The E d g e

"Human life has always lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself *."  C S Lewis - the Weight of Glory.

So here we are, every one, dressed in little more than rags, fearfully poised on the edge of the abyss of death, aching to be more than this - to truly be part of something no longer defined by pain and frustration and demise. 

Occasionally, some phantom whispers from behind "drink this" - potions promising health or wealth or power which delude us into feeling we're more than wretched, more than a corpse just waiting for the moment we tip headlong over the edge. 
Then there are the soothsayers, who say it's all illusion or irrelevant - just enjoy the moment, because that's really all there is - except the emptiness. 

We all know different. 
We can sense somewhere behind - something so keen in our younger days, now buried beneath the rubble in our scarred souls and pained days. 

The bland thing we call 'life' taunts us - it's hiding what it doesn't want us to see - where we're really from and should be going. How we can know more than the futile and the chasm?

Looking at another like us, if we dare turn our heads, we can see the image, hear the cry, feel the pulse, so deep beneath our own skin, that in spite of the ruin, the scars and the rags, we were made for so much more. 

 The terror breaks when such light begins to dawn, and we see the face of the one who has broken our fall. The shadow of mercy has drawn our gaze, and there, the jewel of what makes us whole can be seen anew. 

  (* I've been 'seeing' versions of the image outlined in the first paragraph of what I've written here all day today, and when I arrived home tonight, this wonderful quote from C S Lewis was sitting on my Face Book page, so I thought I'd write this entry).