Storm Tales

Dear Pilgrim,

The gale churns into full momentum: uncanny winds—not so odd for this region or unprecedented during our chinooking winters—but stronger and longer and unexpected-like. Warm weather all week, so why blow now? Then the brown clouds begin drifting, building, obscuring vision, threatening ominous. It’s not dirt, it’s smoke.

Driving home into the gale force, the wall rises hundreds of feet above the city, filling the coulee, reckless and morphing and serious. Smoke holds no concern for the lung or eye it stings, the sight it obliterates, the terror it invokes. Smoke warns: smoke is a gift.

We learn the news: six massive prairie fires devouring to our West. Then, the palpitations shoot up like flares: evacuating orders and rumours and warnings. What if we must evacuate?

So, if we had to get out in five minutes, what would we take? What would we take? What’s valuable? Clothes: no. Books: replaceable, except those nine ancient encyclopaedias—my Grandfather’s first commission on graduating auctioneer school. But they are heavy, and cumbersome . . . and the information is probably obsolete by now.

I throw a few pieces of clothing in a bag, along with my passport and a few coloured pieces of paper we use for money. The computers, the hard drive, old journals . . . these contain soul journey . . . these cannot be replaced.

Then we wait, bags packed by the door . . . and how do we live now? A pang gnaws my heart when I go to put a DVD in the computer: this is non-chalante, in the face of impending tragedy. But then, what can we really do? Everything’s prepared, after all, it’s just the two of us. I feel for the families: frantic to stow pictures, recipes, memories in laundry basket and cardboard box. It’s nice to be unconcerned—weird, because there is so much worry and desperation out there—but nice.

So we wait it out, watching the neighbours across the street, checking updates . . . and the sky turns out the lights, so we wait in the dark. And we must walk in the light we have, while we wait.

So, we munch popcorn, and work on hand-made Christmas gifts, and watch a movie, and wait. And eventually, the warning is lifted, the fire is controlled, and we can go to our own beds to sleep.

The next morning, we wake to perfect calm, and the fading memory of flurried prayers, hurried packing, waves of worry, and the brief panic evaporates in the light of a new day.

We did not suffer loss, just a few hours of the daunting great unknown. And today, I don’t want to live disengaged, dulled by shock or distracted with unimportant clutter. I want this unconcerned happiness to fill my heart and transform my every-day dullness. Because at the end of the day, God’s children are secure—all that’s really important is totally safe, and all the other stuff doesn’t really matter.

And it’s the big storms that teach us how we should live everyday . . . and the little storms that reveal what we really believe.

(Photos courtesy of the weather network.)

Soul Scurry

Quiet. Change comes, but for now, the moment of pregnant preparation lingers. Soon it will break, the silence shatter, the winds sweep us into transformation. But for now, we wait.

The waiting annoys us. This frustrating space: the breath before birthing effort, the still before the bluster, the pause before the next notes sung. Linger here, my soul, and learn the song of suspension.

How can it be that “stepping out in faith” requires me to stand still? It’s so opposite, so different than how I think progress works. We are inculcated to believe advancement equals action, stillness equals stagnation, pausing equals cowardice and ignorance. We know how to rush, how to work, how to drown out the noise and push through. We acclimatize ourselves to action. We stir it up, even when things are still.

Yet, we crave rest, peace, quiet. Isn’t every Westerner’s goal to enjoy sweet and early retirement? Don’t we scrimp and save and cut corners and burn bridges and squander lives so we can preserve our own?

Who has educated us in life mechanics? Who do we resemble in the “how” of our existence? What do we demand, expect, dream for ourselves?

The pause reveals it. Soul scurry: questing for substance through action, we go haywire in the maddening, quiet wait.

Whatever happened to the Anno Domini people?

We get caught up in Anno: the year. We flutter and muster for efficiency, always beating our previous goal, always pushing . . . even when we can’t remember why.

We forget the Domini : the dominion of our Lord. For those twice-owned by the universe Maker, life’s about Him, not me, not even us.

