The Cathedral at Marathon

A vignette on running the race.

Below is a reproduction and mild elaboration of a story which I extemporaneously told during Eastertide festivities; a story in response to questions of how to structure a homeschool co-op in the setting of a small church. I owe the central idea of Seek First to Søren Kierkegaard’s compact masterpiece, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses.

And you see, if you seek to somehow use, as an evangelistic instrument—as a lever—a homeschool co-op—if you wish to reach the parents through the children, it will never work. Not really. For the moment of decision will come: the kids will age out, right? And then the parents, whom you have been seeking to passively evangelize by means of the children’s education—they will be standing at a crossroads. They will be standing upon the precipice of the precarious present tense: the infinite decision. Do they wish to retain the community their children (not they themselves) found in the church by the proxy of the co-op? Do they wish for the Church? What will they seek? In theory, there is any number of objects after which they might seek. In practice? There is the Kingdom of God, or—a void. The null set, if you will. Ø.

For, the path you are contemplating, this oblique method of evangelization, is not the path towards the Church. Let me tell you that path. Let me show you.

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A traveler, a worldweary person, is following the road. Married or not, with a family or in solitude—it is no matter. The pilgrim is, always, on this road, alone. For the earth upon which this road is paved is his heart; and the easier he finds the road, thus the harder the stone of his heart. And he knows that the road should be harder than it is. The ease of this highway nags at his heart. It is an unenunciated terror, so slight as to be waved away, yet stubborner than any other emotion. It is there when he rises, and its flickers play across his eyelids before he sleeps.

And that man, time and time again, may come upon a tree. It is always the same tree, although he does not know it is. He does not know he is going in circles. And this is an unadorned, modest tree, in his eyes; it hasn’t fruit, it hasn’t splendorous blossoms. But, it has shade. And as the wind rustles through her leaves, a faint song is formed, tho’ he mayn’t—or, may!—discern a line or two:

To all who are spiritually weary and seek rest;
     to all who mourn and long for...
     ... wide her doors...
     ... welcome in the name of...

And perhaps the first time, or perhaps the fiftieth time, that the man passes the tree, he casts himself down beneath her boughs, to rest within her shade. He may even sleep; for the first time, he may even truly rest. For despite the ease of the road, he is weary. Depleted. And beneath the shade of this tree, the unenunciated terror retreats. He does not know that that is why he feels better, though. As he wakes, he smells the youth of spring, and he notices that the tree is not unadorned. Strange. He had thought it was. But those are definitely flowers. Thousands, tens of thousands, of little, delicate flowers. And the petals, carried off in great breaths of air, have fallen upon an old footpath etched into the flesh of the Earth, sprinkling pastel beauty on the lesser-taken trail. He follows the path, wondering if others have found it before. “Surely I am the first! Someone would have told me of this if he had found it. What an adventure!”

Rounding a hill, he finds a little country church. He has never been in one. He doesn’t even really know what a church is. It is just a building to him. He tries the front door; it swings open, but not without an aching creak. His eyes adjust from the torrential sunshine to the shaded interior, and the scene is surprisingly unsurprising. There are, at most, half a dozen pews on each side of a central aisle, and a small, cramped chancel at the front, with a weathered altar lit by dwindling candles. On the north and south sides of this quiet, still rectangle are two windows each: clear plate glass. Everything plain and mild. The plaster ceiling is held aloft by wooden beams: a sort of abbreviated A-frame. He thinks that he can see the faint shape of a cross by the altar, but he does not know what that is. Shadows play across the chancel, besides. He turns to leave.

“Friend, don’t go. Not yet. Only for a moment longer: walk with me. Before you continue on the road, before you continue seeking, first seek one thing—with me.”

He turns, with heart aflutter, for no one has ever spoken with such tenderness towards him before. The figure is clothed in red and white, with a warm visage whose features the man could never again remember. And he walks, towards the figure, who is standing, with open hands and smiling face, at the exact geometric center of the church.

It is here, in this humble church, that the center can, indeed, hold. And so it does, while all about it begins to transpose. Where there once were four windows, now there are six, and then eight, and then—; and the plain, clear glass begins to blush with love towards the pilgrim, and rich colors bloom from the crystal planes, and what once were portals to the rocky plains without are now portals to scenes of the Author’s Work within this little church. But it is not so little. Not now.

And as the man walks down that center aisle, it is no longer six pews on each side, but perhaps sixty. But he pays that no mind. And if the man could see through the shooting walls, he should see these magnificent buttresses happily sprouting up along the dilating objects of their embrace, affectionately hugging the newly limber stonework. The ceiling, quietly bending into vaulted heights where there once were cramped wooden joints. Transepts springing out amidst the unfolding buttresses, punctuating the lengthening nave.

