I Don't Understand Eternity

After a very long, very cold winter here in the Northeast, I took my two sons out for a walk on the first nice day we’d had in months.  As we turned a corner onto a long straight sidewalk, my 18-month-old wriggled down from my arms and took off running.  He ran for a third of a mile.  (Fortunately his legs are really short so I was able to keep up!)  I was amused by his reaction to wide open spaces.  He had obviously been indoors far too long.

I wonder if this experience could be an analogy for eternity, a concept I don’t understand (and I doubt I am alone).  We understand the limits of this world; we understand the finite.  But the infinite?  We only have brief glimpses of it, short bursts of understanding that flash in our minds and disappear quickly.  I had one of these bursts as I watched my son running as far and free as his little legs would take him after being pent up in the house all winter.  For Eli, being so young, winter was the only reality he could remember.  His was a restricted world – indoors except for quick trips back and forth to the car, bundled in bulky layers, glimpsing the sun only in passing, experiencing the beauties of winter from the other side of a window.  Of course it wasn’t all bad – there was warmth inside, family, food, books and toys.  But spring?  This was new.  It meant being outdoors, a seemingly limitless place full of wonders and discoveries.  It meant boundless freedom that went on and on, all the way down Milford Point Road.

Eternity hangs around the edges of our consciousness – a promise we can’t live without, but an incomprehensible future that may scare us a bit because of its…forever-ness.  It isn’t our fault that we just don’t get it – it is something we have never experienced.  But here we trust – we live in trusting expectation.  For now, our winter does have its joys, and one of them is the anticipation of spring. 

Eli enjoys the warmth of spring after a long winter.

"No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

Catherine Doherty on Getting through the Hard Times

“We Russians used to talk about this in New York.  We had a very rough time when we first came.  We were overworked and underpaid.  We used to discuss among ourselves how we survived.  We came to the conclusion that we survived because we really believed that God was our rest.  When I asked a friend of mine, ‘How do we survive?’ this is exactly what she said:  ‘Oh, we have Christ for a pillow.’”

-- Catherine Doherty, Poustinia

The Great Equalizer

In the last post, I referred to human sinfulness – or our awareness of it – as “the equalizer.”  Karl Barth’s quote reveals how admitting our own sinfulness has a positive result:  it evens out the playing field of our lives by removing false notions of “greater and lesser” or “us and them.”  When we see ourselves as we really are – as sinners among sinners – we see one another eye to eye, without condescension.  We no longer stand on a higher place looking down on those around us.  The initial recognition of our failings is painful (Jesus likened it to removing a plank from our eye), and we are certainly free to continue deceiving ourselves, to keep our reserved spot on a pedestal removed from the “others” who we look down upon for a variety of reasons.  But when we allow an awareness of our sin to take root – not a self-hating and destructive awareness, but a frank and realistic one – we can move past the initial pain of humility and begin to enjoy its equalizing effects.  No longer on a pedestal alone, trying to maintain the farce of our own perfection, we join our friends, family, acquaintances, and even the strangers in our lives with an appreciation for their struggles and a hope that they will see and accept us as we are.

Awareness of our brokenness makes us brothers…but even more importantly, it primes us for the Greatest Equalizer of all, and that of course is love.  The one alone on the pedestal needs nothing, receives nothing.  He is too busy balancing in a precarious place, too full of himself to perceive a need for another.  But those who are aware of their own sin want an antidote, they long for a solution – and they are willing to look beyond themselves for the answer.  A sinner – and only a sinner – needs a savior. 

It is in our rightful place among our sinful brothers and sisters that we encounter this Savior.  He comes at times as one of them, to help us remove the plank from our eye.  He does this with love, and he does it to prepare us – in case he should need us to assist him in removing a speck from the eye of another.  The very process of salvation is a corporate affair, and in the end – planks and specks removed – we stand together before our God, willing victims of the Great Equalizer.

The Equalizer

"Precisely when we recognize that we are sinners do we perceive that we are brothers."

-- Karl Barth

Taming My Wild Horse

One of the hardest and most wonderful things I did as a teenager was to help train my young horse, Callie.  I didn’t have a lot of “horse experience” – but in a situation where you are face-to-face with or riding on top of a half-ton animal with a mind of its own, you learn rather quickly.  In the years since, I have heard the term “wild horse” used as a metaphor for the untrained mind, especially in the context of prayer and meditation.  It is a helpful image – and particularly meaningful for those with some “horse experience.”

One of the first things you discover when a horse comes into your life is that there is a big difference between the dream of a horse and the reality of a horse.  Children dream only of the perfect horse – the one that delights in their presence, obeys their every command, and follows them adoringly around the meadow. In reality, one quickly discovers that this animal is an independent being with its own mind and personality, its own likes and dislikes, and its own instinctive appreciation for freedom.  Unless you happen to have a horse that naturally loves people, you face more of an ongoing challenge than a spontaneous friendship.

Then there are the challenges of training.  Books could be written about the training process and its analogies to corralling the mind.  I will only mention this:  When training Callie, my teacher and I learned a valuable lesson, and I’ve thought of it many times since in other contexts.  We tried weeks of typical training techniques, but Callie did not respond well; in fact, she seemed more ornery and less disciplined than ever.  Finally, we decided to try something different.  When Callie got stubborn, we simply stopped everything.  We stood still and quiet.  We did not get upset or frustrated.  We waited for the heart rate of horse and rider to return to normal, and then we simply continued our work.  Callie responded to this.  She relaxed.  She was no longer on edge.  She rebelled less and less.  The training continued slowly, but with fewer setbacks and more understanding.

Even when Callie was fully trained, we were not always in sync.  She still had her quirks.  She was frightened by harmless things like deer.  She refused to walk through wet mud, even if it was only an inch deep.  And she always moved at a brisk clip on the way home to the barn, but at a snails’ pace as we started out on our trail rides!  Callie always had her own mind – full of things like carrots, and pastures, and baby horses.  The things I asked her to think about – things like following directions or venturing far from the comforts of home – were not necessarily instinctive.

I wouldn’t say that Callie and I ever fell in love.  Even when she was fully trained and a bit mellowed out by mothering, she preferred the freedom of the pasture to trail rides with me.  But over the years we developed a familiarity and a working relationship.  I looked after her, and she tolerated me.  We went about our times together with contentment and relative peace.  And there were even moments of unity, when she took me places it seemed no one else had ever been, and in moments of stillness and silence, we enjoyed together the same breezes and views. 

The metaphor of the wild horse works.  It is like myself and my mind – and like yourself and yours.  You dream of an easy mind, one that is effortlessly guided along paths and does your bidding every time.  This mind does not exist.  In reality, there is an ongoing push and pull that takes place as you try to control the majestic half-ton beast.  Sometimes, the gentler you are, the better your results.  In standing still, you can move forward.  You will not ever have full mastery, because your mind would rather dream of open pastures and lazy afternoons, and maybe even baby horses.  Even after some training, your mind will retain its own quirks.  But you will get to know them, and you will accept them.  And together your trail rides will take you through dense forests and open fields, across sunsets and into dusks. There will be incredible moments when you will both be still and look upon the same things – in quiet, fully tame, witnessing the beauty that surrounds God’s searching creatures.