"As I Lay Dying..."

Visions from an invalid's bed.

In the month of March, in the third year of the reign of President Biden, when the days began to lengthen and the native flowers put out their first petals, it pleased the Lord to strike me with illness, such that I knew neither smell nor taste, and the pleasure of food, strong drink and the company of mortal man were hidden from me. Nor could I seek solace in work or in art, and my pen was laid aside for the duration of the month. Color fled from my cheeks, the shadows beneath my eyes deepened, and I grew lean and frail. In fleeting moments of lucidity, I escaped the walls of my chamber to sit upon my porch, that I might feel the warmth of the sun and consider the wonders of the created world, though its beauty seemed distant from me.

In Bed, Federigo Zandomeneghi

On the third day of my illness, soup and medicine were left at my doorstep by a righteous woman, moved to compassion by my pitiful condition. But the sound of the human voice and the sight of the human form were absent from me, save for my own weak cries and my wasting frame, which were a burden to me.

Days stretched on unrelentingly, each one an eternity unto itself, and brought no alteration in my condition, save a worsening or an exchange of one affliction for another. When my bones strengthened, my sense of taste fled. When my sore throat left me, a hacking cough replaced it. And each day, the congestion spread farther into my ears until the few comforting sounds that were left to me were greatly diminished, and at last I was bereft of three of the five senses, and I found that sight and touch, the most valued of sensations, were insufficient to appreciate the world as I had been accustomed to appreciating it. I was moved to consider the privilege of health, and I scorned my younger self who had deemed it a thing to be taken lightly.

It seemed that the Lord had considered my prideful state and the depth of my entanglement with secular ambition and the affairs of this world and had deemed it necessary to remove me from that sphere for a time. Health was taken from me, that I might consider my spiritual condition and meditate upon the mysteries of the inner kingdom.

In the first week of my illness, as I lay upon my bed in fever and the shadow of death, visions filled my head and mysteries of the past, the present and the future were revealed to me. I found myself lifted, as it were, into a spiritual realm, and looking down upon my afflicted body, I perceived it as a corpse. I cried out—whether in the spirit or in the body, I do not know—and immediately I felt a presence close at hand, which seemed to speak, although I could perceive no mortal voice. It gently dispelled my imminent fear (not that I was dead, but that I was being transformed into a bug, like Kafka) and it bade me listen carefully.

“Stay off that Kafka nonsense.”

Then a great silence fell, and I was granted an hour or two of sleep.

For a second time, I was lifted from my body as I sat ensconced in pillows, moaning softly with my jaw lax, and once again I was visited by the voiceless presence. It spoke, or seemed to speak: “Daughter of man, behold,” and it showed me scenes of the past, the present and the future.

I saw cities rising and falling, and great empires of the earth thrown down by the very greed that erected them. I saw the green earth destroyed in flame and iron, and I saw living things displaced by idols of metal and plastic. I saw “men without men in mind,”¹ and I saw the exchange of the true and genuine for the imitation, where the imitation was valued by the depth of its fallacy. I perceived that every manmade thing was an imitation of the true and perfect, and that the imitation was the corruption of the thing and only served to poison the earth, the living beasts, and man himself. I saw vice as the imitation of virtue, the inescapable condition of man.

I saw “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life,” by which man strove to become God, and I perceived that this curse lay heavy upon the universe, from the soil beneath our feet to the stars wheeling overhead. And I heard the mighty cry for deliverance rising up from the earth, from the mountain daisy bowing under Robert Burns’ plow² to the human intelligence bowing under the artificial. I saw the alienation of the human spirit from the body and the earth, I saw the universal enslavement to industry, and I cursed my role in it and wondered if, where I sought to heal, I did not also destroy.

Then I perceived, perhaps by the words of the voiceless presence, that destruction is woven into the mortal frame: we have no power to heal but only to destroy one thing in favor of another. “Cursed is the earth for our sakes, and in painful toil shall we eat of it” (Gen. 3:18). And I despised the pride of man, by which we practiced dark arts in dark rooms, and enslaved the light to our greed and ignorance. But we did not know that we built on sand, that our power was an illusion. Corruption has no power over purity, nor darkness over light. In our folly, we believed we had destroyed the light when we had only shut our eyes.

These were the beginning of the visions. The remainder of the visions came to me between waking and sleeping, throughout many unnumbered days, wherein the voiceless presence spoke, or seemed to speak, of life, of faith and of spirit. I recalled its words at a later time, as one suddenly recalls some vivid detail of a dream:

Unknowable Union of Body and Spirit

“The union of the human spirit with the human body cannot be resolved with the tools given to mortals, but the existence of the spirit is self-evident and the influence of one upon the other is observable. ‘Whatever the body does affects the soul,’ (C.S. Lewis).”

Reality is Faith

“No one can be certain of the nature of objective reality. Faith is the only certainty. Science is uncertain because it relies upon assumptions—above all, the assumption that the human perception of the universe is accurate, which cannot be proven. Philosophers of recent centuries pointed to this absurdity (Nietzsche, Camus, Kafka and others) because the Age of Reason failed to provide an alternative to faith. Science is as much a matter of faith as religion, thus man despairs of certainty because he has no faith and cannot trust his senses.

Modern neuroscientists understand that the brain does not always accurately interpret reality. Optical illusions demonstrate how the brain can incorrectly represent the stimuli it receives by taking the simplest explanation. It is impossible to know how often the brain does this, with what stimuli and to what extent. Those who accept this idea recognize that logical assumptions are useful, if only for improving the quality of perceived reality, but have resigned themselves to the fact that they can never be certain of anything. Some people cope with this uncertainty better than others, but no one is satisfied with it. This dissatisfaction speaks to the human need for faith and the despair that descends when faith is denied.”

Lead a Quiet Life

“Secular ambition and overwork are thieves of self and catalysts of the mechanization of society. They crowd out higher aims, like kindness, selflessness and humility, and are poor substitutes for human relationships. It is better to be loved in your corner than admired in the world.”

Love the Natural World

“Plant those wildflower seeds you ordered.”

All at once, the visions ended and I awoke from my trance. A fortnight passed, and I was released from the shackles of my malady. I felt my strength return slowly, and with it the enjoyment of food and drink and human company. I returned to work, but clung to the memory of the heavenly visions, that I might learn to treasure what is good and pure.

The words of R.H. Verrinder are at an end.

References:

1.     Iron & Wine, “God Made the Automobile,” (song).

2.     Robert Burns, “To a Mountain Daisy,” (poem).