I was looking for someone, and then I was running: running in the woods between two aisles of autumn trees. My feet kept slipping because the forest floor was so covered by the bright orange and gold and yellow leaves. When I looked up the canopy above was just as cluttered. There was no sight of the sky. All around me was just a swirl of black bark and vivid foliage, and as I ran, the urge to find who I was looking for heightened-as did the sense of my lostness. The colors on all sides began to blend together and then I had no sense of direction, not even a sense for what was up and what was down. In the end of gave up-falling in some sort of direction until I met some kind of landing.
I covered my eyes as the wind blew and the woods continued to swirl around me uncomfortably. It felt like the whole world was the woods, and I was lost in them, and they were shrinking in around me. Beyond that, I felt watched, watched by something cruel.
Then a loud, crackling, female voice came from all the trees at once. It was deep and round and echoing.
"You think you can escape the woods, child?" it boomed at me with laughter. "Everyone thinks they can escape the woods, they run and run and die running. Or they find a place to cut some trees down and pour cement over the decay. They carve out squares of dirt and live like children who play in street filth and cigarettes, and they think they have left me. But they are still here, and they only decieve themselves that they ever left. You can never leave the woods. You can never get out."
The words echoed in my head this morning as my eyes twitched open. In the comfort of my bed, with the blue sky clearly shining, uncovered, through my glass window, I pulled the covers around me tighter. I couldn't shake the words in my head. It's funny, for someone who really likes nature I was pretty disturbed by a dream wherein I couldn't escape it. But the dream, I knew, wasn't about flora and fauna.
I climbed out of bed and pulled out my laptop-heading to Facebook. I saw people's stati about Japan, so I headed to a news Web site and read up, horrified. I thought about Japan, and then I thought about China because one of my relatives is supposed to be there right now, and then I thought about the U.S. And then I thought about those three great nations in relationship to each other. And then I thought about the last century of wars and inports and exports, and then I thought about outsourcing and then I thought about India. Bits of info from a recent conference and paragraphs of books from various history classes started to seem dizzying. I thought about the increased job competion and increased need for education and the price of my liberal-arts college and what graduate school is going to cost.
And then all of that culminated in disgust with myself and with the fact that the first thing I do in the morning is check my Facebook, a modern convenience which is making the world even more connected and dependent on techonology, and dependent on convenience, and shy of being personal.
I've become pretty concerned for where the world is headed with our obsession with technology(superficial) interconnection. Facebook is a great example. We are so connected with Facebook-but not really too much to any one person, nothing's really real. I'm wondering, in this new age of global connectedness-how deep do our relationships go?
From my dream: The world was the woods...
It's true. And we need to be with others, we need to find someone to travel with us. We need to know people, really know them. We need to really care about humans more than just the system that effects our comforts. That's what we are really looking for in the woods, after all.
But can we get out?
It seems like at the rate the virtual and political worlds are going there are three options A. the best, in my opinion, that things will slow down-that everything will have a chance to even itself out for a little while because of it and we'll learn how to use our new muscles before we roid out some more. B. things won't slow down-things will keep going and going and going and the human race is going to be dramatically changed because of it. C. We're going to hit a wall soon, and the world isn't going to know how to handle it. And it's going to be bad.
Chaos and despair?
No. I don't think everything is absolutely doomed, not exactly. But I do know that as long as we're on the earth, not matter what age we live in, we're never going to find what we're really looking for. Have you ever read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce? When I think of that book one of the main things that comes to mind is that, as wonderful as some things are on earth (the successes we gain on earth, the relationships we form), they are not in the fullness of what they were made to be before the Fall. So even earth's purest offerings are dirty when compared to what Heaven offers.
So what I said up above, that we need to connect to others-it's absolutely true. I think this is one thing our world is sorely lacking right now, and I know that the more we invest in each other, the happier we will be as people. We were created to connect-in so many ways.
However, there is a whole other level to go. People who are lost in the woods are looking for others to connect with to make the journey better. But we have to deal with the reality that our hearts, in the deepest places, know that the best we can find in the woods is not enough to escape the evil that lurks there-so we'll still be searching for a way out all our lives, and we'll be in the woods.
But if you can come to grips with this- and if you can believe that there is a perfect God who clothed Himself in our dirty, decaying skin and become a sacrifice to redeem us out of the eternal woods-then you know you have a path. You have a way out. Not only that, but you have other path followers others to walk with you-believers and friends to help you find the path when you thought you lost it. We're not aiming to make a mock heaven out of cement inside the evil where we live-we're building up each other.
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