DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP

by Matt Cardin

The pages before me spoke of something not of God’s creation, and thus not subject to the redemptive work of Christ; something existing not in the world of God but outside it, somewhere in a void of utter confusion. Reading these words, I began to envision dimly, as through a pane of smoked glass, a vast and ancient realm of uncreated darkness, a great gulf of eternal night where chaos churned through infinite circles of futility. It was fantastic, breathtaking, overwhelming in its immensity and grotesquery. Through a strange kind of epistemological alchemy, the mere sight of this realm began to impress upon me a sense of ancient secrets being laid bare. I saw plainly the absolute immanence, the impossible nearness, of this other realm. I saw the way it pressed in upon the world of life and light at the edges, and not only there, but also in our very midst, at the interstices where the components of the created order cohere. I saw the true nature of the ordered cosmos upon which I had based my hopes: its mutability and insubstantiality, as if it were merely a castle in the sand, waiting helplessly, absurdly, upon a deserted shore, for the ravenous tide to come in and devour it.