Happenings 2 August 2020

Here's an insightful little story from a man called Arthur Gordon. One raw, cold day last winter I found myself having lunch at the seaside cottage of some friends, an attractive young couple in their twenties. The only other guest was a retired college professor, a marvellous old gentleman, still straight as a lance after seven decades of living. We had planned a walk on the beach after lunch. But as gusts of wind shook the house and occasional pellets of sleet hissed against the windows, our hosts’ enthusiasm dwindled visibly. “Sorry,” said the wife, “but nobody’s going to get me out of the house in this weather.” “That’s right,” her husband agreed comfortably. “Why risk pneumonia when you can sit by the fire and watch the world go by on television?” We left them, finally, preparing to do just that. But when we came to our cars, parked some distance away, I was astonished to see the professor open the trunk of his ancient sedan and take out an ax. “Lots of lovely driftwood out there,” he said, gesturing toward the windswept beach. “Think I’ll get a load for my fireplace. I stared at him. “You’re going out there to chop wood? On this sort of afternoon?” He gave me a quizzical look. “Why not?” he said. It’s better than practicing the deadly art of nonliving, isn’t it?” And with the ax slanted across one shoulder, he set off through the dunes. I watched him go with the sudden odd feeling that something was wrong here, something curiously inverted in the proper order of things. Two youngsters were content to sit placidly by the fire; an old man was striding off jauntily into an icy wind; and I myself was left with a choice – an obscurely important choice – and precious little time to make it. “Wait!” I heard myself calling to him. “Wait, I’m coming!” A small episode, to be sure. We chopped some armfuls of wood. we loaded them into his car. We got a bit wet, but not cold. There was a kind of exhilaration about it all, the ax blade biting into the weathered timbers … but what really stuck in my mind was that phrase about the deadly art of nonliving, because I think the old professor put his finger on one of the most insidious maladies of our time: the tendency in most of us to observe rather than act, avoid rather than participate, not-do rather than do; the tendency to give in to the sly, negative, cautionary voices that constantly counsel us to be careful, to be controlled, to be wary and prudent and hesitant and guarded in our approach of this complicated thing called living.

In Him,
Murray