Revelation 21:4

            I taught for many years and rarely had seen a student like Melinda. Ever the bright mind, she was blessed to use it toward her many passions, which included literature. Her interests, I remember, were “words, language, philosophy, neuroscience, and love.” It was in the spring time that she and her classmates were in my class, British Literature.

            We were going through Gulliver’s Travels when I realized that Melinda was honed in, like a cat staring at a human. She was staring directly into the desk.

            “Melinda, what are you doing?”

            “Mr. Tumner, I am trying to find the Brobdingnagians.”

            The entire class erupted in laughter.

            “Melinda, you’re silly. It’s a piece of fiction,” I said.

            “How do you know? Have you ever seen a Brobdingnagian?”

            “No, but I don’t need to see one to know they don’t exist.”

            “How? Have you looked everywhere?”

            “Seeing doesn’t necessarily equate to believing. Our eyes, as well as our brains can be deceptive. You know as well as us. We experience the world through a permanent lag, and we see things upside down—our brilliant brains are at work. We experience bright flashes, eye tears, and blind spots. Any book of optical illusions should be called ‘brain failures,’ scientists put it.”

            “That’s true. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if they existed?”

            The class roared. A boy grabbed the collar of another boy’s shirt and they cackled with glee.

            “No,” I began.

            The room teemed with hysteria.

            “And I’ll tell you why. Because we’d have to be careful all the time. We’d never be able to walk on grass, for fear of trampling a runaway Brobdingnag. And forget about driving. Tiny little freeways? Who’s going to finance that?”

            “Mr. Tumner, I disagree. They wouldn’t cost much at all. And we have prototypes. Hot Wheels.”

            Frank, Danny, and Rob pounded their tables with uncontrollable pleasure. Rob fell back on his chair.

            “Ow.”

            “Rob, you okay?”

            “I feel a little dizzy. Oh shit! Must’ve killed some Brobdingnagians!”

            My class had turned into a comedy showcase. I had to regain control.

            “Ever the comedian, Rob. Good luck with all those brain cells you lost. Apparently each header in soccer means 5 brain cells lost. Pretty soon you’ll have an empty head like Humpy-Dumpty.”

            Silence.

            I knew it. My jokes actually work.

            Groans began.

            “Mr. Tumner, why you gotta always spoil the party? You’re so lame.”

            “Geez, Robbie’s going to have an empty head? That’s all you got?”

            “Heh. Anyway, no. We’ll talk about Brobdingnag later. Who can summarize Chapter 3?”

            Melinda stayed after class that day, and I asked her what she was ruminating on.

            “What’s going on? You’re asking all these silly questions in class today.”

            “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that I’m having these discussions about God and having to go to church with my parents, and I brought up Gulliver’s Travels. I mean, if they believe in God, can’t I believe in Laputa and the country of the Huy-nims?”

            “You’ve been reading ahead. By the way, it’s pronounced “Hoon-hymns,” like what you sing in church.”

            “Ok.”

            “But yes, you should be free to believe what you want. But part of growing up means you have to respect others’ beliefs, even if they’re contrary to your own. You can agree to politely disagree. And if your parents want you to go to church, then go. Then go to college and you won’t have to worry about that.”

            “But I hate going. It’s boring sitting with the adults at Mass and the children’s Bible study is just like looking at picture books for three hours.”

            I sighed. “Well, you have to do what your parents say for the time being. They feed and clothe you. Don’t bite the hand that feeds and don’t run away.”

            “I won’t.”

            I thought of my own faith, how it’d stumbled upon literature and existential philosophers and fashioned for itself an intellectualism about it. How I admired Kierkegaard for his lightness and his seriousness. But most of all, I thought of love, and God’s love, how it instilled in me an appreciation of nature and the importance of the unseen. Maybe that’s what I meant when I said seeing didn’t equate to believing, I thought.

            But really, who says we only see with our eyes? Our imaginations can see into the universe, as Einstein proved and physics continue to prove. How powerful we are, to know how insignificant we can be! How our smallest concerns can be part of the whole.

            “He will wipe every tear from theirs; and there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
            -Revelation 21:4

            ‘God sees each tear as part of the whole; each localized pain contributes to the ocean of suffering which has been and will be redeemed,’ I thought. I was reminded of Jesus, who cried in the garden of Gethsemane.

            What I knew then and still cannot wrap my head around is that Jesus was no ordinary man, but rather a collection of men and women. A collection of men and women who mourn the dead, who cry out of sorrow, and feel pain when things pass away. This, though, was blasphemous; he was a living, breathing person who spoke the Word of God and performed miracles—how could all of humanity be him?

            I no longer cared as deeply about these questions, though I cared for Melinda who was tackling a few or all of them. I mourned her suffering, for I knew how painful it is to disagree fundamentally with someone you love. A conversation with irreligious grandparents convinced me that it really is impossible, or at least profoundly sad.

            But flowers bloom. And they bloom because ‘the former things are passed away.’ Their beauty—the yellow dandelions and purple roses and white lilies and clovers—draw upon humus and soil for the nutrients that once fed the living. The wind carries the seed and the pollen to further heights and to old land, to remind it that nothing lasts and the present exists. Smell it. Feel it. You are the living who stands upon the old and denatured land, the sprout that refuses to give up in the cold wind.