The pause tells us so. In it, the Creator says, “I am bigger than this. I transcend this dizzying chaos.” His priorities and proposals feel preposterous . . . till we remember that He is Adonai: Lord and Master.

We squirm and rebel at orders to “Be still,” till we remember Who is giving the orders, and why He can tell us what to do, and why we should do it.

The Creator is all about His glory, and our happiness. And it just so happens that our happiness depends on His glory, because He’s the most satisfying relationship in the universe.

And sometimes, He has to pause the movie a few extra minutes, till we are ready to hear, ready to acknowledge His priority, ready to be made happy by Him alone—not the thrill of the video or the crunch of the snacks or the comfort of the couches. This movie’s not about us; but about HIM.

To Number our Days

Today, I have lived on earth for ten thousand days. And I look back, and wonder, and ponder.

Of those ten thousand days, there has been food for every meal I chose to eat. I’ve owned, or been given enough clothes to stay warm in the long winters, and cool in the unpredictable summers. Placed in a family of mathematicians, artists, athletes, musicians, and problem solvers, I’ve always felt like an oddball. But I’ve been accepted, supported, and unconditionally loved.

Six church families have taught me what it means to belong to God, and what it looks like when God constructs thought, action, and affection. Girls once playing house now swaddle their own babies. Boys climbing trees now build houses for their families and neighbours. And I watch, and cheer, and join in the adventures; and grapple with the changing relationships. So many people, so many stories, so many inextricably complex souls brushing my own.

How little of what I planned and dreamed actually happened! How beyond my expectations has been my experience! I grieve the unrealized imaginings, even while acknowledging their weakness, and my ignorance in wishing them. And I baffle at the unaccountable adventures, the methods and means that changed my hopes, and gave me what I really wanted . . . and could not have asked for.

I’m dumbfounded by my foolishness, all the things I’ve squandered, all the opportunities I’ve wasted, all the emotions I’ve pilfered on fickle dreams. I’m amazed at the grace I’ve been given, a power to love what I did not desire, to venture where I had no interest going, to follow away when I wanted to stay and build my castles in the sand. I boggle at the sheer mercy—a hand laid gentle on me, encompassing, shielding, stopping, redirecting.

The further I follow, the less I know what to wish for. The more I’m able to do, the less I know what to do. But what I do does not matter as much as what I love. And maybe all this wandering is designed for me, so I can love what is Best.

l remember the days. I ask God to teach me to number them, so I can gain a heart of wisdom. And at the end of the day, I remember, and want to be reminded always, that I belong to God, and God has given Himself to me.

Today, my hero said: The joy is having the Beloved, not loving what we have. (www.aholyexperience.com )She is right.

So I pray, as Moses did, “Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days . . . and let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us.” Psalm 90:14,17

Redeeming the time, Part 3

I’m just stepping into the pantry, pulling item from shelf lip or freezer’s deep cavern, when I am compelled to stop, and consider.

She makes semi trucks look impish. She defies iron men. She obliterates the marvel of LeTourneau’s earth-moving machines. And she has no idea of her power.

A discarded grain of rice, fallen from the bag months ago—she finds it, and takes it home. But where is home? How far must she travel? It doesn’t faze her, because it’s all in a day’s work, and effort exerted shows that we’re alive. I think she understands better than humans, this dance of duty and delight, this mystery of muscles clenching and hands raised in praise, this paradox or working out what God works in, and it is all grace, given in God-life-power.

She scouts out her journey as she travels, clinging with one thread arm to the printer lip, while the rest of her frame hangs, clenching rice grain in her jaw. How can she hold a load her body size, and double her weight?

She changes her mind, struggles back on top of printer lid, and tests more possibilities. Finally, she shimmies down the face, rice dangling ahead of her, pulling her towards the fall off the shelf. She does fall, onto freezer, where she immediately searches for the rice grain, which bounced away from her when they landed.

She’s walking in circles—how can she not be dazed? So I scoot the rice grain towards her. “Here it is!” She finds it, and treks again, this time off the freezer lid, down the side—a feat five times harder than the printer expedition.

