THIRTY-EIGHT
Sarah lookin' cool in front of Todd's car
On p. 38 of Going Rogue Sarah continues to discuss her budding relationship with Todd. At the top of the page she writes:
"Our senior year, when my girlfriends were receiving the standard 'cool' gifts, like Van Halen cassette tapes and L.A. Lakers sweatshirts, Todd gave me gold nugget earrings, nestled in a grass-woven Native basket instead of a gift box, the consummate Alaskana gift."
Ah, seemingly simple words!! Yet, I think that, just as we seek out the deepest of mysteries and secrets in the smallest of God's gifts, so we may search for treasures hidden in the words of someone like our Sarah, who is so attuned to "Nature and Nature's God."
She calls Todd's gift "the consummate Alaskana gift." I think these words deserve close examination! What IS it that makes the gift the "consummate" present?!?
Of what does the gift consist? Gold and grass.
Gold in which Alaska is so rich, and which has become a symbol and metaphor for eternity, for timelessness. Why is it, for example, that we speak of the "Golden Age" of Latin Literature? Because the works of Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, Livy, Horace, et al. have a perfection of form and of content that has defied the envious passage of the centuries and even of the millennia. They are timeless.
A writer in First Things once penned the thought that he or she (I can't remember who the writer was) expected that a certain few things would still be around in the year 3,000 A.D. Among the few things enumerated were "the Latin and Greek Classics." So, an element of Todd's gift was made of this precious, timeless Alaskan metal.
Grass. What of grass, transient, ephemeral grass? Is not the glory of the Creator seen, not just in the 2,000-year-old redwood tree, but also in, for example, the fascinating praying mantis, which has a life span of about ninety days?
Are not Heaven's wonders to be seen equally in a drop of water and in the vastness of a galaxy? Cannot eternal glory for the soul be won both by a lifetime of labors in the Lord's vineyard, and in a heroic moment, an instant pregnant with charity and with eternity?
The Marine throws himself/herself on a grenade to save his/her fellow warriors: The deed of an instant weighs down the Lord's eternal scales of glory, for ages upon endless ages. The Good Thief turns in a second to the Son of God on Good Friday and says, "Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." He is undoubtedly with the Lord as I type these words, and will be forever!
What binds the ageless gold and the swift-fated little leaves of grass together? Love.
The Creator's Love made these two creatures, the gold and the grass.
Loving Native Alaskan hands wrought the gold earrings and wove the basket of grass.
Thus, the Pattern of Love was marked on the gold and on the grass, first by the Lord, then by the Native hands and skill and art that worked with these elements and made little earrings and a little basket. Precious gift.
Todd gave the gift to his Sarah.
A Gift of Love.
Let me note finally that we can see this same juxtaposed mystery of the timeless and the momentary in our Sarah's acts, her speeches in particular. If I may draw from my personal experience, one that was undoubtedly shared by those happy souls who saw and heard her yesterday at Baylor University and has been shared by so many other thousands who have been privileged to meet her, to see her, to listen to her, I can say that, while her orations may last only thirty to sixty minutes, her words and her presence and her light linger forever in a grateful and full memory!!
The moment of the speech itself is transitory; like the grass, it passes away. However, the great golden soul and spirit from which the words of the speech thundered forth, that soul is deathless, as is the sweet memory that her heart has carved into all of our hearts.
Gold and grass and the wonders of the consummate perfection of Love...
