Reflections by Jean Jantzen

Frozen at the Mirror's Pool

Frozen at the blinding bright in dappled sunlight I long to take you to my breast aim the laser of your transfixed gaze at my heart

hold you against me breathe your aroma deep inside me taste dew dropped from petal flesh drink your so full essence soulfully deep and let you go

back to the mirrored pool thawed now by your own sun self informed by its divine grace bedded in fecund earth's wanton embrace set to bloom.

Craig Byers
©1995 all rights reserved

We just witnessed the birth of our 20th grandchild. It was a miracle. Time stood still. Everything else paled into insignificance. Our daughter came within a hairbreadth of dying. Life in the balance. Time stood still! Everything else paled into insignificance.

These larger-than-life events are usually awe-inspiring and exhilarating; however, they can never be predictable and often come with risks. When personally involved in a near-tragedy, you begin to fathom how fleeting is life. It is these life and death events that make you stop and ask the important questions. What is the purpose of it all? Why am I here? I am going to die one day too. God let Abel die didn't he? If we can't count on God to save us, who will? But it was humankind who turned its back on God, wasn't it? Ever since, human's primary fear have been their own mortality. Death became the enemy and immortality became our principal objective.

It is this uncertainty, this "will to power over chance" that spurs us on and on. We need a toy, a plaything, to keep our minds off our current distress. This way we don't need to face our fears. So we looked to other gods to save us--science and technology would be our savior. We would somehow achieve immortality through our technology. We would advance a global language, we would restore a one world order. We would re-establish the Garden of Eden and eternal life. As in times past, we would build a modern tower of Babel.

So, as we approach the year 2000 and our Armageddon draws near, the only answer is to immerse ourselves in another world. A world without fear. A world without pain. A world without end. A spirit world. We call it cyberspace. While this ability to create for ourselves an "out of body" experience releases us from our present reality, it blinds us to what is real. Before long we will not be able to decipher the real from the unreal. There are benefits however. This present-day tower of Babel will allow us to live forever in an altered form. Just as in the past, the poet lives forever through her words, so now the technology of the new electronic reality will give us life everlasting.

All this scrambling, searching, and struggling to save ourselves reminds me of the story of Narcissus who thought he was the ultimate in perfection. He was perfect. However,

his problem was that he took all the credit for his beauty and his perfection. What he saw was the perfection of humanity, of creation itself; he saw it in himself, and so thought it belonged to him." But it belongs to no one. It is the robe of the spirits, a grand design of bone and blood, of intellect and memory, of beautiful suffering and tragic yet unrelenting hope. These robes are borrowed, and when we return home to the mansion of the souls, we leave them at the door. (http://www.starving.com/narcissus.html)

Through the power of our modern technology we will soon have the will to power to save ourselves, won't we? We will be able to control our destiny. These electric extensions of our nervous system will provide us with immortality. Are these the answers we seek? Will they last? Will being members of the wired generation save us? Or will God once again destroy our efforts?

Email Author