I’d be done by now. I’d quit. I’d say it’s not worth it and curl up in self-pitying, lazy heap.

She keeps going—without prodding, or nagging, or competing, or supervision.

She works, and her life is praise to her Maker.

“Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.”

And maybe, just maybe, the infinitesimal, the too-small-to-notice, the minute marvels of creation teach us what it really means to redeem the time.

“Therefore whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.”

Redeeming the Time, Part 2

20 June 2011

I thought I was a good time manager, because I was always busy, always had three or four projects on the go. Efficiency haunts me like a shimmering dream, the twinkle of sun on drying glassware, the gleam of washed floors, the reflection on dusted piano lids.

Why is stress so alluring? Why does the rush and last-minute mindset appeal? Why do deadlines and insurmountable to-do lists capture the imagination?

Do I think somehow, that I’ll become a Cinderella, a damsel deep in suds, ready to be rescued? Or winding self up the staircase of busyness, into a tizzy tower—is the harsh exposure and comfortless vantage really worth it? What if rescue doesn’t come? What if I’m not supposed to be here in the first place? What if I actually become a dupe, inadvertently used for the enemy’s purposes, in all this bluster and jockeying for prominence?

And there’s the lie: stress seems attractive because stressed people seem important, valuable, indispensible. The work needs them, the cause requires them, it will all run amuck without them. I want to be valuable, so I make myself stressed.

Problem One: stress starves the soul. Vital life undergoes anorexic neglect. In the body, blood leaves stomach and deep organs to feed the flailing limbs and taxed mind. In the soul, authentic life drains while I race in circles, too busy running to notice that I’m not going anywhere good. Sure, I accomplish good things, but this lifestyle is not fundamentally, transcendently good, because it’s built on a lie: that my efforts are good enough, that I am the only one looking out for me, that God might not be good after all.

Problem Two: stress isolates me from community, rusts relationships through neglect, destroys koinonia. If a soul is left to decay and despair because I am too busy to care, then I make a shrine of myself, my goals, my needs, and become an idolater.

And if my soul shrivels to nothing because I’m addicted to my own aggrandizement, then I’ve sold myself cheap on synthetic existence.

There’s more to life, and it haunts the soul deeper than tinny time-crunch goals . . . .

Redeeming the Time, Part I

“Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” rings in my ear, resonates in my heart. But what does it really mean? I ask God to help me redeem time, to live abundant, to operate productive and full-capacitated.

Funny. When I asked, I thought I’d receive some divine energy boost, I’d crank into higher gear, I’d streamline and pare down and tone and set myself with incredible determination.

I didn’t get what I thought I wanted.

I’m learning about what I really need.

Sun plays hide and seek through leaves, sparking off insect corpses sprayed across windshield glass. Satin dresses adorn velvet manikins in the dress shop, beckoning the soul to dress up and delight in beauty.

I sit behind the wheel, blank, dumb, unable to move. I scold myself for such foolishness, yet I’m incapacitated. I have time. I have options of how to spend my time. And I have no idea what to do.

I hate the dither—just do something! Even if it’s dumb! But I don’t want to act foolish, then regret it. Shame bubbles up, mixing into the vortex of my mind. All the stupid stuff I’ve done, I’ve said . . . don’t want to repeat that. Just make a decision and live with the consequences . . . . snap out of this limbo.

Time suspends when I realize I have time. It puts my life into slow-motion, and actions take on new meaning. This moment could be significant, special. It involves choice, not just instinct; creativity, not just habit; discernment, not just preferential or deferential default.

Am I so used to racing that I don’t know how to walk? So used to operating on a “top-up” mentality that I don’t know how to slow, and feast? Inhale and run, recharge and charge . . . is this really where I want to live?

The space tells me the answer. I don’t want to operate in this gear. I did once; I don’t have to now. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should.

And I see my sin, the presumption that supposed this is how I should go about my life, not asking for help, because “I know how to do this.”

No I don’t. But I didn’t know that I didn’t know till the Space.