I've been talking about time traveling and about how guilty all of us are from time to time in doing it. If you'll pop over to Part 1, you'll get more of a heads up on whatever in this world that I'm talking about in this post. In a nut shell, I am sharing parts of a book I once read [The Time Traveler's Wife] and the crazy thoughts that it spurred inside me while reading it. Below, I first quote from the book with its page number.... and afterward I follow it up with my crazy thinking that what was said provoked inside me.....
Pg 105 – Clare said of Henry, "I won't ever leave you. Even though you're always leaving me." ~~
Do you know that feeling?
I read another book with a friend once. Inside the book on one of the pages was a riddle that a boy asked a girl, “What goes around the world, but stays in a corner?” She laughed without answering, because they both shared their joke. The answer: A stamp. Later, I came up with one of my own. I asked my friend, “How about this one? What never leaves, but left a long time ago?” My friend never even attempted to answer. Since he didn’t ask, I didn’t give him one. The answer that I never told him was this. “Him!” There are some people that “won’t ever leave,” even though they’re “always leaving” or left a long time ago. Some people are stayed forever inside the heart, inside the mind, inside the soul, even after they’ve long ago gone; even after they’ve come back and left again a hundred times; even after they’ve died ahead of you and already left this world to live in the next one. It’s called love… or sometimes for others, theirs is called hate. It’s a way for them to live on even when they don’t live in close proximity to you in person anymore.
Pg 128 - ""Do you ever miss him?" Clare’s grandmother asked her.
"Every day. Every minute."
"Every minute," her grandmother responds. And then. "Yes," she says, "It's that way, isn't it?"...
"Good night," I say, turning out the lamp. As I stand in the dark looking down at Grandma in her bed, self-pity floods over me as though I have been injected with it. It's that way, isn't it? Yes, I think, it is."
"Every day. Every minute."
"Every minute," her grandmother responds. And then. "Yes," she says, "It's that way, isn't it?"...
"Good night," I say, turning out the lamp. As I stand in the dark looking down at Grandma in her bed, self-pity floods over me as though I have been injected with it. It's that way, isn't it? Yes, I think, it is."
Yeah.
It’s like that toward the one you miss, or the thing you miss, the hope, the job, the want, the desire…. You miss it. “Every day. Every minute.” And “self-pity floods over you as though you’ve been injected with it.”
Yeah. That’s a good way to describe a missing (or a regret, a rejection, a wound, some past hurt… anything that sends you into a party of pitying). An “injected feeling.” It’s a poison that not only hurts; but often it’s deadly. If we let it, it can cripple. It can paralyze. It can handicap. It can kills us.
Pg 145 - "Causation only runs forward. Things happen once, only once…" ~~
Yet wow, at some “causations” that run forward from those things that happened “only once.” And too, we have a tendency to rewind and replay again and again and again that “only once” thing happening… I wonder does it really happen “only once” if instead in our minds (and in our talk and our walk) we’ve got it happening over and over and over again? Do some things (sometimes) never stop happening simply because we won’t let it? Okay, just a crazy thought!
“Causation only runs forward.” Profound! Totally true!
© Causation = “the act or process of causing; the act or agency which produces an effect.”
© Cause = “a reason for an action or condition; something that brings about an effect or a result; a person or thing that is the occasion of an action or state; an agent that brings something about; sufficient reason.”
Wow at so many “causations” that have been triggered by a one-thing-that-happened happening, one word that was spoken, or words that were not…… Huge! Too huge for me to be able to verbalize! It’s astounding! One thing can almost change the whole world… or at least, the whole world of one person and all those around her. “Causation runs!” My, I'd say that indeed it does! And woe at all the chaos and havoc she often runs about invoking!
Pg 149 - ""I love him. He's my life. I've been waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he's here." I don't know how to explain it. "With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel..." I shake my head. I can't put it in words. "I can reach into him and touch time... he loves me. We're married because... we're a part of each other... It's happened already. All at once....... I've seen my future. I can't change it, and I wouldn't if I could."" ~~
Aww.. isn’t that how “love” feels? We've been waiting for it for our whole life! We don't know how to explain it. In love we can ‘see’ our lives ‘mapped out’ before us. We see the one we’re in love with healing our past and giving us bliss in our futures. That’s sweet. I like how love feels. Real love is even better. It doesn’t guarantee every moment feeling happy. But true loves endures t(w)o-gether through the hard times even when things aren’t ‘happy’… until it is again.
Pg 152 - "I envy him. He is me, but I'm not him yet. He has been through five years of his life that's still a mystery to me, still coiled tightly waiting to spring out and bite. Of course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he's had them; for me they wait like a box of unpoked chocolates." ~~
Well, to explain this statement. This is Henry that's time-traveled to his future... though his "present" is actually 5 years prior to the moment that he's visiting. He looks at who he'll become that he's not yet... and he wonders what he's experienced that he one day will. I love his statement, "He is me, but I'm not him yet." Isn't that how God sees us?! He sees us as how He's making us to be, that we're not yet transformed into. Woe, at the experiences that we'll have to go through that'll take us there. If only we could see them as Henry did, "like a box of unpoked chocolates," instead of wishing we could jump to the moment of what we'll become and not have to travel through the becoming of it.
