to save you from the peril
that you’re in. This path leads to destruction—
if you turn, you’ll live again. So I’ll block you
and I’ll fight you and I’ll stop you till you see
that the path to perfect freedom
is the path that leads to me.”
And so I am undone
in my glorious defeat
I run into his arms
and I find the victory

The Growing Power of Wilful Ignorance

She didn’t want to go to the dentist.

My friend already knew she had cavities, and she knew the dentist would want to do something about them. If she avoided seeing him, she could ignore the problem a little longer. It’s easy to ignore a cavity if the tooth is still functioning. Drills and fillings feel drastic when it’s entirely possible to carry on as normal with no intervention at all. The easiest way to deal with a little bit of decay is to apply a little bit of wilful ignorance to it. The trouble, of course, is that wilful ignorance is not an effective treatment for cavities. It only gives them time to grow. And as the decay grows, the wilful ignorance will have to grow with it. To keep a growing problem out of our minds, we must continually increase the capacity of our tolerance for it, slowly expanding the diameter of our blind spots to fit over its ugly edges.

A Thousand Lives (a poem)

Here’s a poem to compliment my previous post, A Treasure Chest for Thoughts

I have often wandered in
The Hundred Acre Wood
If you’ve never been to Neverland
I’ll tell you that you could
But mind yourself—
There’s pirates there
And don’t trust Long John Silver
You need a bear like ol’ Baloo,
The jungle-wisdom giver
I’ve been in boats with Rat and Mole
And Huckleberry Finn
And for a time the Pevensies
Were pretty much my kin
I cried when Old Dan died and I
Rejoiced when Gandalf was revived
And I have lived a thousand lives
While sitting by the bookshelf

Right Here (a poem)

Life is not a reward that comes
after all of the chores are done

after all of the children
are fed and the
workweek is over and
laundry is sorted we
hope that our plans won’t be scrapped or reordered
for moments of peace, or a day to de-stress—

if that’s what life is,
tell me what is the rest?

Life is right here
hiding here in these moments
in dishes and spreadsheets and auto mechanics
in toothpaste and heartbreaks and peeling the carrots
and only the ones who refuse to ignore it

will live every day they’re alive

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.”
— C.S. Lewis