A Gentle Twitch

What is important in life?  It seems, from a chapter heading in Brideshead Revisited, it is a "twitch upon the thread."  As my friend explained to me, this is a metaphor for how God deals with his free creatures:  He plays out plenty of thread, but at times gives a gentle twitch to remind us of our end and destiny.  That twitch, explained my friend, is what led her to return to the Church after some years of wandering.

A life in full includes the thread and the twitch, both of which are signs of God's "play" in the world, his providence.  Evelyn Waugh appreciated this, for he said that his books meant to "represent man more fully, which, to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God . . . . I believe that you can only leave God out by making your characters pure abstractions.  Countless admirable writers, perhaps some of the best in the world, succeed in this . . . . They try to represent the whole human mind and soul and yet omit its determining character -- that of being God's creature." (cited in Thomas Prufer's "The Death of Charm and the Advent of Grace: Waugh's Brideshead Revisited", contained at p. 92 in his Recapitulations, 1993, The Catholic University of America Press.)

Prufer goes on to say, "the artfully represented course of events includes the gift and the call, the partnership and the exchange between God and man, man and God." Ibid at 92-93.

An artist cannot truly represent a life in full without including the thread that binds us with God, a thread that is weak enough to break, but strong enough to transmit a twitch.  Likewise, one can't live life fully without feeling, at special times, this twitch.  The twitch reminds us that we do not live life alone but in companionship with Someone who loves us enough to tap us gently on the shoulder and invite us home! The twitch reminds us of the thread of love that binds our life and our lives together in a divine meaning.