Eternity and the Ephemeral

On focusing on what matters

This artist in Thailand creates fascinating globes out of paper cut by hand. Order your own DIY pattern from her here.

When we religious people talk, we tend the prioritize the eternal over the ephemeral. And this is as it should be. For the things of this world are passing away, and it is the difficult task of we who follow Christ to remember that everything we see around us—sky, clouds, concrete buildings, old-growth trees, chain link fences, asphalt playgrounds, vehicles, houses, and the entire earth—is passing away. Someday this will all be gone like the leaves now being blown off their trees by autumn winds, but we human souls will remain. The souls of human beings will outlast the stars.

It’s difficult to recall that all those I see—at this moment, for instance, the people gathered in booths around the polling place of our latest local political race, the government workers staid in their steel and glass cubicles inside, the homeless and indigent and bereft shuffling past—when the government building and all the cosmos are dust, I and these will still remain in life, “some of us to glory, and some to everlasting death.” We human beings, we dried leaves, we weak flowers of the fields, we frail blades of grass, passing from this life so quickly—within us is the eternal metal, to burn bright or black, according to our deeds.

C.S. Lewis says it better as usual:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors…

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

Thanks to early inebriation in C.S. Lewis, I find it easier to imagine this, although I often forget it in the rush of the day-to-day stream of duties. Those moments of prayer that should punctuate my day—morning offering, grace before and after meals, Rosary, noon Angelus, Chaplet, evening Angelus, Night prayers—are a clambering out of the stream and recalling that what went on today is only important insofar as it affected souls—my soul, the souls of others—for good or ill. Did my words and actions shape me and others well or did my actions deform, twist, harm the souls of others?

For someday, like a filmstrip twirled around us, our days will reveal our character, our final form that we take on after death. Our time of shaping is limited. Use it well. 

And so now in the light of eternity, I ponder the ephemeral. Because it all IS ephemeral. In the light-years of perspective eternal, the difference in lifespan between a skyscraper and a straw Christmas ornament is insignificant. The difference between a castle of stone and a castle of cardboard is similarly inconsequential. But a castle built in the air—well, this is where it gets interesting.

Exquisite handmade straw ornaments from this artisan family in Lithuania.

Castles of material—stone, concrete, marble, cardboard, plastic—are destined for dust. But those castles of dreams, built of human thought—they may endure longer, since they spring from the imagination of one who is immortal. The castles in the sky—dreams and plans and wishes—may be selfish, vain, destructive, or even evil—and thus they will be either burned into ash and obliviated or remain lodged in the brain of the eternal sufferer as a fiendish source of torment. Hence we should in this life be wary of our dreams. But it’s entirely possible that an individual castle in the air may be something quite different—a glimpse of heaven, a perception of true beauty, a vision willed by God to be embodied in some art of story, song, image, sculpture, or verse—and those castles, unlike the Sleeping Beauty castle or Neuschwanstein Castle, or the palace of Versailles—may actually greet us in the heavenly realm as a mansion we can actually enter and enjoy. So build those castles in the air carefully, because they might endure.

And if your artifice enters into the imagination of others—how many of us have been inspired or nudged or dissatisfied as a result of encountering the famous castles of the imagination, Cair Paravel, the White Tower of Gondor, or any number of similar fantastic structures embodied in story? Will we see these in Heaven?

Quite possibly! Heaven is vast, and any number of goodnesses can be found there (including images of Neuschwanstein, Versailles, or Disney Castles). It is surely the glory of the soul of Lewis in heaven that his castle of air is there to be found (let us hope) by millions of other souls. What we will see of Cair Paravel will doubtless be perfected, transformed, embodied in some greater awesome Good, but still recognizably Cair Paravel of the Four Thrones in Narnia.  Which is kind of awesome, to have built a castle of air so believably and transcendently that others can enjoy it for eternity. 

Michigan artist Amy Ferguson creates intricate prints like this one at Printer and Press.