At the center, still, the figure. “Yes! Seek this first. The rest will wait. Just this one thing, I ask of you. Seek this a little while. With me.” And the pilgrim continues to walk towards the center.

And at times, of course, he falters, and stops. Pausing, he looks about himself, and wonders, “This is not what it looked like when I entered.” For it is a glorious basilica now. And he may meander here and there, looking at the stained glass, or even beginning to walk back towards the door through which he had entered just a few—minutes? hours?—ago. His progress is fitful. But always, the gentle repetition: “Seek this first.”

And each time he starts to walk away, he gets less close to the door than the previous time. This is not only because of the expanding space. This is because of grace. This is because he is becoming less interested in the rocky plains outside. He is becoming less interested in the highway. He is becoming aware of the incongruous foolishness of having his cake, rather than eating it. Taste and see. “The more I seek this first, the less interesting the rest of it all seems. But I’ll come back ’round to it eventually.”

And after miles of cathedral, he reaches the center of it all, and the figure embraces him, and it is like being held by a pillar of fire. But he does not get burned. But it does burn, for one glittering, blinding instant.

And from the center, the chancel does not seem so far now; the altar not so distant; and the shadows are long gone. It is farther than ever, and yet closer than any could have hoped. The candles are burning bright and full. And the figure takes him by the hand, leading him down the aisle. There is another figure visible, now. He is at the altar. He is dressed in colors for which no language has adequate vocabulary. And the two of them, the pilgrim and the pillar, begin to run, though the former’s feet are so light and his heart so quick that he fails to even notice. The impossibility of the church’s length has long left his mind. Where insipid intellectualism would have needled with sophomoric questions, awe and wonder now flow over him and through him. He is not happy, strictly speaking; he has stumbled through the scrim of happiness, discovering the sun-splashed valley of joy which lay behind it. The curtain was torn, after all.

As they near the chancel, the pilgrim senses great movement behind him, a swell of inertia, the vast kinesis of a million bodies all moving as one, together reaching the finish line of that great footrace; but he does not turn around to see. His eyes are lost in the Light of He at the Head of the Church. His heart is lost in the dancing revelation of Apocalypse. All is becoming Light.

His ears had heard, Seek First, and the implication had been that the highway outside would wait, that he would get back around to it; that after Seeking First [God’s Kingdom], he might Seek Second, Seek Third, etc., other matters; that his life would continue as it had been, but with some amendment, some new attachment. A prefix, if you will. But that is not what happened at all.

It was not a prefix that he had received, here in this strangely expansive, seemingly infinitely capacious little country church. No, he had received a new name. No prefix, nor suffix, could hope to contain the sweeping alchemy through which his spirit had passed. It was nothing short of a rebirth.

Here, in this unremarkable desert, a highway had been made straight for God. Here, in this quiet little parish, a center aisle befitting the celestial Wedding had been constructed, hewn out of the reclaimed, redeemed hearts of man. And here, the pilgrim, himself simultaneously the first to discover the path and one of countless many before—for the path is always unique, for it is always discovered anew—here, the pilgrim alights towards the altar, a member of that great Body presenting herself unto the Groom. The race was run; the battle, won.

Within the flowing walls: the altar, and the chancel, and then the nave, dissolve into Light. For it is not dissolution, but in fact precipitation: but we’ve neither the eyes nor the words for that sacred Material, that elevated Incarnation. And so the Light, in all its spectacular purity, seemingly collapses into a single point, when that point is in fact a constellation of many dimensions, new dimensions, all dancing in perfect worship amidst the Wedding Feast. For the pilgrim was just one of so very many lost coins.

What is within those walls defies our understanding; what is without defies our defiance. Without is that worn footpath, dressed in the splendorous robes of spring; without is that highway, with so countless many trudging along it. But without is one more thing. Without stands a tree, that ugliest beauty which ever was born upon this Earth—for cursed were all upon it. And to those like the pilgrim at his beginning, it is but an embarrassment: ugly, useless, and shameful. But still, and always, that wistful eastern wind, pushing Helios towards his western sleep, filters through the leaves of that tree; and still, and always, that faint song is formed:

 To all who are spiritually weary and seek rest;
     to all who mourn and long for comfort;
     to all who struggle and desire victory;
     to all who sin and need a Savior;
     to all who are strangers and want a home;
     to all who hunger and thirst after righteousness;
     and to all who will come,
     this church opens wide her doors
     and offers welcome in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.