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A telescope destined to be a looking glass.

by Colby Joyner  
8/11/2007 / Christian Living

This is an excerpt from my mass of notes that I usually feature on a major social networking site:

I

The notes are back. There will be no eating of minstrels, but alack there will be much rejoicing. Recently I've treated these notes with a sort of salutary neglect: "stand strong boys, be thine own colony while I take a break over here in England--er...Lewisville."​I wanted to take a little break for my mind to percolate, thus it has, so even though these thoughts have been slow-cooked and basted, the meat down below is still the same old meat that my head produces every once in a tranquil moment. May it just fall of the bone onto your plates, though some may want a sample and never get a taste at all, but hopefully my limitations in language will be lifted somewhat for everyone to get at least a bite. And may the meat be much more fulfilling than this garnish of an introductory paragraph that isn't that meaningful. So let's stop leaving the colony alone:

I've found recently that satisfactory life requires (for me) a balance of things (certainly)--but more importantly a sway towards certain ideas on a weather vane consisting of the poles: simplicity and complexity, and their complicit poles: serious and light-hearted (most likely that flippant light-hearted mood in which you're a random laugh-bag who is filled with more nonsensical joy than an infomercial). So we have two crossing spectra, two axes in which I've found my coordinate on the wrong side of the scales far too often. It may seem so personal to try and label any certain placement on these axes as "wrong," but in my own experience of 19 years and almost 5 months, I do know where I shouldn't be (at least most of the time).

I have found that throughout my daily drawl of classes to goofy friend conversations that the spectrum of serious versus light-hearted is more like a swinging pendulum. Each must have sufficient time on each side to have enough strength to continue to the other side, keeping in balancebut not static balance. This balance of motion between my random side and my drastically serious side is essential. They work together, as if the serious me keeps things from passing by while the playful me keeps me from passing by. When these two hold hands time seems to spin in place for a moment before resuming it's inevitable trek onward. One is there to notice things while the other enjoys them. So I lied when I said they were poles. They are rather circled ends in the tight cylinder, where serious is quite distinct from jovial, but they are thus dependent on each other to retain their shape. Often times we think of dependence as this bridge instead of this swirling mass of dependence that must be circular. A bridge is more easily severed than a caterpillar is unraveled. For this same reason shaking hands isn't as intimate as hugging. The cylinder is so much more secure than any bridge. I feel like marriages seem to be more like handshakes now. All that is required is that they connect. Once you push one way all you get is more from that way, you'd get more of that person as if they were completely separate. If a hug is better, why not strive for it!? Just like a hug, within marriage wouldn't it be so much more secure and amazing if they were circular, distinct as can be apart, but once you push towards one you start pushing back towards the other. You push across the line enough and you'll end up back at the other person. All in one shape. Amazing. (I thought I was doing pretty good diction-wise until I said "hug" three times in a row. If you read this and feel emasculated lift the table you're sitting at with all your might)

Because of this, I think that the idea of a circle is beautiful. Just when you start going to one side from the middle, right when you cross into one's territory and one is favorable over the other...the line starts turning back. You cannot convince that line that it needs it's opposite side any less, the further you push it the further it goes back until it's hurrying back to the other side as fast as it can go...till you pass the midpoint and it starts all over again. It would not be a circle if it strayed and kept favoring one side. Just as how I would feel less human if I spent too much time being a serious hermit and not enough being a social buffoon.

I should go on to the top and bottom of this cylinder. This is the first thing my mind grazed upon and is what prompted the writing of this altogether before any circles were involved. I was looking through the telescope before realizing it was round. And just like that telescope, it has a rounded structure, but it also has the focus, the purpose behind it all, what you're getting a constant, better look at in the first place. This is between the simple and the complex.

But I'll save that for my next note. So, here's a cliffhanger, all those who actually suffer through my writings. For all those still on break have a great and safe one and leave me a line sometime (circular, of course).


II

I once ate a buffalo with my bare hands.

Hello part two. Ok, it's not that exciting. But hopefully it will be as powerful as Mariah's "Always be my Baby." I hope you love that song. I know I do. Doo Doo Dooo---awe, doo doo doot doo doot du dum. Wow, at least part one's opening paragraph had ridiculous things that made me hungry, now I'm not even using words. I feel like Hanson. Or the Scatman. So on to the business at foot, for something is ahand.

