Gatsby's green light

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that is was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning--

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.**

I fell in love with the Great Gatsby, reading it, like every other Sophomore at Clarke Central High School. Well, sort-of. Over Christmas break of my sophomore year I had major surgery. After a week in the hospital, Christmas break was over, but I still had weeks to go before I was ready to go to school. So my mom served as my home school teacher. At first I was so weak and in so much pain, that about all I could do was listen. My mom read to me (and to this day I love hearing books and being read to). I don't know how far she got before I picked it up and actually read it myself, but two chapters in and I was hooked.

My love affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald would last for years. And while I read other books, it really always came back to Gatsby and the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. The poetry of the book (you will be hard pressed to show me text that is more beautiful than that last page of the Great Gatsby I've printed above), the language, the rhythm all combined in my 15 year old head to create the symphony that still plays for me today. I hear echoes of those words and patterns weave their way into my sermons, often unnoticed until long after the sermon's been delivered. I long to be able to write, to use words, like Fitzgerald does.

Something about the green light, the searching for and never finding, and not realizing it's right there--it evoked something visceral in me. I used to think about Gatsby and the green light and wonder about my father. So much that he longed for seemed to be right before him, but he just kept missing it. It was so close, just right beyond his line of vision.

But now, as I read it, I read myself into it. In the strange season in which I find myself--the season of longing--I think that's what I'll call it--I read these words with new eyes. I don't fully understand it, this season. I think that's okay. [H]is dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. My hopes, human hopes and dreams sometimes seem so out of grasp. Not rooted in the material, but crying out for that which is unnameable, that which is beyond us, the longing continues to call to us, or at least, to me. And paired with the longing, if we are lucky, is that other piece that Fitzgerald names, that we... for a transitory enchanted moment [hold our] breath...compelled into an aesthetic contemplation [that can be] neither understood nor desired, face to face...with something commensurate with [our] capacity for wonder. And therin lies my hope. That my, that our capacity for wonder will lead us to and eventually beyond the siren's green light.

**The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page 182 of the 1988 Hudson River Edition. If that's not your edition, just read the last 4 paragraphs of the book.