“Maybe being comfortable and quiet is a trial in itself,” said my spiritual companion when I expressed how I feel uneasy with how quiet my life is. I wonder when the other shoe is going to drop, a feeling Brene Brown says is normal. St. Paul says godliness with contentment is great gain. He says he has learned to be content whether he has plenty or lack.
It feels like an accomplishment, St. Paul’s great gain, to receive the joys of going to town for donuts at the bakery or shopping for groceries. It feels like a gift to be able to receive the simple things, and to not stir up drama to break the quiet. Though I have to work to stay in the present because I am easily tempted to fear.
When people ask me, “How are you? What’s new?” I say, “Fine. Nothing is new.”
Do they want to hear about how I finished They Flew by Carlos Eire and have made my way through a few hundred pages of Dominion by Tom Holland? They Flew is about the historical and valid evidence for levitation during the Catholic Reformation. Dominion surveys how Christianity grew from a tiny group of people, their leader dead and resurrected to the major driver and influence in Western culture. Do they want to hear how horrified I am that Christians burned heretics at the stake? How I feel sorry for God that even the Holy Spirit hasn’t stopped our cruelty.
Do I tell them that Omalola walks on a loose lead when we walk down the road? I try not to think much more than “Thank you” to God for the same sight day after day, squinting into the sun, looking back at our house when I turn around, looking at the tree either way that I walk.
And seeing another tree that seems to be chanting a call and response to The Tree. It too is an oak left standing in the middle of three hundred acres. Both of them, their branches look like a woman flinging her hair into the wind, not out of snobbery, but out of joy.
Do I report how the trees and farms and fields might be the same, but the light changes every time I walk. The air changes. Sometimes it’s too windy and I can’t hear my footsteps or a truck roaring up behind me. Other times the sun pats my face like a mother reassuring it’ll be all right. Still others, a cloud settles. It looks like snow. It looks like how my brain feels when I don’t get enough sleep and I am unable to pull away from my phone.
“How are you? What’s new?”
I could relay how I feel guilty that I sit inside trying to write these posts when the day has broadened with sunlight and Morgen stands at the gate waiting for me to come out. But it’s easier to be sucked into my phone than push against how tired I am and move my body outside, especially if it’s cold. I have felt like there is a glare of ice and I am too unsteady to cross over to spend time with her or maybe it’s more like a river that is too fast and too deep to cross. Perhaps it’s the same river where I lead Tessie, my deceased mare, took off her bridle and let her go to God. And it hurts too much to step into it again.
Or I could relay the one really good day where I stayed away from the phone and FaceBook, got out to walk the dogs, feed Morgen, walk back out to lunge her, her delight pouring off her flanks. Her eye is so soft and she licks her lips like she’s eaten something very good. I play gospel so I can make sure we go one way and then the other.
How are you? What’s new?
I don’t say how I feel pressured to suffer by a voice in Christian circles that says we should forsake comfort, we should hurl ourselves into the grave exhausted by our good works. But aren’t we told there remains a rest to the people of God? Bible teachers say, Jesus’ throne, his glory is the cross. But I want his glory to be the light thrown across the land at sunrise and sunset. We are called to take up the cross, to follow Jesus. But he says my yoke is easy, my burden is light. How can the crossbeam being walked to Golgotha be easy or light? When does the Kingdom come for us? What about that new creation? And joy? What about joy?
I won’t say this being quiet can be lonely because it’s drama that brings friends together. The cliché misery loves company about says it. I tell you my story. You tell me yours. Our voices get high tense, we feel alive with tension. What else is there to talk about? But I don’t tell you my story because I don’t have one to tell.
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