The simple versus the complex in my crossing spectra which were really part of a cylinder which is really more like a telescope. They are the lenses, the stratifying benders of light at opposite sides of varying shapes through which I must use to see that which is the focus. Without the circle of serious and light-hearted thoughts, these would fall out of the air. But, thankfully the structure keeps them together. So when simplicity and complexity duke it out like wild yogurt, I have found that I always want to stray towards one side. To favor the other would be presumptuous, and by that I mean it would be assuming that we know a lot. To be completely towards that one side would also be wrong, because it would be assuming that we know nothing at all. I tend to bias myself in the complex, narrowing the simple as the lens closest to my eye, but alas the smallest. So thus as thoughts escaping me stray towards the complex, it represents how ignorance is all the more apparent with the increasing of knowledge and how we cannot assume a state of simpletons. An orange seems simple enough. Simply, you can eat it and it grows in certain ways. A few experiments later, you discover the nutrients, cells, and the intricacies of an orange. The further you go, the more you know that you don't know jabberwocky about an orange. But along this way of find out how stupid you really are, something happens. There's something about the knowing of a lack of comprehension while increasing your comprehension that incites a stronger feeling of caring than I can really ever think to describe. I'm not saying I love oranges romantically, although that would be an easy way; I'd be the pimp of Florida. Anyways, what I am talking about is with people. If people were simple, the more you found out about them, the less you'd want to be around them. For what else would you learn? Two plus two can only equal four for so long until you start losing it. But no, it's not like that. Instead, as you get to know a person, growing closer with such delicate maneuvers as to not scare off this person that naturally guards themselves because of the world's attacks, you become more and more hooked. Your inability to explain and define, the bewildering smack in the facethat is what makes you goo-goo eyed and hungry for more. I'm not just talking to the romantics. This is what makes everyone draw together.

So I'm sure that there are some of you who might say, "but, I'm close to someone and I know what kind of things they usually say and the way they usually act and what not." To them I say: that is like knowing a car goes when the engine is going, the gear is in drive, and the accelerator is pressed. It surely is useful information, but you don't know jack about a car...you only know how it reacts when it's steered. For the people that might read this whom I go after every once in a blink or even breath (and you know who you are), you are so irresistibly complex that I cannot begin to tell you how much I long for infinite moments around you. I feel like this is the growing ground for all sorts of love and caring. Don't sell yourself short if you have no idea of expressing yourself...it's not that you aren't competent...it's not that you aren't talented...it's because you wouldn't dare dumb down how beautiful the feeling is to try and make me understand. How pristine and amazing is that?

This thus leads to the second way of the telescope. The information flows away from the large lens of complexity, back towards the eye, back to the looker. Upon the way it narrows down to the simplicity lens. We have to be limited by language and other things to make it in our understanding. For this reason, those three words consisting of a combination of "you," "I," and "love" will never be enough. But, if you are at the point where you can bask in the warmth of having something so special that it cannot be described, you start finding happiness. Sorrow doesn't disappear, it just cleans the pallet for a greater joy than before. But some people don't realize their worth to others. Maybe if you keep repeating, "I feel it," they might eventually get how special it is. The "it" has no antecedent that we could ever hope to explain.

So that is pretty much part two. There is a part three. There is what is past the complexity lensthe greater things that we are all meant to be pointed at. That which we are meant to be the looking glass of. So if the area of complexity is the breeding ground for love, certainly what is past that is the most fertile of all. But that's for next time. Remind someone that they are an unexplainable blessing today. They'll get it eventually.


III

Welcome to part three. I guess this note is officially a trilogy, but I'll try and not have a Matrix syndrome or anything. As much as I'd like to make this note sound as grounded as a beaver touching a kitchen sink, once I delve into the realm of God (in blatant words) there there will be much abstract notion that will leave readers quicker than gum's flavor. So hopefully your skis will stay upright while the boat leaves feasible water. Ready? Good.

