E Is for Eternity
Eternity — it was the last thing I thought about when I died. I was supposedly going someplace (as they say) for a long time. In fact, they say the place you go will be the place you stay for the rest of time. I cannot fathom this any more than many people can fathom living with the same person for all one’s lifetime. But the fathomability of all things varies with each person’s fathom factor, which may change as one ages, or may be one of those things stapled onto your DNA as much as your eye color or your baldness factor. I would like to think we have seasons of fathomability.
Spring sees growth in everything. Change is the order of the day; newness rules: buds, leaves grass, trees, chick, puppies, bunnies, all that stuff. Everything is new and feels good; anticipation sprays the air with an aroma of future, excitement, lust and baseball, for those that like the sport, which I don’t. But I do know spring. I like spring. It hits me in different ways all the time. I crave that edge, that indefinable “What’s next?” that pushes me to know it’s time to energize my creativity and push forward to the next thing. God will steer me as he has always done. Spring rocks.
Summer pushes a hold button — a lazy sit in the sun and read button that carries suntans and waterskiing and vacations in its bag of tricks. It’s the end of school days for some, a marked change of pace regardless of schools just because it’s hot. Swimming pools fill, beaches overload, air conditioners do, too. I can only hope the summer of my eternity isn’t the same heat as the rest of my eternity, or I’ve really goofed, unless lazy is the button I push and I have a lazy eternity — which I can’t like very much, unless that’s what I’m supposed to learn in my eternity, because I haven’t learned it here.
Fall is my second favorite season. It’s transitional. It’s beautiful. While preparing for the cold winter eternity, it begins with a cooling of the evenings even if days stay hot through October here. And then, the colors burst in a crescendo — only to fall like my ability to be clever at the end of a long day of pushing against that heavy door hoping to find something, anything on the other side. Sometimes we’re lucky. Those are the good days. Sometimes we have to keep pushing. I am able to fathom an eternity of fall. It’s a beautifully crisp, stout and sure season that lets in passion. Yes. That works.
Finally, the winter does come, covering me in negativity: a dirty snow. It’s not the white fluffy snowflake snow, but the coal-gray, smoky, slushy, shoe-wrecking snow of the city. So, I cannot fathom this eternity because spending the rest of my time in a dirty-snow city would suck. My fathom factor for an eternity of winter is exactly zero. Maybe minus something.
It could be important to question where we’ll spend eternity. I don’t know. Maybe instead, we should ask in what season we are spending our lives. For we don’t really know there is an eternity. In fact, eternity might be right here. Right now. Who’s to know, really?
