A Walk With God Through My Courtyard
Some walks with God aren’t mileage heavy so much as heavy in grace and beauty. As Lao Tzu, the sage who lived in China many centuries ago wrote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
I don’t live in a castle. My courtyard rests between four apartment buildings, my own obscuring a majestic view of Pikes Peak. Just a quick walk around the corner, however, reveals that wonderful 14,000 footer hovering over me whether I see it or not. This walk could take a minute or an hour. I’m not the one setting our agenda.
Some walks with God aren’t mileage heavy so much as heavy in grace and beauty. As Lao Tzu, the sage who lived in China many centuries ago wrote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
I’ve taken many such steps in my life, and so have you, I’m sure. Sometimes we know it when it happens, and sometimes we don’t.
We step forth from my patio upon which sits a bike I never use, memories and fingerprints attached to its purple paint still too painful to bear. A couple of chairs rescued from near the dumpster last autumn, and an old quilt a funny little squirrel we call Charles has been depleting for his home and the soon-coming winter complete the arrangement. Though it is late August, the morning chill has set in before each sunrise and soon the molten coinage of Fall aspens will take our breath away. That you can count on. Oh, the shimmering beauty of Light upon light upon light.
Our bare feet step upon grass that soaks in the afternoon sunshine spilling over from a sky we don’t call Colorado blue for nothing. But here in the courtyard, we do not gasp, for there is nothing wide, nothing deep to the naked eye.
I’ll tell you something, though. Our squirrel companions don’t seem to mind the everydayness of this space. Not the cool gray squirrels I grew up admiring back east, they’re little golden boys and girls in these parts with tails more like bottle brushes than 3-D plumes fit for the pen of a poet. They are busy, sparkling, expecting good and getting it because they know to look in all the right places. They don’t seem to mind the work it takes to survive.
“That’s because they’re squirrels doing squirrel things,” says God.
Tell me about it. They don’t have mirrors or measuring tapes telling them they’re not good enough to be who they are.
“Neither do you. Unless, of course, you choose to have those, and that is always your right.”
God is always telling me I can do pretty much whatever I choose. I can also choose to fool myself that I’m not choosing whatsoever, that the majority of circumstances come upon me by someone else’s foisting.
“There’s always a choice,” God says.
Choices like building apartment complexes and keeping a rectangle of grass and paths and three very large pine trees that house wildlife and tell us nature is happy to contribute itself to itself.
It’s all nature, really. In one form or another. We tend, as mankind, to crush it all together into boxes.
“But boxes crumble and rumple,” says God. “Mark my words. Corners do that sort of thing.”
So says God the structural engineer.
Even these boxes my neighbors and I inhabit that buffer the courtyard from the winds that sometimes sweep down from the Rockies will someday not exist, will they? Your home, too. Someday it will descend to the pitiful or the unnecessary. Better, stronger places than these have tumbled to the ground.
“Spheres are much more reliable,” says God. “Boxes all end up as one simply by crumbling back to the circle of the earth.”
I think about that, watching Charles race up the nearby tree toward the cooing of the dove couple that nests atop it, the same couple who waken the courtyard each morning with their winsome chortle. Good times. Good times, they seem to say over and over. And I truly believe each cooing retains as much sincerity as the one before it. The doves have given me no reason to believe otherwise.
We amble beside the sidewalks, for who can resist the soft blades of grass connected to the earth by fragile, yet copious roots?
"There's a good example of the truth of togetherness, isn't there?" God asks.
Yep, says the woman who used to describe herself as a Lone Wolf, and oh, brother.
Hard cement runs forward in a series of squares. The patios are square. The walls are squared, the windows, the doors. Where would we be without ninety degree angles?
“In huts, I suppose. Do not look on this with any sort of derision. I take great pleasure in a straight line, intersecting lines, too.”
I know this to be the case, because I am an artist, and there is an immense yet simple satisfaction in running one’s pencil down the metallic edge of a ruler, and that couldn’t have come out of the blue.
More than lines intersect in this courtyard. People intersect here, too, dogs on leashes made straight lines by eagerness to get to the dog park, take a walk, or just do their business. People head to work, lunch bags in hand. Others get their children to the bus stop. Even our sliding glass doors let all of this in. I sit on my chaise just inside writing or drawing and often wave to my favorite neighbor, Kim, who invites me over to her house sometimes to watch reality TV.
God chuckles. Reality TV.
I know. Anything but, right?
“You said it, not me.”
And I realize how unreal most things are, always at the whim of our perception, misperceptions, or altogether lack of perception. I have to wonder if there are folks who pass by each day not realizing a squirrel named Charles even lives in one of the nearby trees.
“We were talking about sharp edges.”
We were?
“Well, that’s where I was heading, if you want to know.”
