Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land
Dear God, thank you for life and breath and time alone… but I find myself now on a blank slate of winter earth that seems endless. I’ve seen signs of other mortals and I know your invisible presence is here too. Thank you for staying close. But I’m one who lives into life longing for people’s warmth, singing, laughing, eating, drinking… I’m thirsty just now. Forgive my kvetching. But I really am thirsty. Amen.
I believe in hope that I will find people by following these sled tracks that veer from the sea’s edge into the woods and back again.
I find a place in the sled tracks where others have stopped and here is a spring of water rising up from the rocks. Thank you, God, for this water and this resting place. Grateful also, I am to the unknown people who led me here.
Water flowing — That is just what I needed. And now lifting my gaze from the intensity of sled tracks is the whole beautiful nature of earth in sight and scents and silence –the fragrance of pine, the scent of snow at sea’s edge, the patterns of branches, delicate laces of treetops nestling blue sky patches and so intensely shines the sea to dancing in the white of wind-frothed waves, clean and unblemished.
Here beautiful comes in all different ways. It’s more than gloss on earth to sweeten our vision like drips of honey spilled on burnt bread. Here beauty is all there is, metaphor for God with us. Why does it seem Christian to require suffering as the true vision of holiness, when beauty simply overwhelms? Why does Christian imagine heaven as a blank space in sky, when even the tangible earth has all of this? Does the image of suffering on the cross taint our Christian vision with grief until we have no imagination left for the metaphors of love spread so richly?
Refreshed, I walk on as the sun tips west and I have to wonder if I will reach these people with the sled while there is yet daylight. I have neither a fire start nor a warm wolf to save me from freezing in sleep.
Here is a place where the forest was harvested by human need, and here I see the marks on the earth of moving the logs to the sea. They could have floated them anywhere, and I have no way to follow. So, I just continue walking in the sled tracks.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 