This afternoon I went to check on the unsupervised boots. It rained yesterday. Perhaps they had splashed themselves into some trouble. Perhaps I simply needed an excuse to visit the river.
From a distance I could see the black blob on the edge of the trail. I grinned. Perhaps my hypothesis was right. The boots' person clearly did not intend to return to their task masters. No one had picked them up for charity either. . . But wait! As my own shoes dragged me down the hill toward the dark spot I realized that something was amiss. There was but one boot, black as ever, white topped, lonesome, pointing its solemn nose across the river to the cornfield.
I could go on, about the necessity of delivering oneself wholly into the sprouting and green-thumbed hands of spring and giving up both boots and squishing into the freedom of mud under all ten toes rather than holding onto a piece of bondage. But that would be silly. Both boots were here two days ago. Something had clearly happened to one of them.
That was a good excuse too. I peered into the water on the right side of the trail. No boot. I scanned the shallows on the left side. No boot. I looked for it as I ran down to the river access point. No boot. And up the hill again. And then I forgot about it when I clambored back up through the tree across the trail, and ran back to my jealous homework. And I forgot about the woodchuck too...
And what of the woodchuck that waddled over the bank as I descended toward the boots, the plump fellow who impudently sat up on his haunches some five feet below the trail, by the stump of a fallen tree, and looked at me? What better witness could be found for the story of the strange disappearance of the boot?
I shall have to go see about that tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Leave Off Your Boots
There sat the boots in the middle of the trail; black, and as tidy, though not so shiny, as a show horse's squared front hooves.
The edges of the trail were licked with the sunlit dimples of the overflowed St. Joseph river, and the birds were singing around me. It was enchanting indeed, but not generally a place boots would go unchaperoned.
I half expected to find their walking mates as I rounded the last corner and came directly upon the river. I had a chuckle ready, suspecting a jolly fellow overcome with spring fever like the young fisherman I found in Lemon Creek yesterday, darting around after minnows with two sticks. But there was only more sunshine, and the eager river ascending up the banks, its cool mouth glad to take my sweaty fingers and then return them to me, wet but clean.
Here I was stopping again. It was cool by the water, unlike the heat cloud dancing after me on the pavement. There were baby green sprouts beginning on the bushes near the bank, and behind me the birds were insistent. I turned to go, running again, on the narrow spit of land between the pools of shallow floodland.
And there were the boots again. Perhaps their owner had already acquiesced to the calls of spring and dove in with them still on, like I longed to do, leaving the wet things to dessicate in the April sun with plans to return. Or maybe they left the boots for charity, counting on some thrifty walker to take them in, braving the damp smell. But I like to imagine the sudden leap into the air, the ecstatic howl, the kicking off of the boots into the April breeze, the pattering off barefoot; the happy person so tipsy with spring that the only things remembered in the drunken capers up the trail were the dutchmen's britches growing along the edges of the bank.
I never even found the socks.
The edges of the trail were licked with the sunlit dimples of the overflowed St. Joseph river, and the birds were singing around me. It was enchanting indeed, but not generally a place boots would go unchaperoned.
I half expected to find their walking mates as I rounded the last corner and came directly upon the river. I had a chuckle ready, suspecting a jolly fellow overcome with spring fever like the young fisherman I found in Lemon Creek yesterday, darting around after minnows with two sticks. But there was only more sunshine, and the eager river ascending up the banks, its cool mouth glad to take my sweaty fingers and then return them to me, wet but clean.
Here I was stopping again. It was cool by the water, unlike the heat cloud dancing after me on the pavement. There were baby green sprouts beginning on the bushes near the bank, and behind me the birds were insistent. I turned to go, running again, on the narrow spit of land between the pools of shallow floodland.
And there were the boots again. Perhaps their owner had already acquiesced to the calls of spring and dove in with them still on, like I longed to do, leaving the wet things to dessicate in the April sun with plans to return. Or maybe they left the boots for charity, counting on some thrifty walker to take them in, braving the damp smell. But I like to imagine the sudden leap into the air, the ecstatic howl, the kicking off of the boots into the April breeze, the pattering off barefoot; the happy person so tipsy with spring that the only things remembered in the drunken capers up the trail were the dutchmen's britches growing along the edges of the bank.
I never even found the socks.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Courage, Dear Heart
Lucy stands in the crows nest, high above the deck of The Dawn Treader, with an arrow ready on her bowstring. Ahead of her lies the dark tunnel, a lump of blackness and despair that seemingly cannot be penetrated with any physical light. She shivers. Her heart quakes as she looks ahead at this test, this foolhardy adventure, and in her heart she prays for the one light that she knows can go with her anywhere. As the ship nears the entrance of the dark tunnel, she looks back one last time at the Sun and sees something in the shape of a darkened cross against the brightness. She blinks as she sees it getting larger and then realizes that it is a bird of the sea, an albatross. And suddenly it is above her, circling around the mast, closer and closer until it whirrs near her head, surrounding her with a glorious perfume and the whispered words: Courage, dear heart.