Pg 154 - "Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude…" ~~
Ah, us…. and our “runs”. J
Pg 160 - Clare says,"I wish I could send a postcard into the past, to this cad Henry who I don't know. It would say: “Do nothing. Wait for me. Wish you were here.”" ~~
Here Clare wanted to send a postcard to the Henry that she won’t meet for 5 more years to warn him that she’s coming, to ask him to wait for her…. to ask him not to sleep with anybody else looking for the love of his life because she was it… it just wasn’t their time until then… She wished she could send him a postcard to tell him he’d meet her one day and it would be better for both of them if he has not involved himself and slept with lots of other women. Hmmm…. that’s just how God planned it, isn’t it? Why don’t more of us heed to the wisdom of waiting?
Pg 160 - "I know but - you're not you, yet - I mean, you're different." ~~
Woe! You’re not who you’re gonna be yet… but when you are, it’s so very much gonna be good! J
Pg 161 - "But it's a long way from the me you're dealing with in 1991 to the me talking to you right now from 1996. You have to work at me; I can't get there alone.”
I read in another book just recently (“Healed Without Scars”) that talked of leaders and those helping to heal those that were hurt. I was most impressed by a statement written there that said, “A prophetic leader lives out of a creative paradigm, which casts a vision of healing for individuals that is based on WHERE THEY ARE GOING and not on WHERE THEY HAVE BEEN. Such leaders invite those whom they lead into a world they deeply want to belong to, yet rarely ever experience until that leader creates a path for them to get there.”
It reminds me of the verse, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov 13:12) and “Where there is no vision, My people perish” (Prov 29:18).
People need vision for their lives, a picture to give them hope for their future. They need a visual of something better than the yuk that they’re presently in, and a hope, an anticipation, an expectation, and a directed path to be able to get there. They need others to be patient and to listen and to help them as they go (and until they get to their “1996s” while still slumming in their “1991s” or for how many years it takes them to make it). They need someone to “work at” them, because they can’t get there alone. They need people to show them where they are going and help them along the way, instead of leaving them as who they are and who they’ll always be because of where they are or where they’ve once been or what they’ve once done. They need someone to help them see themselves differently, and thus, help them arrive at being different.
Pg 170 - ".. when he turns to me I see that he doesn't recognize anything; nothing in the room means a thing to him, and the knife of realization sinks in deeper: all the little tokens and souvenirs in this museum of our past are as love letters to an illiterate." ~~
Pg 238 - "... you know that Annette had the most marvelous voice... rich, and pure, such a voice, and such range... she could express her soul with that voice.... she could really hear... she was a very emotional person. She brought that out in other people.... Annette made people happy; she was happy herself. She enjoyed life."
I want that to be said of me! I want to bring out the emotion in others. I want to make people happy. I want to be happy myself. I want to live my life enjoying it… and to be an example for others to enjoy theirs!
Pg 240 - "... and we laugh, and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment."
This makes me want to LIVE, really live to the full and out loud, in each and every moment I’m in. To bask in whatever it is that’s giving me joy just now….. and not let the sadness of my yesterdays (what I’ve lost or the things that have happened to me) or my fear of my tomorrows rob me of the moment and the total happiness that offers me real laughter…. maybe sometimes after so many tears.
Pg 282!
Pg 285 - "When you live with a woman you learn something every day."
HaHa. So true. J
Pg 286 - "The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreamy silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered that Clare likes to be alone."
Okay, this is so me… for it takes me being alone to be able to gather and keep my thoughts until pondered upon and then penned. I have to concentrate hard (so very hard), with all that’s in me; for any slight distraction or movement from another’s breath in the room even scatters my thoughts and my thinking into a zillion tiny pieces that are hardly able to be picked up and put back together to any sort of coherency ever again. Thus, when anyone interrupts, they find me with quite the furrowed brow... as I try to hold onto what I've been "knitting"!
It also reminds me of another thing. “Sometimes I see an expression of Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone.” ~~ In our “time-travel” to this place or to that, to our past or to our futures, to our hopes or to our hurt, to our longing or to our loss, to our love or to our hatred… we want to go “alone.” We close the door to those that are around us, daring them to near our door or say a word. And we sit inside “knitting” on something… our thoughts, our joy, our mourning, our dreams, our deaths, our loves, our embitterments. Wonder at all the “knitting” that goes on behind the closed doors of our minds? Oh, what tangled webs we often weave while ‘knitting.’
Pg 292 - ".. the voice of one who has seen future, and has no plans to mess with it." ~~
Pg 293 - "Sometimes I would give anything to open up Henry's brain and look at his memory like a movie." ~~ Funny, wouldn’t we all? Someone bring the Popcorn! That'd be a movie I'd want to watch!
Pg 315 – "Kendrick turns and I am shocked at the difference in his face. Ravaged is not the word. He is emptied; something has gone that was there before."
Wow, it’s sad what devastation will do to a person. It’s sad of all that it robs. It’s sad how quickly it can “empty” one that merely moments ago felt pretty perfectly full. But what’s sadder still are those that stay emptied once tragedy depletes them, and they never get their fullness back again… the devastation not only robbed them of their present moment, and not only crushes them for a season, but it forever steals, kills, and destroys their futures as it continues to eat at their hearts, it devours their minds, consumes their thinking, embitters their souls, and thus leaves them dead in the land of the living.
[To be continued.... Part 3 to follow...]
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