How It Ends

Our middle son Knox is a voracious reader.  He reminds me of myself when I was a few years older than he is now, but with one major difference.  After he reads a few pages of a new book to ensure that he will like it, he reads the last few pages.  That is something I would never do.  I don't even want to finish reading a good book; knowing how it ends would spoil the whole delightful process.

This habit of his makes me think of that moment in the movie When Harry Met Sally by the director Nora Ephron who died today at age 71, (I am not recommending this movie by including it here, but this scene is apropros.  :) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gow9u1ol8a8  Afraid our 8 year old might have a dark side, I ask why he reads the ending first.  Knox replies that he didn't want to waste time reading a book if he didn't like how it would end. I discovered this habit when he had stopped reading The Summer of Riley about a boy and a dog because it was too sad.  I told him to keep reading and that it might get better in the end.  "No," he insisted, "I read the end and he loses his dog.  I don't want to read and be left feeling sad."  Maybe I'll take Old Yeller off the reading list.

What made me think of this today was reading my One-Year Bible (and just in case you have one and are doing the same. .  I know, I'm 20 days behind), Psalm 115.  I remembered the opening verse from a chorus we sang in youth group a "few" years ago:  "Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory. . ."  The psalmist answers the other nations' question about where this God of the Israel is.  This answer compares the One True Living God to the other nations' idols of silver and gold:

They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.  They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell.  They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. (v. 5-7)

But what I didn't remember was the verse following, "Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them" (v. 8).  What a terrifying thought.  The overwhelming powerlessness. I know a little of this in watching my eldest who is unable to communicate all that he wants.  It is so frustrating for him.  Trusting and worshiping a false idol leads to this type of inability to say, see, hear, smell, or do anything.  All autonomy is gone.  Expression impossible.  Utterly trapped.

Here's a different ending from one of my favorite contemporary poets, Mark Strand.  More beautiful, but no more comforting:

                                      The End
                                 by Mark Strand
 

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

.

• The phrases "at the end" and "there at the end"  make a sort of refrain that like a wave, gently lapping the lake's edge, quietly reminding us what this poem is about.
• Unlike the Psalmist's depiction of the end, here the poet doesn't know how the ending will be (what song) or how it will feel ("held by the sea's roar"). 
• The contrasting beauty of Strand's description of day's and night's end with "the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down/No longer appear" shows what all of us do know.  Life on earth will come to an end. 
• The profound phrase "the weight of the past leans against nothing" brought a pause to my reading.  Isn't that what we often feel?  Well, maybe I should speak for myself, but at times, I am overcome by the weight of the past, a burden I know that I do not have to bear; however, it is one that likes to creep onto my back, climbing memory by memory, and slow down my present journey, tripping me up or knocking me down, if at all possible. 
• In the last line is that ship which brings to mind Dante's guide Charon over the Acheron river to the land of the dead.  Slip[ping] is an interesting verb choice here.  Of course, there's the rhyme with ship, but it's almost as if the end sneaks up on us, or maybe it is we who meet it with stealth in the darkness; no, more often, I think, it happens unawares, we slip out of the this world into another; that other for this poem is into the dark unknown.
• Another phrase that repeats is the one that offers the reader hope: "Not every man."  Some of us do know. Not all go into gloomy desolation. Believers in Jesus know the final outcome, the victor of the final battle.  Herein lies our hope.

Like Knox and his books, we know how it ends:

Revelation 5:9-13 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

Amen!