God never assumes I want to know anything, but I’m pretty sure there is a Divine assumption if I don’t today, I might tomorrow, and if I don’t tomorrow, someday will suffice. God’s right about that. Knowledge of truth is wasted if it’s dumped on a person all at once. We can only handle so much of it before it runs off like slurry from a coal mine. Thank goodness truth is more like a fountain, it just keeps recycling through again and again until we’re ready to drink it in without drowning. And we have an eternal teacher and an eternal nature, so no worry on that front. One day we shall know fully. That is a thought so overwhelming to me at this point, trying to comprehend it makes me feel a little nauseous.
But we were talking about sharp edges, right?
“Remember the times you’ve seen erosion?” God asks us.
Of course we do. I turn to you and ask if you’ve seen the Grand Canyon, or pictures of caves and divots in great rock walls eroded by wind or water. Oh good, you have. The striations swirl and dip as if the sandstone, listening to the song of the universe and longing so greatly to join in harmoniously, allowed itself to be molded by the very breath of creation. It exists as a sigh of wonder, and we, beholding the patterns of acceptance, emit a sigh ourselves, don’t we? It took some time for that to happen, too. It wasn’t as if the cliff face said, “Now this is too much, everybody. I’m out of here.” For nature, the large, stock-still, glorious parts of it, never seem to mind being molded by forces greater and more lively. Never. Be it quake, hurricane, or flood, the behemoths always say, “Yes.”
“That is grandeur,” says God. “That is what you are, too. You just don’t know it.”
So in the allowing of all my sharp edges to be chipped at, scraped at—
“Or breathed upon,” says God. “You can choose that, you know. Humankind believes it must always be hard, that you must earn the beauty, deserve the grace. But I tell you, this is not so. Your certainty that all of life’s lessons, the very best ones only come through hardship, is not so.”
Nothing worth having ever comes easy?
“Yes. I tell you, you believe that to be so, and so it is.”
As a man thinks in his heart? I quote the old Bible verse.
“Yes. You’re full of sayings today.”
It’s true. God, I’d like to think we can skip a lot of the pain, the suffering.
We sit down under the tree of the doves: you, myself and God, and I ponder, for pondering can happen anywhere God abides with you. Have most of my hardships been self-inflicted?
“Even imaginary?” suggests God.
And here in the courtyard, where lines and curves, human beings and wildlife intersect in a tiny microcosm of apartmentville, the answer is clear.
Yes.
You look at me with that Me Too kind of expression.
Drat. I’m not sure what to do with that.
“Rest in that,” God says. “There’s no shame in making mistakes, children. Your choices do get better and better. I’ve seen it. And abide in me. For even as that quilt on your patio arrived at just the right time for Charles to make his home warmer and more comfortable for the coming chill, I will not leave you, nor forsake you.”
What about sickness and disease? We can’t control those.
“Let me ask you a question. What is the true source of suffering, your infirmities or your grievance about them?”
Well, pain is pain, right?
“You tell me, child.”
I know there’s an answer to this. But I can’t answer it yet. I've seen my daughter doubled over in bed with intense migraines, friends suffering from autoimmune disorders which have stolen their lives to some extent. And only one thing makes sense to me is the notion we sign up for our lives ahead of time; we agree to experience, as popular lingo says, “All the things.”
What, you say? That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard! I can’t blame you there. But it’s either us or God, and for the life of me, no matter how much I’d like to, I just can’t put the heavy on God anymore.
I have to think about this more, apparently.
“Take your time. There’s no such thing as an eternal mystery despite what some folks say to the contrary.”
I can take some comfort in that.
I rest my head upon the Divine shoulder, and so do you. They are big enough, strong enough, compassionate enough and kind enough to not only support this lively little courtyard, or even the whole world, but the very cosmos of which we are a grand, beautiful, yea even, God wants me to tell you, magnificent part, infirmities, ignorance and all.
Who told you you were naked? I remember God’s question in the Genesis story. I see it now! Naked was never bad, was it?
“Not even a little. It became bad because shame needs a place to hide, be it behind closed doors or underneath clothing. But I love you. No matter what. Shame is always a choice, child. I will always be here to lead you, to guide you in making decisions that lead to life, but I will never condemn you if you falter. Oh, no. The shame you bear for anything you’ve done, and the suffering that results, well, those are the sharp corners of life, aren’t they? But worn down they will be. For the sharp edges are not your poor choices, the times you chose fear over love, condemnation over forgiveness. These things will happen. They are the shame you hold over the head of yourself and the head of others.”
I’m ready to be round again, I say. I’m tired of the edges. They cut people, they wound, and they always come back to hurt me. Unnecessarily so.
I think I’m just ready to be human like Charles is a squirrel.
