Under Wide-Open Skies

“We live under wide open skies and know where we stand.”

—1 Thessalonians 5:4, The Message

These days I have been driving more often through farmland, and I am entranced with the way the clouds make patterns on the pastureland below. You could be standing in one spot, thinking it is a dark and gray day, when not 10 yards away is a place outside the shadow of the cloud in full sun. And I understand something now that I have not understood before: without that kind of wide-open space, it’s impossible to know where you are standing.

As someone who grew up in the city, I am not used to seeing so far around me, miles of open space rolling into the horizon. Time and experience come in small packages. If the sky is gray when you look up, dark is all there is; dark is everything. You don’t have the perspective to see that maybe a short hop away it is already getting lighter.

There is healing in the wideness of creation. There is a grace in seeing the big picture, in knowing how the story ends a short skip across the rolling farmland, in seeing a moment in the shadow of the clouds is only one small drop of dark in a wind-swept land of light, in a world of grace, in a universe of blessedness.

Why? Yes.

Recently I watched the classic movie Out of Africa again and was moved by many things I hadn’t noticed the first time I watched it as a teenager. One exchange in the movie has really stuck with me. After Karen and Denys spend a night together she is full of questions the next day about what this means for their relationship and for her future. The short dialogue goes something like this:

Karen: I need to know what this means.
Denys: Why?

And that’s it. As someone who spends probably way too much time asking “what does this mean?” I love the simplicity of his response. Why do you need to know what it means? Maybe you don’t need to know at all. Some things may not need such close examination. They just are.

This past Sunday, we went on a hike on a beautiful sunny day. There were tufts of dandelion fluff in the air, the sky was liquid blue, the green leaves were filling out the trees, and my son caught a frog in his bare hands just before falling into the creek. It was a day of laughing, a day of slowing down and living in the moment. It was a day that in all ways seemed to be God’s “yes” to a question I never asked.

Why? I don’t know. But yes. Definitely yes, and amen, and yes again.

Spring Snow

Spring in Edmonton is a tease. You get several warm days—enough to make you dig out the t-shirts and want to run to the garden store—but then you are slammed once again with cold and possibly even snow. So we sometimes see two things that don’t often go together: new green leaves and cold white snow.

I wonder why the leaves don’t just figure out by now that they need to wait a little longer. But there is no caution in spring. It will not wait for a better time. It just is. Is now. So very green and new.

Once it’s begun, growth is never straightforward. We step ahead and we fall back. We step ahead and we are slammed with snow. Why are we surprised? After all, we were told: “In this world you will have trouble.” You will, you will have trouble. We’re also told to “take heart” because Christ has overcome the world.

Overcoming is as long and hard to pin down as anything I know. But if snow and new leaves can survive each other, maybe we will survive too.

Hospitality

"Hospitality requires the creation of friendly, empty space..."
—Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

The word "hospitality" instantly conjures up images of a crowded room full of people talking around a table of food. But this past weekend, I experienced hospitality of a very different kind. I attended a silent retreat at King's Fold Retreat & Renewal Centre (one of the most beautiful places in southern Alberta). In the absence of words , there are only thoughtful preparations to speak hospitality to the stranger.

For example, there are the slippers: when you enter into the outdoor greenhouse, you are supposed to remove your shoes. But your feet might get cold, so ready and waiting for you is a basket of handmade slippers in a variety of sizes.


In the outdoor nature paths, there are little brooms to whisk away any debris that may have collected from the woods so you can sit on a clean bench.


This weekend showed me in some small way that the essence of hospitality is not filling the space with words, or filling the space with anything, but simply creating what Nouwen calls a "friendly, empty space" by the sense of thoughtful preparation. There is deep human connection even in that kind of emptiness: someone who has gone ahead, who has your best comfort in mind, and who offers you nothing more than the gift of their forethought and some quiet to enjoy it.

Learning to Walk

This past week I was working with a group of elementary students on the topic of self-esteem, asking them to fill in a worksheet with something they could do that they were proud of. It's so much easier for little kids to give you a long list of things they are proud of than it is for adults to do the same.

But what most struck me most in that afternoon was was a timid girl who asked me quietly, "Does it have to be something from now or can it be from a long time ago?" I said of course it could be from a long time ago and what was she thinking about? And she replied: "When I was a baby, I didn't know how to walk at all. Then when I was one, I had to try really hard, but by the time I was two, I didn't even have to think about it." I smiled and said "that's great" and she turned to her worksheet and proudly filled in the blank: "good at walking."

By that standard, I'm still a baby in terms of living the Christian life the way I want to. I either don't do it at all, or have to think about it very hard. But I know several older women for whom acting gracefully doesn't seem to take much effort at all. That gives me hope that one day I will be as good at acting gracefully as I am at walking, that it will be so natural I forget to be proud about it at all.

Harbor

“He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea. Then they were glad because of the calm, and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.”
—Psalm 107:29-30

There is something about a storm that wants to shout—the loudness of the crashing waves, of thunder, cracks of lightning, and the whipping wind thrashing everyday objects into projectiles. And maybe because of this loudness or maybe because of the panic of being unsafe, you can hardly hear yourself think to know what to do, to know the way ahead. And then…

“He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea.” And then all is quiet again and silent. And you can hear your thoughts and hear the whisper and then you know it will somehow be okay.

“Then they were glad because of the calm.” They were glad for the quiet, glad for predictability and safety, glad for the little everyday things like a cup of tea or a hot bath or sitting quietly on the couch talking to one who loves you. They were glad because of these things, glad because they realized they could be taken from you and because they had them back again.

“And he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.” And the end of all the chaos of the storm is being brought to the place you were supposed to be all along. What I would give in the midst of the storm for one glimpse of that harbor I am bound for, that we are all of us bound for, far away on the other side of all this wind and rain.

Today

“Do not worry about tomorrow … each day has enough trouble of its own.”
—Matthew 6:34

“Today in your hearing this scripture is fulfilled.”
—Luke 4:21

There is something about working among the poor that puts the words above into a vivid context. People are missing some of the most basic necessities—food, shelter, safety. And these needs are urgent. I have talked to people who need bread today—not tomorrow, not in a little while. Right now. Today. So we open up the freezer at my place of work and send them away with a loaf.

In some ways, it is a luxury to have the space to worry about what might happen tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that. You have confidence that enough of the basic necessities will be met today to allow you to reflect on other needs down the road—a sense of purpose, meaningful relationships, being valued in community, healing and wholeness for the soul and the body. Yet having the luxury to think about tomorrow does not make it any easier to survive today.

These other needs are just a different kind of bread for which our souls may be starving. The call here is to be present in today, whatever we are missing. In these words from Luke, Jesus speaks in this kind of immediacy with his announcement of hope: “Today in your hearing this scripture is fulfilled.” Not tomorrow, not in some distant far-off future, but today. Right now.

It is easy to mark off the ways I am fortunate (I have a freezer full of bread). It is harder to admit the ways I fall short of the hope in these words. I worry about tomorrow. I fail to fulfill the promise of this “today” for those who are in dire need of bread of all kinds. And yet I hope that the one who announced these words of promise will keep announcing them to the places in my heart where things are missing, keep announcing them through all who extend a hand to those in need, keep announcing them to all of us who sometimes find it hard to be here, in this moment, today.