So this is heartening and frightening to the artist, because it makes our work fraught with meaning and purpose which we don’t know and whose ends we can’t control. The work comes through us and is made of bits of us and yet is beyond us. We are responsible for the initiative but can’t control the receptivity, and that is our glory and our shame. Which is why, I think it is perennially so difficult to create art. Even now, starting or continuing a story brings with it a fever of fear, a sense of terrifying utter nakedness and vulnerability of soul. I believe this is why Hemingway drank. Regardless of the beliefs of the individual artist, we all sense in some way the terror of creation, the sense of starting a journey whose destination may affect the souls of others eternally, for good or ill. And of course, in order to do any creating, we must stop thinking about that, but burning through the initial dread is perennially hard. 

Now I consider those castles in the air from the viewpoint of a parent, for so much of what we mothers and fathers do creates art—the arrangement of the table at dinner, the lunchbox carefully packed, the clothes folded in drawers, the curtains hung, windows cleaned, bedrooms set in order—and there is of course the birthday present hidden in paper wrappings, the Christmas tree aglow with lights, the Nativity scene placed with care, the music introduced, the storybooks opened—the innumerable, uncountable things we do for our families that enter their imagination and affect their souls–do these too endure?

I am perpetually amazed by the Asian moms who create such lovely lunches for their children like Li Ming does. This is a truly ephemeral art form that deserves mention.

I think they do! Not the sweater itself, but the memory of it—not the cake with crooked candles and clumped icing, but the sweet recollection of song and festivity—not the gifts, but the beloved wearing-out-of them that matters. And so much of this home art is meant to come to a natural end—delicious food eaten, candles melted into waxen pools, tied sneakers untied, made beds unmade by weary children—so much home art is of the sort that must be renewed and re-created over and over. Its very ephemerality is its glory.

Since it really all is ephemeral, what is to be done? I have come to treasure and value the even more ephemeral earthly things that enter into the memory with leaving scarcely a material trace behind–handmade Valentines of paper lace and cut-out catalog flowers, shiny birthday balloons that fill babies with joy and deflate within the week, cut flowers whose scent and grace flees in a weekend—these give the memories but lack the longevity of an expensive stuffed heart-holding animal gathering dust, the clunky commemorative mug, the artificial floral arrangement. These latter are an irritant because they outlive their celebratory purpose and remain glowering on the shelf or in the closet for years afterwards, inevitably souring by their space-taking the memories their entrance inspired. I have come to see that in many ways, the ephemeral gifts are superior in their escaping the physical so swiftly.

And few things are as ephemeral as theatrical productions, the love of my life. I love how no photo or video can ever capture the being-thereness of theater. Like liturgy, your presence is crucial or nothing happens. Losing oneself–or watching others lose themselves–in the sudden spectacle of lights or magic, of actors pouring out their hearts while looking in your eyes–nothing comes close to this. Well done, its memory is eternal indeed.

I have forgotten many things, but I will never forget being eleven years old and watching the magnificent Yul Brynner bounding onstage in Philadelphia in one of his final tours of The King and I, throwing himself into his art all the more before the lung cancer that was to kill him could catch up with him. His 1956 movie performance looks exhausted and stilted by comparison: it does not do the man justice. I have similar memories of the performers of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus whose antics amazed me over and over as a child. In the digital age where most acting comes through a screen, the power of theater still transcends.

May the Lord have mercy on the soul of Yul Brynner in thanksgiving for his tremendous art, and may the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

And I love that when the play’s done, it’s gone. The stage is cleared, the scenery packed up, the costumes and borrowed furniture and props returned, after a hurrah at the cast party, the actors and crew disperse—and in amateur theater where I dwell, they return to ordinary lives below the radar of recognition. Few who were not there will ever guess that their computer technician can cut a mighty caper, that their barista can make the rocks echo with his singing, that their kindergarten teacher could put her hands on her hips, toss her hair, and issue a stinging retort in iambic pentameter. But for those of us who huddled together in the audience to watch the truly-immortal words of Shakespeare declaimed to the darkness, the memory now lives forever in our souls. And that will be carried along with us into eternity, when so much of the rest has gone.  

So I have come to recognize in the ephemeral in particular the truth that life is fleeting, but even in the most fleeting of good earthly pleasures is a taste of the transcendent, which can remind us of forever. 

Use it well. 

Sky lanterns, immortalized in Disney’s last great film, Tangled, are hard to find in the US but can be gotten overseas with ease, such as from this shop in the UK.