NOTHING GOLD

NOTHING GOLD

Lately, I’ve been noticing how nothing goes from chaos to order without intentional work. Everything’s natural progression seems to be decay.

Take a perfectly spotless, in tact home. Now, do not do any work in the home for… I don’t know… let’s say three hours. Yup, three hours. In three hours time, you will see exactly what I mean when I say the natural direction of everything is from order to chaos. (If you do not have children, change three hours to three days.)

How do socks magically appear randomly throughout the house? How do books and papers find their way to countertops and all other exposed surfaces? Pillows must hate the couch. I am convinced pillows and couches are enemies. This is why pillows are always on the floor; they refuse to be touching couches.

Although this inclination toward decay may sound unappealing at first. There is something of great worth in it. A poem you may be familiar with concisely states what I might ramble on about for days:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

As only he could, Frost brings in something we often miss. In the decay, there is beauty and life. The leaf subsides to leaf, and the dawn goes down to day. These aren’t bad things. These are life. Nature’s cycle moves from partial to full. There is growth and change in the subsiding and going down. Even the line “So Eden sank to grief,” can, in this context, indicate the fortunate fall (the idea that God, in his omniscience was fully aware man would fall, and he created the world anyway because his big picture plan was beautiful and best for man… including man’s ability to choose evil.)

What I’m trying to get at is life is beauty. Life is chaos and mess, and, yes, we have to work hard at it, but even in the decay there is something valuable. Perhaps, it is even something worth all the gold and luster being worn off so we can see it.

We all strive to be perfect, shiny, and golden, but that can’t stay. We should embrace the beauty of what comes in the moments after the shimmer is gone.

We can strive all we like to remain golden images of perfection, but the truth is order moves to chaos. And as much as we want to stay gold, we see the dawn has brought us the day, and that is pretty amazing, too.

We have been given a great gift to know both gold and what follows.

Hug the mess. Enjoy moments of perfection. Love the wrinkles. It is all life. Embrace it.