What we are thinking of and I am talking of here is the concept of what lies beyond the complex lens: what is our focus. What our sights are meant to be set on...and eventually the looking glass of. Here my tone will venture near from magnanimous, for if I sway towards cautious or (even worse) towards flippant, I doubt an extended metaphor can function amidst its increasing abstractness. Thus I will create some faux solid ground with my temperament to compensate for the boat leaving the water. This does not mean my argument is so shaky it needs false security, but it does need for me to act like it. It demands this because I (like everyone) am stuck in the realm behind that simplicity lens, the one where we all function throughout most of our lives; so I must act as if my mind is enlightened enough to be intrepid towards this subject. Anyways, aside from my self-psychology and motivation, the words following this are simply (or in this case, complexly) what I "think," and thus should be taken as so. So enough false starting after the green flag, time to go off to the races.

From the previous two parts one might have discerned that I meant all complexity can inspire love and caring. As one becomes aware of his ignorance in another, the loving curiosity sparks a fire that grows as we learn more and more that we have more and more to learn. I don't dispute that in all terms of complexity powerful emotion can be triggered, but I do contest that that emotion must be love. First let's entertain the idea of love sans God...let's entertain the vanity that we can imagine a world without the Almighty. Let's say we have the most savage humans to ever exist, but let us also say that they are capable of the level of thought that your average 2007 human is. Don't think that they aren't ignorant...they are to the extreme in ignorance in terms of our academic standards, but they are nonetheless capable of high thought. I believe that if God were not there, there would be no possibility for love. They may copulate and make little smart savages running around, but without God there would not be love.

To further illustrate this I will say something which may make some people initially angry: animals cannot love to the extent that humans can. The reason why people might contest this is because their first image is their puppy at home and not mating flies out in the jungle. Any way you see it, that puppy at home doesn't have the ability to be as Christ-like as we can. Though the flowers do not bicker about nutrients but rather faithfully wait for blessings from the Lord for growth, they cannot be fully Christ without becoming something other than a flower. We can become Christ-like uniquely by submitting to Father, but we are still men. All other living things could not function like Jesus without becoming something else, but Christ came as a man and thus we can be men and yet attempt to imitate the qualities of God. The full Spirit is unique to us, thus the ability to love as Jesus commands is unique to us. So, as for those smart savages, they may be capable of being Christ-like, but with no Spirit, they are incapable of doing so. Thus they cannot love.

So we now know that this greater passion that is more than just liking, love, is more or less distinct among humans as far as physical beings go on this planet today. If we are the only ones capable, we are the only ones holding the telescope. And the focus is the Godhead: God, Jesus, and the Spirit. The reason they are in a realm more complex than all else is because their love supersedes all. In that context, their love is, in fact, unfathomable...which makes it (according to my earlier logic) what makes us experience love in the first place. Thus their love is self-sufficient, overwhelming, and beyond all else. It is the positive feedback of all positive feedbacks. It is the exponential to put all others to shame. It is that which is only capable through God. The ground here is certainly most fertile. For love is not only given, but made from it's incredible complexity. And there is a flicker that established the ability for us to be loving beings too, unbound by our inherent shortcomings. This flicker became the light of the world, and we know Him by Jesus.

So to proceed further you have to agree about something. You have to agree that love is a good thing. It seems simple, but make sure you want to seek after it and eventually find it running rampant inside yourself. Make sure you won't be embarrassed to your friends because you seem "too loving."

So, love is good. We desire it. And now due to the flicker it is attainable. This is what it all adds up to. The telescope represents our mind, the eye looking through the scope is our soul, and our focus is Jesus Christ. And just as our eyes reflect the world around us, our souls shall be the looking glass. They shall mirror Jesus. That is what we are meant to do. We are all rounded around the center of God, staring straight at Him and choosing to close our eyes.

And it all adds up: the eternal complexity of a Lord allowing for self-sufficient love along with our simple reflection of that love that we can hold within ourselves. In order for the love of Christ to be in you, He must be in the glistening of your eye. And when this happens, it happens to the soul. No mind of the telescope comes into play other than providing the focus and division of complexity. When this happens you don't even have to think about you. You are loving, and you are now the lamp on the table.


So I hope that a few held on to this beast of a boat. I also hope that you all can be the looking glass that we all are called to be. Talk to people, ask them questions. And, utmostly:

Love them without thinking.

Colby Joyner is a full-time student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; he is currently studying Spanish.

He thoroughly enjoys getting feedback or comments on his works and can be reached at [email protected]

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