Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter.

It's a dangerous business, rereading old favorites. There is no knowing what you might think of them.

This time through N.D. Wilson's wild philosophical thunderstorm of a book, I found things I didn't like. (That will happen when you haven't read a book for four and a half years, and the last time you read it you were a fifteen-year-old idealist who'd never encountered Hume.) It mostly boils down to a general feeling of superiority over "the philosophers" (among whose ranks I still contend Wilson belongs) and an attempt at theodicy which I cannot find entirely biblical.

But there is so, so much good to be found here. Lessons we all need to learn about what it means to live, and die, well. Stories told with skill and joy. Augustinian and Chestertonian ideas in Wilson's sparse yet rich style, strong words written with laughter. And so, I recommend this book very highly, to anyone who has ever been angry at God (and even to those who haven't).

(And then go read his fiction.)

You are spoken. You are seen. It is your turn to participate in creation.

(Time for the requisite quote collection. There are a ridiculous amount of good ones here.)

Spoiler

+ Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. Swell with pride and gratitude, for you are tiny and given much. You are as spoken by God as the stars.

+ Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded... into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God.

+ Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened his mouth and began to tell a story.

+ If life is a story, how shall we then live? It isn't complicated (just hard). Take up your life and follow him. Face trouble. Smile at its roar planted by cool water even when your branches groan, when your golden leaves are stripped and the frost bites deep.
Shall we die for ourselves or die for others?

+ Living is the same thing as dying. Living well is the same thing as dying for others.

+ May my living be grace to those behind me.

+ We are mortals. We are seeds grown and hardened for planting, intended for the ground, and for a glorious Easter harvest after. The first Reaper is a foe, rending soul from flesh, and oh, how we run from him, how we stop our breathing and cower behind locked doors in our mortal darkness. But when our Brother takes up the scythe, there will be drums and sun and sweat mixed with laughter. Then we will beg not to be Passed Over.

+ By His grace, we are the water made wine. We are the dust made flesh made dust made flesh again. We are the whores made brides and the thieves made saints and the killers made apostles. We are the dead made living.

+ Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.
Almost.
It is death by living.

Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake.

Slight caveat for my Catholic friends: Wilson's anti-praying-to-saints belief comes out a tad flippantly in this book. I agree with him, but he's very blunt about it.