Asheville percolations

My foot knows every cobble,As I amble, I am part of every thought That grew these houses From the loamy earth, and curving girth Of hills, whose bellies rumble far beneath The stones that found, These nooky, olden houses, With their eaves that lean to shelter, Their lights that gleam A welcome from the blink Of brooding windows, As the bell of evening wind tolls Through the streets that ribbon softly through the trees.

Here, I wander free as all The sky-eyed souls Who bear their dreams as mounting storms, Within their faces, Yet find shelter from themselves within the grace, Of little mercies: Lace at window, Light like snow upon a crisp white table, Hours lithe and quiet, Days like cups to catch the bright, Small drips of dream, and sun, and sleep, That make a lifeboat for a soul.

Counsels of dusk

I had a decision to make. One of those choices that seemed to pit me against myself, and then the both of us against God. A dilemma that split my soul into numerous bits and set all of them fighting each other. On the rare occasion this sort of thing confronts me, I often creep away to some quiet place where I can pray away all my confusion. There's an old castle-styled historic place nearby, and I hied me there for a night and a day. I spent my first afternoon in dutiful thought; weighing this option against that verse against that friend's opinion, against the yen of my own heart. By sundown, my head was a bee's nest of voices. I stumbled out of my castle room in search of a walk, intent only on getting away from the small spaces of my head and even the indoors.

Cold air can be a sort of salvation. It can smack your face with this sweet, reviving touch that regenerates you from the slow suffocation of your own tunneling thoughts. Out in the sharp-edged dusk, as shadows made dark outlines of rock and tree, I felt the contours of my thought expand to the pearled blue of sky, the sudden precipices of cliff as I walked a short way up a canyon. Everything in me widened and breathed.

Crisp, with the glitter of a day's melting on its skin, the snow was pure as child's sleeping face. The mountainsides jutted through it, the rich, wet red of their stone like the beating heart of the wintered earth. And the trees, giant, crooked firs, with a hundred years of abiding green woven over their arms. It was at just such a tree that I stopped, craning my neck to meet the height of its quiet face, standing near the curve of its changeless arms, its motherly shadows. I watched the sky deepen, brood about it. In its shelter, my mind clarified by cold, my questions came slower, the voices in my head slowed and spoke clearly. I asked God what in creation I was supposed to do.

"REST."

It was clear as any word in my soul I have heard in my whole life. There was even a tinge of exasperation in it, as if this were probably the one thing I had never thought of doing. As dark snaked through the canyon and I turned homeward, I crunched through the snow, turning this word over in my mind. Rest from what? I asked. From the strife of your own wisdom. From the push to define a plan and act on it when no plan has been whispered into you from God. From the desire to have your whole life in a known, gridded outline. From the push to prove your worth, to be outwardly successful (and inwardly bankrupt), to look on top of things. From the frenzy to have a plan, instead of letting God tell a slow, rich story through your days.

When I reached the castle, I stopped on the terrace. Night came and stood on one side of me, cold on the other, their touch gentle, propping up my heart as I let stillness drive away my worry. I waited there, for some sense of conclusion in my heart. There was no tidy answer to my dilemma. No, succinct word to shut up each clattering voice in my head. There was though, a reshaping of the spaces inside of me, a widening of my thought so that the voices faded away and a restfulness came to the inner rooms of my heart.

Secret Subversives

Over the plains and through the terminals and oh my goodness, I'm home. Fourth conference in five weeks. Bed, my bed, is looking good tonight.

I should probably have something theological or spiritual to say after such an intense weekend. At the moment, I have only sheer, spluttering exhaustion. I did however, jot down a few odd thoughts several days back, and think I'll go ahead and post them now with the pictures that came of them:

The sealike navy of the gigantic hotel lake in Las Colinas turned a placid face to me the first, sun smitten afternoon of my stay. Our rooms were blessed with the strangely home-like feature of low, deep windowseats. I dragged the plumpest sham from my bed into the corner, pulled the curtains close beside me and simply looked. The lake fills the whole window here. I love that in the very heart of business-loving, freeway-framed, concrete-cornered Dallas I can curl into this space and see only lake and sky at their banter. Ducks traced calligraphy onto the water, the curlicues entirely out of place next to the fifteen-story office complexes, but oh, so lovely. And free.

I am always a little shocked by the way nature claims the crevices of this place. The lake, and green swards and trees were, I'm sure, landscaped in just like the sidewalk for aesthetic appeal. But they didn't stay in the five square feet allotted. Water is its wild self wherever you put it. It keeps a face both bright and inscrutable, a laugh or grumble ever in its eyes.

Wherever water is, there is some door into a land beyond; you can see the soul's depths in a puddle, but also the heights. A penny's worth of rain is enough to reflect a star. Sky and water... brothers. Wind...the laughter between them. And there they all were, free as God made them the first day of the universe, right in the middle of Dallas.

And the trees. The veiny hands of old vines were at the very throats of the high rises and overpasses. A few of the wintered trees, their muscles roped and bare, looked as if they would grab modernity and yank it up by the roots, like a band of real Ents straight out of Middle Earth. But not yet. That was part of the wonder murmuring as I watched this world from my fifteenth floor perch, then walked it later on. It's a secret. Leaf by leaf, branch by branch, drip by drop, the fierce beauty of the earth creeps into the modern corners of this place. Creeps into my sight.

Someday it will overcome. It's this live, brave force of creation that will not be boxed or defined or contained. This primal creativity straight from the heart of God that cannot be stopped or stunted. I love the way it overwhelms the workaday world of hotel and conference. It's slightly shocking. I carried it with me all weekend.