Inevitably, these ambitious descriptive paragraphs become silly cliches. In The 5 People You Meet in Heaven for example, Mitch Albom uses floating, techni-color light shows, and teleportation to describe the places between heavenly checkpoints (note: the similiarity to old Star Trek episodes)...as I read these inadequate descriptions, I just felt bad for Mitch. It's not that he isn't a good writer - it's that he tried to describe the indescribable. His efforts to capture Heaven in a 194-page book struck me as the literary equavelent of a toddler who scribbles a picture of a 'Heaven' with thick crayons. I imagine that if God read Mitch's book he would smile after reading the last sentence like we smile at our childrens' drawings...in a loving yet patronizing grin God would tussle Mitch's hair and compliment his cute 2D creation and then return to his 3D (or 11D*) world.
*According to String Theory there are at least 11 demonsions to our world. Poor, Poor 3-D Mitch Albom was always a few dimensions too short. Mitch - your book was cliche ridden and predictable, but I'm sure God enjoyed your cute scribbles anyway. I am sure 'The Creature of the Universe and of all Reality' lovingly hung your book on his giant refridgerator next to Dante's Inferno and my nieces fingers paintings.
What does all this criticial bashing of Poor Mitch Albom have to do with my adventures in Brazil? Welp...I, like Mitch, am going to attempt to describe the indescribable. However, unlike Mitch, I have decided against crushing you with a avalanche of adjectives and clinhes... instead, I will let the multimedia power of links, photos, and film do the indequate job of describing the undescribably for me.
Waterfalls, Butterflys, and Rainbows.
No really - Waterfalls, Batterflys, and Rainbows.
*To kick off this multimedia adventure listen to the theme from Jurassic Park as you read. (open link in seperate window)
Last week, I traveled to the edge of Brazil, where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet to see one of the Natural Wonders of the World - the Iguazu Falls. To say that seeing these Falls was an awe-inspiring, breathe-taking, humbling, beautiful experience is accurate - but laughable inadequate. None of those expressions capture the senation I felt as the mist gently wrapped itself around me, as I turned in 360-degree circles to see the water spilling over the canyon walls in all directions, as I stood next to a rainbow so perfect that I swear if you touched it your hand would be painted red, yellow, green, and blue, as I raised my voice louder and louder to be heard over the constant white-noise roar of water hitting rock. Standing in the midst of the falls all my of senses were turned up to 11, my mind whirled with sappy cliches and eternal Truths, and yet I all I could do was gawk....dumbfounded.
My companions and I stood on the final platform in the park for over 30 minutes smiling and staring, smiling and gawking, smiling and reflecting and smiling. As I watched the hundreds of different falls trickle, stream, charge, and gush to the groud of the horse-shoe shaped canyon, I thought to myself if the world really was flat...if the oceans actually ended and casacaded over the edge of the earth before falling into space...this is what it would look like.
More dumbfounding adventures on the way, but now I have to watch movies on a rain day with our kids. -Gerbs
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1 comment:
Look what God did.
Breathtaking.
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