By: Jim Taylor

Reaching for infinity

Spring is such a glorious time of year.

        In school, we had to memorize a poem by A. E. Housman:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

is hung with bloom along the bough…

        When I was a teen, I considered the poem soppy and sentimental. But today, as I look out my study window at the orchard on the hill above me, Housman’s words come back to me with greater emotion.

        As I write these lines, the cherry and apricot blossoms have finished. But the peach trees are wreathed in passionate pink. And a mist of white apple blossoms drifts across the pale green foliage higher up the slope.

        At times like this, I almost wish I could freeze-frame the moment, the way they do for dramatic impact in movies and commercials, to keep it this way forever.

Almost. But not really.

        Because then I would have to make a decision. Would I freeze time when the cherry blossoms are out? Or the peach? Or the apple? Would I freeze time in the spring at all, or wait until the rich reds and golds of autumn dominate the scene?

Endlessly the same

I read a short story once – I can’t remember the author or context – which suggested that hell was not a place of misery at all. It was a place where the same superficial pleasures repeated themselves. Every day. For ever. And ever.

        I love picnics. But going on a picnic every day pales after a while.

        I love sunshine. But one summer, while I was still a student, we had more than two months without rain. I found myself dreaming about mist wreathing off truck tires on a rain-soaked highway.

        As I grow older, I realize something about me – I am interested in an experience, a conversation, a skill, only if I can learn something from it. I expect that learning to enhance my future behaviour, or my knowledge, in some way.

        Doing the same thing, over and over again, for no reason other than that’s exactly what I’ve done before, holds little appeal for me.

        However much I love spring, I don’t want to be trapped in it forever. It’s the cycle of seasons, the ever-changing newness, that gives zest to life, that lends warmth to memory, anticipation to the future, and delight to each day.


Beyond the box

 Perhaps it is because humans are creatures of change. We have regular cycles in our lives, just like the seasons. But also we wake up every day different from what we were the day before. Our bodies change. Our minds change. Our relationships change.

        Ralph Milton’s son Mark, an astronomer, commented once that each new discovery about the universe reveals to us how much more we don’t know.

        Some people find that prospect terrifying. They want knowledge, and life, to have finite boundaries.

        Not surprising, since we mortals live finite lives.

        Perhaps I’m in a minority. But I see nothing to prevent us finite creatures from reaching for infinity.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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