The LND

The Light from a Narrow Door is a fictional convention I used to carve out the most important themes and aspects of my world building. Before I explain further, I want to define world building. For me, it is the creation of a fictional world that houses increasing layers and levels of meaning and narrative. There are characters, stories, music, art, geography, philosophy, mythology, culture, languages - and whatever else you can dream up - in the fictional world that you build. Some great examples of beloved world building are what Tolkien created with the Lord of the Rings, G.R.R. Martin with Game of Thrones, and D&D. 

In my own world, the LND was introduced into the stories during the hardest period of my life. The lowest low, rock bottom, hell, you already know. I needed real spiritual strength. I needed something, anything. I called for one thing to come into my life. Just one. I saw that others had a thing, and it either allowed them to have a good career, or a beautiful supportive relationship, or to be part of a community. I knew my love for my son granted me a preternatural toughness, but I needed something more, to fight our way out of hell. I just needed that one thing to rely on, to turn this all around. I needed a sword. I always loved the idea of a sword. 

So when I saw the Light from a Narrow Door, I took it up like a sword. Because at that time, that is how I perceived what I needed to be, what I needed to introduce into the fictional world that mirrored my heart. As I continued to build this world, I put victory after bloody victory into my satchel to recount when I needed to remind myself of what I’ve accomplished so far. When I rested in a lonely inn somewhere for the night, before the next days grueling adventure. New level, new devil, how many scalps have I claimed in my fight to return to the world of the living? As I recovered bits of myself along the way, I healed some, and I began to see the LND as something else.

It was a path, it was the way. So I stayed on the path of the LND, and found my escape from the territories of suffering. As I took in my surroundings, and allowed the real me to emerge slowly from its protective shell, I expanded, naturally. And I learned that the path I have been on for so long is not only a path out of the old world, but towards something. Where? It was towards the door, of course. The Narrow Door, no less. How did I not see that? I mean, I wrote this thing, didn’t I? Am I not the author? 

So I went forward on the road, daring not to stray for too long, and in my fiction, the path eventually lead to that narrow door. As I got closer to the door, I wondered what would be beyond it. I wrote about that too. I should know what is there, shouldn’t I? Eventually, I reached the end of the path, and I came face to face with the door. And I learned something new once more. 

The door was not a door, but a being. A sentient life force, an entity with its own power and awareness. It was certainly aware of me, and my path to it, and could see me coming even in the farthest reaches of the dark where I had cracked my skull and was left to bleed out my very essence. It witnessed me. It had been emitting this light from the very beginning, and I only noticed it when I asked for that one thing.

But who was this being? I had to know. I traveled so far. And being a being of light, I couldn’t talk to it, or touch it, and so I just walked up to it, forehead to forehead. I stepped into it. And then I learned one last thing.

It was me, all that time. I was that being. And when I think back on that version of me, that fragment of me that lay in the distant darkness of my own created hell, there is a beam of light, from my consciousness now, to his. That is what I was seeing.

I recognize him (me), suffering there, and I feel him with me now. I feel a great deal of compassion and love for that little guy. In this state of ecstatic, grateful realization, I feel what it must feel like for God to learn that another one of his creations has found faith in its own being. After all, all of this is its creation - the creation, and it all leads back to the creator. All of this is such a beautiful story, no matter what happens. It must be. I felt it. 

I asked for one thing, and I received the one-est of all things. It was only as useful, as beautiful or powerful as I was able to perceive it to be. It was exactly what it needed to be, for where I was at the time. Just like I am. Then, and now, a part of the world that we are still creating.