* * *
I wake up overwhelmed. I am exhausted. It is still dark out, and I am already worrying about the outcome of my day. It is not merely that this single day has me stumped, but that the weeks to come are looking blacker as the February zooms closer to midterms. And this morning--I have a paper to finish, a bed to be made, and some semblance of physical presentation necessary before I arrive at work in so short amount of time. I take the time to open my Bible, to be assured that my strength is indeed inadequate and that God's strength alone is perfected in my weakness. All too soon I set about my other tasks and finally find myself running to work to make it on time, praying. Something moves on the ground in front of me at the base of one of the large campus trees, leaving the ground and flapping up to the lowest branch. I stop running, noting already by its size that it is a hawk, musing that it is likely the red-tail I have often seen down by the dairy. I am within twenty feet of it now, and it still sits there, looking around, seemingly unconcerned. I keep walking, and it flies to a tree on the other side of the side-walk, its brown and white speckled chest clearly visible. I walk nearly underneath it, stop, and gaze up at its eyes, at its folded wings, at its curving beak. I stand there and know that I am already a minute or two late for work, that my paper is not as I would like it, and that there are yet many hours until Sabbath. But that is okay. Courage, dear heart.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
He Counts the Stars- Psalm 147:4
We very rarely begin a task without having a specific, self-interested reason for doing so. We attend school perhaps because we want to learn, but of course due to the reality that without an education, we do not have as much opportunity for making a living. In turn, we work not necessarily because we enjoy it, but because we wish to have the perks that come along with money. We are kind to our neighbors, hopefully in wishing to live as Christ, but as a practical means of ensuring our own support when we ourselves are in difficult straits.
He counts the number of the stars.
I daresay He does not need to know their number. He has told us that He can count the stars, and yet has never published in human tongue the exact number, like He might of if He were human--He has not printed it in the latest scientific journal, signed GOD. In that sense He has not boasted. And it is not as if stars are human beings, in need of at least the occassional meal or sip of water, or birds, desirous of twig-ball nests and leafy branches above them, or living creatures in need of His mighty hand for survival. To be sure, however, stars owe to Him their placement and their suspension in the atmosphere. But stars are stars: things we humans know so little about in the grand scheme of things; bright drops in the sky little children look at and imagine to be nail holes of light into the heavens, or rolling orbs of fire, or fireflies, forever placed and forever "on." What end is to be achieved by counting them?
He counts the number of the stars.
Could it be else, but wonder? Could it be else but uncontainable joy? John Ortberg writes in The Life You've Always Wanted that he imagines God saying to the sun each day, with the innocence and joy of a child, "Do it again," shine another day (62). And why not to the stars as well? To God, they have never grown dusty--each morning, each evening, like the first day, He kindles fire in them again, calling them by their individual name, glowing them.
He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them
God told Abraham several times in Genesis that his descendants would someday be as the stars. In Genesis 15, we read that "He [God] took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' " God concludes His show-and-tell by reminding Abraham once again that his family will once be that numerous.
Are not we, by faith, children of Abraham? Are not we the uncountable stars burning little dots of light into the black around us?
He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them
Like the stars, we each have our own name, given by an excited and fond-eyed Name-giver in a continual burst of creativity. We ourselves are evidences of God's laughter, delight, and star-counting extravagance; uniquely called and predestined and justified and glorified.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes:
“What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?" (150).
And so He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.
He has given us names that each take part in His wonder. He has given us pieces of Himself, bits of His starglow. And yet though we are too many to count, His light is not reduced by a fraction--It fills the heavens so as to take away need of the sun--it is only amplified by the gift.
He counts the number of the stars.
I daresay He does not need to know their number. He has told us that He can count the stars, and yet has never published in human tongue the exact number, like He might of if He were human--He has not printed it in the latest scientific journal, signed GOD. In that sense He has not boasted. And it is not as if stars are human beings, in need of at least the occassional meal or sip of water, or birds, desirous of twig-ball nests and leafy branches above them, or living creatures in need of His mighty hand for survival. To be sure, however, stars owe to Him their placement and their suspension in the atmosphere. But stars are stars: things we humans know so little about in the grand scheme of things; bright drops in the sky little children look at and imagine to be nail holes of light into the heavens, or rolling orbs of fire, or fireflies, forever placed and forever "on." What end is to be achieved by counting them?
He counts the number of the stars.
Could it be else, but wonder? Could it be else but uncontainable joy? John Ortberg writes in The Life You've Always Wanted that he imagines God saying to the sun each day, with the innocence and joy of a child, "Do it again," shine another day (62). And why not to the stars as well? To God, they have never grown dusty--each morning, each evening, like the first day, He kindles fire in them again, calling them by their individual name, glowing them.
He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them
God told Abraham several times in Genesis that his descendants would someday be as the stars. In Genesis 15, we read that "He [God] took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' " God concludes His show-and-tell by reminding Abraham once again that his family will once be that numerous.
Are not we, by faith, children of Abraham? Are not we the uncountable stars burning little dots of light into the black around us?
He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them
Like the stars, we each have our own name, given by an excited and fond-eyed Name-giver in a continual burst of creativity. We ourselves are evidences of God's laughter, delight, and star-counting extravagance; uniquely called and predestined and justified and glorified.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes:
“What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?" (150).
And so He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.
He has given us names that each take part in His wonder. He has given us pieces of Himself, bits of His starglow. And yet though we are too many to count, His light is not reduced by a fraction--It fills the heavens so as to take away need of the sun--it is only amplified by the gift.
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