Light | Deep
I’ve got no deep thoughts today.
I took the Dogs to the park. We walked among leafless trees, brown and gold fields bent down from the weight of snow that’s all but gone, and a low-hanging gray sky empty of Birds. So boring. So ordinary. So quiet.
We spend most of our lives in days like these, don't we? At least, I believe I do. I’m comfortable with this reality. I guess it makes the arrival of the Red-winged Blackbird and His ‘conk-la-lee’ call that much more surprising when he returns in February to perch on those dead Sunflowers in that field. Oh, today, during one of the seemingly hundred times I let Tecumseh out, I did hear a flock of Geese flying over. Speaking of Tecumseh going outside, with this unseasonably warmer weather, the frozen yard is now a muddy mess, and there’s a fun trail of paw prints throughout the house.
I suppose the Geese and the mud remind me that I’m alive. That there’s life teeming everywhere, especially deep beneath the Earth right now, even if I can’t see it.
The ordinariness of a dreary day in the park made me think of how I perceive things. There’s a whole world, of which I am a part but rarely attentive to, alive in places like the park this time of year here in the Northern Hemisphere. The park is breathing: the Trees do, though not like I do, but the same breath I take is an exchange of air with the Whitetail Deer and the Bald Eagle I saw last week. I guess, I’m considering that the world isn’t made up of inert matter but is a realm of diverse, active intelligences (plants, animals, elements) with whom humans are deeply entangled through shared senses.
Okay. I’ll admit it – that’s too deep.
Know what else is deep? God’s love – both deep and wide. We are preparing for the good news that the love of God is infused throughout all creation. I think it’s Paul in Colossians who was one of the first of our tradition to say this when he wrote, “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Some call this a deep incarnation!
The Christ mystery holds us together. God’s love binds us together. It’s this energy and love of God that stitches us together like sinews and bones and muscles – our bodies.
'Know what else is deep? God’s love isn’t just an idea. It’s real. It’s alive. It’s felt in how we relate to each other. I experienced it—I saw it in the light and darkness of our Longest Night | Blue Christmas service last night. Over twenty of our friends gathered to witness our individual and shared grief and joy. I felt God was—and still is—near. It’s like that line from the poem by Mark Nepo we read last night, “I am so sad and everything is beautiful.” [I’ll post the poem below so you can see this line in its proper context.]
Goodness, our lives, as ordinary as they are at times, are full of depth. On well-worn paths and padded pews, I encountered the supernatural in the natural – aren’t they the same?
Take a deep breath. Sit in the dark and light a candle. Do you perceive it? You are alive. So is that plant, albeit a little thirsty, on your shelf. That spirit-breathing-life that you take in, that gives light to the candle, is the deep love God has for us – and that matters.
And so do you.
Here is the poem "Adrift" by Mark Nepo
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
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