Echoes of Memories from Tomorrow

Before computers and the Internet entered my world, I read fiction obsessively. In my youth, it began with Science Fiction. I'm one of those who found the movie versions of books so disappointing. Eventually I moved more into a certain sub-genre of Fantasy novels. I preferred the multi-volume epics, the ones loaded with obscure psychological paradoxes, not so much the big heavy sword and sorcery battles.

Then I bumped into computers, and discovered the Internet. For a long time, the books didn't get my attention. But that, too, is fading.

Tonight I'm reading a later sequel to one of the series which held me so tightly before the Internet meant much to me. I picked it up almost at random in a thrift store, simply because I recognized the author's name. I'm not at all the same guy who was absorbed in those novels, despite the author's talent having gained in richness, if anything. Instead of entering his imaginary land, I find the story itself bouncing off the features of my own inner landscape.

There are moments of recognition, as if something he crafts with his words is but a different way of saying something I've already thought or experienced. His story, his fictional world, is less real and less entertaining than my reality. Things are reversed, and I can now put down the book, leave it for days, no longer getting lost in it. It's still worth my time, but less of it in such big bites.

My inner landscape is now too rich and entertaining. I'm exploring things I didn't know could exist. Instead of yearning for the lost worlds of fiction, I'm seeking to penetrate the mists of my own clouded future in the Spirit. I'm absorbed. What I'm finding is the whispering wind, a call to a tomorrow even the wildest fiction cannot match. The rich landscape beats anything I've ever seen, and I've traveled a great deal in the past.

For example, I'd love to go back to Europe. This time, I want to explore it by bicycle, randomly rolling across places I'd never seen before, where tourists aren't likely to be crowding for their fixed and measured dose of culture no one actually lives. And I'd like to explore the Mediterranean, not on a cruise ship, but in a small cargo vessel. I want to see the ports and places tourists never go, experience the bad weather you don't see in movies and tour guides, meet the people who aren't in the tourist industry.

Not so much because I think anyone can afford to send me there. Frankly I can't imagine what talent I have, or what skill I can offer which would justify the expense, even of such a skin-flint exploration as I would like. The point is really not so much seeing Europe or the Mediterranean itself, but seeing myself reflected in hundreds of puddles, the glint of morning dew on the grass and trees, and the eyes of people who can't speak much English because they don't have much need for it. It would be a chance to measure the limits of my faith, the thousand small coves and hills, and flat farm fields of mud, the places few of us ever test because everything has been scripted, and the tour guide has never seen what was behind that little shop front.

I have no part in the staged dramas. I stopped reading the scripts and scene layouts long ago. I don't want the standard costume strung with the trinkets no longer made by local shops, just giving the appearance. What I'm seeking never gets on the stage of mainstream Christianity. Somewhere, long ago and far away, faith in Christ was something else we never saw. By our standards, it's not pretty, not clean, and not on the maps. But the voice in the wind drifting through the mists calls me still.

And as I poke around in those hidden lands of my soul, I find I recognize things I've never seen before. It's a powerful aching memory of tomorrow, singing a new song my spirit has played a thousand times.