The Thaw Before The Spring

Life accelerates in a parade of feces and smiles.

I read this book by Douglas Coupland called 'Life After God'. In it, we see the voice of a writer who is trapped in a life which is totally undesirable and ultimately unsatisfying. He weaves together a collective unconscious notebook of memories and whims and thoughts. One interesting thing the writer talks about is the mind's capacity to only take so much. He wrote something to the effect of 'The way I see it, the mind is like a glass of water, and every memory or experience within makes the volume of water greater. But I think at around the age of 30 that glass is pretty much full, and that anything after that age just doesn't seem to have the same effect it used to'.

I totally did that quote major injustice, but the point is our memories and experiences are so meaningful, even down the most mundane of activities. I remember for a while, back when I was 24 and drinkin alot of coffee and playing alot of nintendo in my bedroom, I worked a shift for a lumber yard that used to be a major employer for me because they needed some help. So i jumped in, full throttle because at that stage of my life I desired only one thing - money. I didn't really care about girls or what have you, but money was my motivating factor. I wanted to make alot of money so I could take alot of trips and afford to buy alot of crap and take friends out for dinner alot. Money was my honey of the hive.

So I ended up working this shift, as a driver for the lumber yard, and nearly died that day up in Mont tremblant Quebec, after a car came whizzing into my lane, in icy conditions, and I, with a van full of tongue and groove cedar and rough pine, tapped the brakes only to skid forwards on an angle, totally out of control, and into a T-junction snowbank, on to a guard rail, which hung the van up and kept it from sliding down a fairly steep, snowy, tree-riddled cliff.

I was fine, thank God. Just a little shaken up. I told my friends at the lumber yard, the next morning, that I had no interest in working there anymore. At that moment, I realized that there are alot more important things in this life than money. I began to see life with brand new eyes, realizing just as Don Miller writes, that we are truly are on 'thin ice' and that every moment we have on this crazy planet counts. WE MUST MAKE THE MOST OF IT! Dwindling into an existence of complaints and blame just won't do. God didn't design us to live a life like that.

After that day, I have tried to count every moment a blessing from God because you just never know when it's all gonna go. I heard this speaker on the weekend, at a hi-school youth rally, where teenagers sweat alot in a high school gym and things called 'icebreaker games' are supposed to be fun but they're really not. Anyways, this speaker, Phil Cann, said an interesting thing. He said 'I don't want to go to heaven. That's right...you heard me. I don't want to go to HEAVEN!...Because I love life. If life were intended for everyone who comes to know God to just go to heaven, they would. They would pray a prayer and disappear into thin air, spiralling upwards into the skies and gone. But they don't. God has so much for us down here and so often we're missing out'.

I know that maybe some of you who read this think that this capital G God I write about is total shit, or just something I conjured up because I'm lonely, but I swear it is truth with a capital T. And I really do hope that everyone I encounter in life will, even if they don't agree with me, at least know that I wasn't pulling their crank. John 10:10.

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 8:14 AM Comments: 0