Thirty years ago or so, when I was going through a
traumatic life transition, an image came to me in prayer that gave me strength
to bear the changes of the moment and those to come in later years. I saw myself meditating in absolute stillness
in a summer meadow. I could feel a lovely
breeze brushing the downy hairs on my cheek, and the warmth of a buttery
sun. In the stillness I could hear a bee
buzzing about. I could even hear the
earthworms deep in the earth below me doing their earthworm chores. I noticed that my being was full with a sweet
contentment; that I was home. Meanwhile,
in the distant background, the skyline of the city of my life collapsed under
its own weight, silently, into great clouds of dust.
The metaphor was apt to the situation. My life did, indeed, feel like it was
collapsing all about me. But I did not
yet hold the certainty that God was present with me through the collapse. I was not yet sitting in the stillness, with
the tumult at the periphery of my
awareness. I was living, rather
painfully, in the middle of the tumult, vainly attempting to shore up the
collapsing walls of my fortress. The
image brought me the hope that I would survive, that my authentic self was not the top-heavy construction I had
created, and that the Spirit of Life was juicily inviting me to shift my
attention from that constructed reality to God’s Reality.
I’ve since had many lopsided life constructions collapse
into heaps of dust: a job, financial
security, status, relationships, even health.
At those times I experience, once again, a painful tug at the heart
strings for the familiar things that I have used to give structure to my life. These are the things that I have used to tell
who I am, or what I can do, or what I’m worth.
Even after the collapse is complete I have been known to be obliviously
busy with the shoring up, unwilling to face the pain of losing what I thought
of as myself.
But once I’ve come to my senses, once I begin to accept and
feel the loss, I can also begin to remember the buzzing bee, the earthworms, the
breeze, and my experience of deep contentment in that meadow of the soul. Then I can remember to pay attention to what
is, what was, and what always will be:
the abiding presence of the One who knows me and sustains me, who abundantly
gives me all that I need to be content, and who doesn’t seem to give a hoot for
the cityscape.
Sometime later I was given a related metaphor that taught me something further about
the powerful nature of this Reality.
While walking the grounds surrounding the retreat center where I was
staying, I found a neglected sidewalk.
It had apparently once led to a building that had been torn down years
ago; the sidewalk had been left to crumble.
Sections of the walk were entirely overgrown with lovely wild grasses
and colorful wildflowers. In fact, the
only way I could tell that it had once been a sidewalk were the few sections of
concrete that had not yet been overgrown, and the “shadow line” of a walk that
could yet be seen in the grasses. Like
the city of my life, the sidewalk was being returned to the earth.
Somehow, in spite of the many heaving potholes in the road
that we have to contend with each spring, we tend to think of concrete as solid
and enduring. But God knows better and is
apparently content, barring human interference, to allow concrete to find its way
back to dust in its own time. God’s
power is not the short-lived power of concrete, or even the power of the
jackhammer that quickly reduces concrete to rubble. God’s power is the unhurried and profound power
of seedlings which, through the seasons, and with the help of rain, snow, and
sun, break up the concrete of the thoroughfare, helping it on its journey home
to the earth. God’s power is the persistent
striving to life that endures in the roots of wildflowers and grasses. And in spite of our propensity to cling to the
realities we construct for ourselves, God patiently reminds us again and again where
the real power is.
