shells

The kids and I began to tidy up the backyard yesterday from its months of summer disuse. I never thought I would say such a thing, but in the summer months, our back yard is vacant and despondent. Branches and sticks were strewn about, and there were piles and piles of leaves (we have a “natural” backyard--as in, no grass, just pine needles and mulch carpeting the dirt floor under our thick canopy of trees). We found a small forest of mushrooms sprouted overnight after days of rain: thin and translucent in their newness, their round faces cupped toward heaven like tiny fragile teacups, their stems hollow straws to drink down the autumn rains. They seemed to come from a different world entirely: a world where even the transient mushroom (for certainly with the coldsnap they are gone even this morning) receives such minute attention to detail that the ruffles and ribbons around their faces are fit for the bonnet of a dignitary. Watching these feathery miniature trees poke their heads through the mulch and dead leaves is almost enough to make you believe in the fairy world: their early shoots like alien antennas cautiously on the lookout for sympathetic intelligence.

We discovered something else as well: shells. Giant conch shells, large Pacific Northwest clam shells, twisted thick white listening seashells. I knew where they came from: my father-in-law made us a seashell mobile as a going-away gift when we moved here, and it blew down in a storm this summer. We packed up these shells strewn together with sturdy nylon string in a box along with our books and dishes and clothes when we said goodbye to our family and the Pacific Ocean and drove with these shells the three thousand miles to the other side of the continent: and hung them up as our home flag when we arrived. I guess you could say we hung the shells the way some folks hang up a confederate flag: to let people know where our loyalty lies. But sometime in one of those late summer hurricanes you never get in Washington state, our shells were strewn across the yard with the branches and long-leaf pine. What would an archeologist have made of these shells if in two hundred years they unearthed them here, in this mud and tar valley of North Carolina? They are without question from another world: thick as bone, bleached white, round as a child’s face. They have tumbled in the sea for how long--months? years? They could survive here, even, with this humidity and mosquitoes and hurricanes. They could bear the lightening storms and the rain and even the torrent of oak leaves and long leaf pine that tried to bury them in the week.

Then why did I feel like I was picking up the one thing I had thoughtlessly discarded when I placed them, one by one, in a straight row, on the deck yesterday--as if they suddenly had become fragile and in need of care, like little children? Why did I feel like I was reclaiming something I had nonchalantly discarded? Like a teenager who has not yet learned what is important; like a housewife who gives away all her china just to be rid of the clutter--I was suddenly discovering what was valuable again.

We have moved enough. This is not a journey I am eager to make again: the arduous pilgrimage of the soul where you agonize for months (years?) about where to plant your roots and raise your children. I think I have nearly had enough of going back and forth: now I think we almost know where we are from and where we are going.

Mt. Rainier

Isaiah 55:6-11

Seek the Lord while he wills to be found; *
call upon him when he draws near.

This verse implies something that makes me uncomfortable: if there is a time when God draws near, then there must be a time when he is away. This concept of God’s distance is puzzling because we have been taught since Sunday School that God is right in our hearts and any time we want to speak to him day or night he is like a genie--pop!-- right out of our heart in to our minds and we can have this private little tete-to-tete with him. Anytime. All the time. Ultra, omni-accessible, like our i-phones and cells--ready always at our fingertips to take our calls or requests. Is it possible that God is not “at our fingertips” like we imagine? Are we doing God a disservice by imagining him to be at our beckon call any time we are doing sinning and ready to repent, or afraid and in need of comfort, or in distress and need wisdom?

We know throughout scripture God is present to his people. And we are told he desires nothing more than for us to be reconciled to him. But still: Isaiah clearly implies that there are times, or seasons, when God draws near to us. An example from nature: I grew up in the shadow of Mount Rainier. Mount Rainier is no small hill; at nearly 15,000 feet, it was the first thing I saw out of my bedroom window in the morning, and the marker I used when learning to drive my way around town (ie, the mountain will be behind you). Though the mountain was quite stationary, our experience of the mountain was constantly changing. There would be entire weeks when, blocked by clouds and rain, we would not even get a glimpse of Mt Rainier. When we had out of town guests and this happened it was particularly frustrating, because without the mountain’s large bulk peaking over the Cascades, you can’t even imagine it was there. We would point and say “right there is Mount Rainier” but really you could not even see a hint of the foothills: it made us feel rather foolish. But then--one afternoon you look up and the clouds have suddenly melted and the mountain is there in all its splendor. And also: sometimes, around sunset, the mountain would appear to have grown so much bigger--it would seem to have crept right up to our doorstep. There were times it actually looked like it was sitting on our back porch.

Does the mountain draw near? Does God move away from us? Or are there seasons when our view of God is less obstructed and we can access him with more ease? Are there times in our lives when we see God more clearly, times he actually appears--like Mt Rainier--closer at hand? Give us grace, God, to look up and see you at those times you reveal yourself to be sitting on our back porch.