“Lovely,” says God. “I like that plan.”
The dove couple coos. I think they agree.
***
I don’t live in a castle. My courtyard rests between four apartment buildings, my own obscuring a majestic view of Pikes Peak. Just a quick walk around the corner, however, reveals that wonderful 14,000 footer hovering over me whether I see it or not. This walk could take a minute or an hour. I’m not the one setting our agenda.
Some walks with God aren’t mileage heavy so much as heavy in grace and beauty. As Lao Tzu, the sage who lived in China many centuries ago wrote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
I’ve taken many such steps in my life, and so have you, I’m sure. Sometimes we know it when it happens, and sometimes we don’t.
We step forth from my patio upon which sits a bike I never use, memories and fingerprints attached to its purple paint still too painful to bear. A couple of chairs rescued from near the dumpster last autumn, and an old quilt a funny little squirrel we call Charles has been depleting for his home and the soon-coming winter complete the arrangement. Though it is late August, the morning chill has set in before each sunrise and soon the molten coinage of Fall aspens will take our breath away. That you can count on. Oh, the shimmering beauty of Light upon light upon light.
Our bare feet step upon grass that soaks in the afternoon sunshine spilling over from a sky we don’t call Colorado blue for nothing. But here in the courtyard, we do not gasp, for there is nothing wide, nothing deep to the naked eye.
I’ll tell you something, though. Our squirrel companions don’t seem to mind the everydayness of this space. Not the cool gray squirrels I grew up admiring back east, they’re little golden boys and girls in these parts with tails more like bottle brushes than 3-D plumes fit for the pen of a poet. They are busy, sparkling, expecting good and getting it because they know to look in all the right places. They don’t seem to mind the work it takes to survive.
“That’s because they’re squirrels doing squirrel things,” says God.
Tell me about it. They don’t have mirrors or measuring tapes telling them they’re not good enough to be who they are.
“Neither do you. Unless, of course, you choose to have those, and that is always your right.”
God is always telling me I can do pretty much whatever I choose. I can also choose to fool myself that I’m not choosing whatsoever, that the majority of circumstances come upon me by someone else’s foisting.
“There’s always a choice,” God says.
Choices like building apartment complexes and keeping a rectangle of grass and paths and three very large pine trees that house wildlife and tell us nature is happy to contribute itself to itself.
It’s all nature, really. In one form or another. We tend, as mankind, to crush it all together into boxes.
“But boxes crumble and rumple,” says God. “Mark my words. Corners do that sort of thing.”
So says God the structural engineer.
Even these boxes my neighbors and I inhabit that buffer the courtyard from the winds that sometimes sweep down from the Rockies will someday not exist, will they? Your home, too. Someday it will descend to the pitiful or the unnecessary. Better, stronger places than these have tumbled to the ground.
“Spheres are much more reliable,” says God. “Boxes all end up as one simply by crumbling back to the circle of the earth.”
I think about that, watching Charles race up the nearby tree toward the cooing of the dove couple that nests atop it, the same couple who waken the courtyard each morning with their winsome chortle. Good times. Good times, they seem to say over and over. And I truly believe each cooing retains as much sincerity as the one before it. The doves have given me no reason to believe otherwise.
We amble beside the sidewalks, for who can resist the soft blades of grass connected to the earth by fragile, yet copious roots?
"There's a good example of the truth of togetherness, isn't there?" God asks.
Yep, says the woman who used to describe herself as a Lone Wolf, and oh, brother.
Hard cement runs forward in a series of squares. The patios are square. The walls are squared, the windows, the doors. Where would we be without ninety degree angles?
“In huts, I suppose. Do not look on this with any sort of derision. I take great pleasure in a straight line, intersecting lines, too.”
I know this to be the case, because I am an artist, and there is an immense yet simple satisfaction in running one’s pencil down the metallic edge of a ruler, and that couldn’t have come out of the blue.
More than lines intersect in this courtyard. People intersect here, too, dogs on leashes made straight lines by eagerness to get to the dog park, take a walk, or just do their business. People head to work, lunch bags in hand. Others get their children to the bus stop. Even our sliding glass doors let all of this in. I sit on my chaise just inside writing or drawing and often wave to my favorite neighbor, Kim, who invites me over to her house sometimes to watch reality TV.
God chuckles. Reality TV.
I know. Anything but, right?
“You said it, not me.”
And I realize how unreal most things are, always at the whim of our perception, misperceptions, or altogether lack of perception. I have to wonder if there are folks who pass by each day not realizing a squirrel named Charles even lives in one of the nearby trees.
“We were talking about sharp edges.”
We were?
“Well, that’s where I was heading, if you want to know.”
