I have lived a charmed life. Things have largely gone the way they ought to go. Hard work rewarded. Relationships reciprocated and faithful. Fairness and justice upheld. Slow and steady wins the race, the tortoise preached, and I have won many races. My trains have run on time. My trains have reached their stated destinations. I am one of the fortunate few who didn’t have their first life-changing encounter with what might be named Chaos until college.
Chaos meets us in many different forms: Untimely death. Marital betrayal. Sexual violation. Innocents destroyed by violence. Diagnosis of a lifelong or fatal illness. War. We read about it in the papers. We speak in low tones about it in our neighborhoods, churches, and social circles. We know it happens, we know it is real. But, it’s not until it actually comes close enough to sheer off a piece of one’s own flesh, that we experience the taste of Chaos.
The first taste literally takes our breath away. For days, weeks, maybe even months. It is simply unbelievable. We mechanically go through the day numb and blank, carrying this odd weight in our chest. And yet, we compulsively search the Internet… for what? We are not quite certain. It’s just this inexplicable drive to learn more about the disease, the bombing, the shooting, the possible treatments, the perpetrators, other victims’ experiences, views from experts…anything. Maybe there is bit of knowledge or understanding that can restore Order to the internal house of our soul that has been wrecked. Eventually, the weight in the chest finds its way down and takes long-term residence as a knot in our gut, and, at night under the covers, when all is quiet–especially our thoughts– we weep as one who is bewildered.
The first time is truly the worst. Having made one’s initial acquaintance, each subsequent encounter with Chaos is never quite as bad. But, each meeting still leaves its own scar–another bit of ourselves shorn off, devoured, whittled down. Toss in the variable of having children, and the number of unexpected meetings with Chaos seems to increase exponentially.
English: Victoria tube station Victoria line platform roundel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Fifteen years ago, I read an intriguing passage from G.K. Chesterton’s wild caper, “The Man Who Was Thursday”:
I tell you…that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is the victory of Adam.
Chesterton’s bold assertion here is that we’ve got it all wrong. Ordinary Time is not marked by good things happening to good people. Hard work does not naturally lead to success. It is not normal for justice to be met. Every morning, the sun is not supposed to shine upon us. The train that says it is going to Victoria is not statistically expected to arrive in Victoria. In fact, there are a thousand other outcomes that the universe might actually lead that train to. Chaos does not interrupt into our Ordinary lives and make things go awry. Instead, Grace, Kindness, and All Things Good are the superheroes that interrupt and save us from the natural state of Chaos and make possible a Life worth living.
According to Chesterton, what we so often take to be Ordinary is not in any sense ordinary at all. Every day that you or your loved one drives to work and actually get there in one piece is a Victory. Every day your child goes to school and comes home in one piece is a Victory. Every day we go to sleep and wake up again– it is a Victory. Every second a building’s structure maintains its integrity, every moment a car brake functions to slow the vehicle, every time the gas stove lights safely to cook your pasta, it is a Victory. Every breath in that leads to a successful breath out…every single thing that I take for granted…yes, a Victory.
This radical picture of Victoria is challenging because it feels so upside-down, topsy-turvy. It is astonishing for its ability to accept a natural state of Chaos without any sense of subdued desperation or fist-clenching steeliness. It is something that makes one’s heart race wild with excitement, shyly hoping that maybe it is actually True.
If only I could somehow swallow this passage whole and integrate it into every molecule of my being. It would be a game-changer. What would it be like to have such a keen sense of the daily “hairbreadth escape” and triumph over Chaos? To have one’s heart swelling with serial gratitude so that one couldn’t help but leap up along with the station guard and cry out, “VICTORIA!” And imagine leaping up only to find that all the others in the train car have also leapt up with the same fresh realization that the power of Chaos has been undone, and breaking into raucous song as at a victorious soccer match?!
Chaos has been the game-changer too many times. Oh to be one step ahead with a vision of Victoria rooted firmly in our hearts…
Circa40 