The Linden Letters: 3

My Dearest Phoebe,

I will endeavour to keep this letter shorter than my last one; I may fail.

It has now been almost a decade since we first met. Who could have known, back then, how it would turn out? Or, rather: how can we know, even now, how we may end up, given we have made it only, perhaps, to the middle?

I often consider how lost we would have become—not only as “us,” but as separate souls—had you not gone abroad so soon after our first meeting. Before we can arrive somewhere, someone must go to prepare a place for us. (Imagine what could have happened, had we made a premature attempt.)

Yes, there was no choice but for you to go away. I have come to think the point was for you to face yourself—to atone for the mistakes you had made, including the ones for which you were not entirely to blame. It was during those years, away from the States, away from me, that you rediscovered God, ultimately leading you back to your true self, and back to me.

It would be wrong for me to argue that I had understood the significance of our first meeting at the time it happened. I did not know its depth until years later. It could not have become clear until your second coming, when you reappeared in my life, now almost a year ago. (Or did I reappear in your life? Two things can be true at once.)

Do you remember? You walked through the door; you hung up your coat; we embraced. Somehow, no time had passed during that nine years. I had prepared a sort of speech; you stopped me with yours. Do you remember?

“I don’t know if you know, but I have been away for a while.” That is how you began. I already knew that fact, of course; I knew far more than you thought I did. What neither of us could know, in that moment, was that someone had already gone to prepare a place for us. You continued to tell me about the entire affair—everything which had come to pass during the time we were apart. I need not repeat it now: I know you do not like to revisit it, and I do not fault you for that.

It doesn’t matter. You figured it out; you went away; you came back. Many people never do.

My buddy Anselm asks about you every time I see him. It is almost always the first thing he says. Why? He knows of my love for you—that much is true. More important, he loves me; perhaps he loves you, only transitively. Yes, I am making a maths joke; but it is true that he loves us both, at the very least in the sense of “loving thy neighbour.”⁰ He is also more than casually acquainted with the idea of “laying down his life for his friends,”¹ as am I—if more imperfectly so than he. I think it goes beyond that: Anselm makes an effort to love others the way God loves us all. This means wanting the best for us, and nudging us in the right direction, that we might achieve our highest aims.

(Kirstin keeps asking about you, too; and she has been going to church with Anselm on and off for a few months now. You should call her.)

It has been said that a person tends to become the average of the five people with whom she spends most of her time. I believe this to be roughly correct. Only when we have come to see that we have surrounded ourselves with the wrong people are we able to correct course. (The Christians are not wrong about not being unequally yoked.²)

I paraphrase, for your benefit, a related passage from a book I read many years ago: “The effects of the ‘still, small voice’ of Truth, uttering itself, are not so much seen as felt. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher. Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,—this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’”³ (Italics mine.)

I told you I would try to keep this letter short; toward that aim, allow me to end with several important points which you must keep in mind:

• Your existence as a perfect child of God is complete and irrevocable.
• God makes available to us infinite opportunities to learn and to grow; these often come in the form of relationships and interactions with other people.
• We must be careful not only about the people with whom we surround ourselves, but also about the thoughts we entertain within our consciousness. “Stand porter at the door of thought.”⁴

My belovèd friend, I have not forgotten that you need someone to love you gently but firmly, and to guide and support you as needed. I will continue to do that to the best of my ability.

I leave you with a final idea: you must try to unharden your heart, forgiving those who have wronged you, just as others have forgiven you. This is an ongoing struggle, but well worth the effort.

Knowing that you love me, too—I remain yours,

Ronan

Footnotes

*See also “The Second Coming,” by W. B. Yeats.

0. Mark 12:31
1. John 15:13
2. 2 Corinthians 6:14
3. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 323–324
4. Ibid, pp. 392–393

Acknowledgements

Today’s work is the tenth in the series of what have come to be called the “Spider Stories” (and poems). They could not have been created without the help and encouragement of the real-life characters who inspired them, and that of friends and confidants. Special thanks to several Christian friends—in particular I., B., H., T., K., S., and the late J. C. M.—some for their guidance regarding specific elements of these works and some for general discussion of the underlying ideas and principles.