God never assumes I want to know anything, but I’m pretty sure there is a Divine assumption if I don’t today, I might tomorrow, and if I don’t tomorrow, someday will suffice. God’s right about that. Knowledge of truth is wasted if it’s dumped on a person all at once. We can only handle so much of it before it runs off like slurry from a coal mine. Thank goodness truth is more like a fountain, it just keeps recycling through again and again until we’re ready to drink it in without drowning. And we have an eternal teacher and an eternal nature, so no worry on that front. One day we shall know fully. That is a thought so overwhelming to me at this point, trying to comprehend it makes me feel a little nauseous.
But we were talking about sharp edges, right?
“Remember the times you’ve seen erosion?” God asks us.
Of course we do. I turn to you and ask if you’ve seen the Grand Canyon, or pictures of caves and divots in great rock walls eroded by wind or water. Oh good, you have. The striations swirl and dip as if the sandstone, listening to the song of the universe and longing so greatly to join in harmoniously, allowed itself to be molded by the very breath of creation. It exists as a sigh of wonder, and we, beholding the patterns of acceptance, emit a sigh ourselves, don’t we? It took some time for that to happen, too. It wasn’t as if the cliff face said, “Now this is too much, everybody. I’m out of here.” For nature, the large, stock-still, glorious parts of it, never seem to mind being molded by forces greater and more lively. Never. Be it quake, hurricane, or flood, the behemoths always say, “Yes.”
“That is grandeur,” says God. “That is what you are, too. You just don’t know it.”
So in the allowing of all my sharp edges to be chipped at, scraped at—
“Or breathed upon,” says God. “You can choose that, you know. Humankind believes it must always be hard, that you must earn the beauty, deserve the grace. But I tell you, this is not so. Your certainty that all of life’s lessons, the very best ones only come through hardship, is not so.”
Nothing worth having ever comes easy?
“Yes. I tell you, you believe that to be so, and so it is.”
As a man thinks in his heart? I quote the old Bible verse.
“Yes. You’re full of sayings today.”
It’s true. God, I’d like to think we can skip a lot of the pain, the suffering.
We sit down under the tree of the doves: you, myself and God, and I ponder, for pondering can happen anywhere God abides with you. Have most of my hardships been self-inflicted?
“Even imaginary?” suggests God.
And here in the courtyard, where lines and curves, human beings and wildlife intersect in a tiny microcosm of apartmentville, the answer is clear.
Yes.
You look at me with that Me Too kind of expression.
Drat. I’m not sure what to do with that.
“Rest in that,” God says. “There’s no shame in making mistakes, children. Your choices do get better and better. I’ve seen it. And abide in me. For even as that quilt on your patio arrived at just the right time for Charles to make his home warmer and more comfortable for the coming chill, I will not leave you, nor forsake you.”
What about sickness and disease? We can’t control those.
“Let me ask you a question. What is the true source of suffering, your infirmities or your grievance about them?”
Well, pain is pain, right?
“You tell me, child.”
I know there’s an answer to this. But I can’t answer it yet. I've seen my daughter doubled over in bed with intense migraines, friends suffering from autoimmune disorders which have stolen their lives to some extent. And only one thing makes sense to me is the notion we sign up for our lives ahead of time; we agree to experience, as popular lingo says, “All the things.”
What, you say? That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard! I can’t blame you there. But it’s either us or God, and for the life of me, no matter how much I’d like to, I just can’t put the heavy on God anymore.
I have to think about this more, apparently.
“Take your time. There’s no such thing as an eternal mystery despite what some folks say to the contrary.”
I can take some comfort in that.
I rest my head upon the Divine shoulder, and so do you. They are big enough, strong enough, compassionate enough and kind enough to not only support this lively little courtyard, or even the whole world, but the very cosmos of which we are a grand, beautiful, yea even, God wants me to tell you, magnificent part, infirmities, ignorance and all.
Who told you you were naked? I remember God’s question in the Genesis story. I see it now! Naked was never bad, was it?
“Not even a little. It became bad because shame needs a place to hide, be it behind closed doors or underneath clothing. But I love you. No matter what. Shame is always a choice, child. I will always be here to lead you, to guide you in making decisions that lead to life, but I will never condemn you if you falter. Oh, no. The shame you bear for anything you’ve done, and the suffering that results, well, those are the sharp corners of life, aren’t they? But worn down they will be. For the sharp edges are not your poor choices, the times you chose fear over love, condemnation over forgiveness. These things will happen. They are the shame you hold over the head of yourself and the head of others.”
I’m ready to be round again, I say. I’m tired of the edges. They cut people, they wound, and they always come back to hurt me. Unnecessarily so.
I think I’m just ready to be human like Charles is a squirrel.
“Lovely,” says God. “I like that plan.”
The dove couple coos. I think they agree.
Comments
Post a Comment