The Little Green Road

"Keep it secret; keep it safe."

-Gandalf

There's something precious about keeping secrets. I don't mean harmful secrets or things you really ought to tell other people, or prayer requests or your own faults or failings.

I mean things like modesty: keeping the secret of your body from everyone else but the one person God has ordained to be your spouse.

I mean beauty: "I gazed--and gazed--but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought. For oft when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude."

I mean the thousand quiet things that don't need to be told/shown/spoken in order to be enjoyed.

I mean the things that are most beautiful when kept silent:

The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” 

-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It will seem to you that I've been in a reflective mood recently, what with the post on flirtation last time and now this, and perhaps I am. Or maybe I'm just finally finding time to write the things down that have been living in my brain, unrecognized for the longest period because my schedule has been so wacked. I'm not a huge SAVE THE EARTH person. Not at all. But in the same vein of keeping things secret, I found the perfect illustration:

I live in the countryside and there's this lovely bit of a triangle made from three different roads. The patch between the three is a secret patch of forest and I love it because it's so forgotten; nobody uses it for anything because it's too small to hunt on, it's too tangled to walk through, and I'm pretty much the only person who goes for a walk these days anyhow. On the opposite side of one of the roads, there was another patch of forest--this one rather large. And winding back into the forest was this lovely little green road that always looked like Ireland with the sun coming down, filtered through the leaves. I liked to think what sort of road it was: who took their ATV's down it to go hunting, or drove down it in their pick-ups to go fishing in one of the copperhead-infested ponds way back on Mr. Byrum's land. And someday, I told myself, I'd get brave enough to step past the No Trespassing sign and just set foot on that little green road. It was most beautiful to me because it was overlooked, unnoticed, and entirely mine. After all, when you're the only human being who cares to take walks in the country, you're bound to feel a little possessive.

The saddest thing happened...

They cleared that piece of land this past week--harvested all the pines and other trees--and my bit of Ireland is gone. Entirely gone. There's nothing secret and sacred about it. It's not even green anymore since all the equipment dragged brown pine-needles and covered its beauty over in a pall of Business. It's almost enough to make me feel like crying which is entirely silly, I know. I mean, if they planted the pines on purpose to harvest later and took the care to thin them as they were growing, then they've a right to do anything they want with them; in fact, that's good business. That's what it means to work and live in an agrarian society.

But it's not secret anymore. Someone exposed the bit of green road. It's not innocent, but ravaged. It looks like a war-zone. And worse yet, it's not mine. I don't know that piece of land anymore. It looks rakish and wretched and like the difference in Fantine between "At the End of the Day" and "I Dreamed a Dream" in Les Miserables. I hate the new look and I'm trying not to be upset and making myself drive that way and stare at the barrenness and think, "Someday it'll be secret again." Even the Triangle Bit across the road looks different because now the sun stares right in like a nosy neighbor, ferreting out any secretness it used to possess.

I guess this post doesn't have any point except that I think we're way too obsessed with moving forward and telling everything. We over-share the secret, beautiful bits about our lives and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and even on our blogs. I love to share the beauty with you. I love it so much. I'm a huge fan of taking pictures and helping other people see the fragile beauties. It's a small way I can minister. And yet I never want to lose the wonder of knowing things not everyone in the world knows. I was the only one who cared about the little green road and so it was mine. Now it's gone and no one else will know and that's kind of a really special feeling.

Keep your innocent, pretty special-secrets; they're never going to lose value by being yours.