The Far East and Other Things

[Composed yesterday]

The day began 30 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. Don’t you hate that? Oh well. It turned out to be a great day.

I went to church, as usual, and then I decided to go to Starbuck’s Coffee, for the second week in a row after church. As I sipped a raspberry mocha frap, I decided to finish off The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. Just as I thought I remembered from childhood, this is my favorite of the seven books. My favorite part is the end of the book. In the story, it’s also the end of the world…and it’s so beautiful.

As the travelers come to a strange island with a “ginormous” table spread out with a king’s feast, an old man with a beard and silver hair down to his feet comes out and tells them the guests will be arriving shortly. They stand in awe, as the sun rises, for thousands of birds fly from the east, with the sun on their wings. They are sent daily to this, Aslan’s Table, to feast, as they sing an ethereal song, after which they fly back to Aslan’s land, the land beyond the sun, beyond the edge of the world. The travelers continue sailing eastward and as they do, the bottom of the sea becomes visible because the water is almost completely transparent. They can see an entire world under the sea, full of castles and roads where the mermaids and sea kings live. Reepicheep, the fighting mouse, gets rather excited when he has a draught of seawater and it tastes sweet. He remembers the prophecy given to him, “Where the waves grow sweet, doubt not Reepicheep, there is the utter east.” As they journey further, the water at the world’s end gets not deeper, but shallower and shallower, and the current pulls them ahead at light speed. The sun is so big that they are constantly bathed in white light. The utter end of the ocean is a vast sea of white lilies, “very hard to describe—sweet, yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an elephant. She and Caspian said to one another, ‘I feel that I can’t stand much more of this, yet I don’t want it to stop.’ “ What the book is attempting to depict is what I think it depicts so wonderfully, crossing into eternity.

I was interrupted from my reading by my party of friends, who had arrived. I joined them for brunch at a restaurant, and then left to go to the lower west side, south of Houston Street. I went to a place on the Hudson River that my roommate, Brian Quimby, had told me about. Floating the Apple is a volunteer group of water enthusiasts who let people use their kayaks to paddle around in the Hudson for free on weekends. I did that for about a half hour, and it was delicious fun.

After that I headed to the Financial District, to mail some letters at the post office, followed by a journey to the 2 subway stops down at Wall Street. I walked past the New York Stock Exchange, strangely silent compared to the chaos that will ensue tomorrow. And Trinity Church caught my eye. It’s such a big beautiful building, I figured I’d have a look inside.

Of course, once inside, I was awestruck by the beauty of the cathedral. I wondered out of the main chapel into its several halls and then…something happened that I did not expect. I saw a side room with a few chairs and hymnals, and a lavish altar, with a burning candle hanging above. I went to sit down, thinking I would flip through a hymnal. As I picked one up, the desire to pray came over me. I checked my emotion at first, not wanting to be pseudo-religious just because I’m being a tourist in some church building that, “No less,” I thought, “tread by common tourists all day.” But the feeling persisted. An urge to pray at that moment, and not put it off. I began to pray in the Holy Spirit and then…my prayers were turned to this nation, to my marriage, to my purpose on earth, to Amanda’s…I began to read silently aloud some of the old hymns and prayers and was rejoicing. A half-hour later when I left, I looked at one of the carvings on the door. It was glorious! It was the scene from Revelation where all the saints are casting down their crowns before Christ on the throne, with a great lion in the foreground.

I went to the Whitehall yellow line subway and rode it Times Square, where I returned to the Virgin Records megastore and looked through some music. Chevelle’s Wonder What’s Next for only $12.99 became irresistible once I let the opening track’s rift dance in my head for a while. So after purchasing it, I began looking for a plate for Amanda, who is collecting plates from various places she travels to. I did not find a satisfactory one and will have to try again elsewhere.

I just now finished up my 16-page paper, am e-mailing it. Thank goodness that won’t keep me up nights this week any more.