Honor, and Those That Should Receive It

It’s fun to be young. We have our strength, energy, good looks (some of us), and we have the semblance of wisdom (fewer of us). Everything exists for today when we are young and the future is gloriously more of the same only better, because we won’t ‘get old’ like the others before us—how can we in these fine bodies we have?

This year my grandfather celebrated his 89^th birthday and grandma her 90^th. Today, I attended a party celebrating a colleague’s 90^th birthday. Another colleague said his mom is about to celebrate her 96^th birthday. In each of the three lives I can directly observe, they are not strong in the way we think, but are frail. They move slowly and tire more easily than they used to. The look good for their age. But in large measure they do have wisdom. Some have aged more gracefully than others who have fought the reality of their lessening abilities.

Rugged Frailty

In Perelandra, the second book in C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, Venus is an Eden-like planet, complete with an Adam and Eve. Weston, a human from earth is possessed with a demon and comes to Perelandra in order to cause the Fall there. The hero, appropriately named Ransom, is sent by God after Weston to preserve the innocence of the Eve character. The longer Weston is on Perelandra, the more depraved he becomes. He mauls some frog-like creatures horribly, and Ransom stumbles upon them, and seeing their suffering condition, tries to put them out of their misery, but they will not die, because Death hasn’t entered that planet yet. Ransom realizes he’s just adding to their suffering and leaves them, since he is also unable to heal them.

What has stuck with me about that episode since I first read it in college is