i may be strongly tempted to worship you

the best part about flying is when you leave a dreary, overcast day behind and break through the clouds to where the sun seems to have just been awaiting your arrival so he could burst into your narrow, little airplane window and warm you all over with his sunbeams. my heart feels free up there above the clouds, like the sun and i were meant to be traipsing around those pillowy mountains together, jumping from one to the other, warm and laughing.

when my plane landed in midway this afternoon, i came home to the same dreary, overcast weather i'd left in minneapolis. i took the orange line up to the loop, the wide, picture windows of the el showcasing the whole of the downtown skyline. a little man got on at pulaski, shorter than me and as skinny, too. he wore glasses too wide for his small face and his big red marlboro-emblazoned parka hung over the suit he wore neatly underneath. his cheeks were red and dry. he stared out the window solemnly. his appearance struck me as caricature-like and i did my best to conceal my staring.

i finished c.s. lewis' first essay in his book, "the weight of glory," on the plane this morning, re-reading pieces of it over and over again. as i stared at this man, the last page came alive:

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 can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say 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. all day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of other of these destinations. there are no ordinary people. you have never talked to a mere mortal .... our merriment must be of that kind which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

in that same way that i feel alive when the plane breaks through the cloudcover, when that little secret in me that hints at what more is yet to come than even this sings to my heart, when i feel i can imagine what real freedom looks like for even a moment, i wonder what makes this man feel freedom. feel comforted. feel the possibility of glory.

when i was in college, i couldn't stand guys with white hats (i know, it was a weird, unexplainable dislike), so, feeling once convicted about judging people so widely, i made an attempt to pick out those guys in crowds and imagine them as little boys. and i drew great big birthday parties around them with jesus standing just over their shoulders, or right next to them, or handing them presents. and i imagined what it was that jesus could be celebrating in them. that there was something valuable in those little hearts, in those big dreams, in those sky-high hopes. and if jesus thought it valuable, then i'd think it - and him - valuable, too.

it's still something i practice. honestly, i find i have to practice it more the older i get. i have more hurts built up, more memories of feeling slighted, attacked, patronized, and i'm quick to expect the worst now. what an ugly place. but if i really believe, as lewis says, that "next to the blessed sacrament itself, [my] neighbor is the holiest object presented to [my] senses," i can bear no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption against him. if i believe that "Glory Himself is truly hidden" in my neighbor, i must love - in all the fullness that LOVE is.

i hope i run into that man on the el in heaven someday and he turns out to be this beautifully handsome creature, fully glorified. meanwhile, i'll remember as i struggle against the impulse to snub, that someday, somewhere, i may be strongly tempted to worship that very person.