Ecchoing Green

God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth . . .

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Location: New Hampshire, United States

Friday, June 30, 2006

Bonde la Ufa

As I write this I am thinking of a man I used to know, a man who has recently died and about whose death I just have learned. This was a good man, kind and self-sacrificing, who was a missionary in Kenya. I was friends with his youngest son, and when I was ten years old, my parents (God bless them for this!) sent me to visit my friend and his family. I flew from Houston, Texas to Amsterdam in the company of a family acquaintance and from then on to Nairobi, a long, long flight.

Seriously jet-lagged when I arrived, I vaguely remember being bundled into a car and hitting the road for the long drive northwest to a town called Kitale, in the shadow of Mount Elgon. Sitting in the backseat between two other boys, I was rocked to sleep almost instantly by the thrum of the motor, the steady rhythm of tires on asphalt, the warm breezes that blew through open windows. I remember waking up after what must have been several hours and feeling a terrible pain in my neck; I had fallen asleep with my head leaning straight back. But I regained my senses immediately, as a sight that I’ll never forget seized me through the windows. Pain? What pain? I was staring at the edge of the world.

We were driving a narrow road that skirted the Rift Valley, a cleft that appeared, in the eyes of a ten-year-old, to have no end. Instantly, that green divide, dappled by shifting shadows from clouds overhead, burned itself into my memory as deeply as my own mother’s voice. In that moment a door opened that led me on to new thoughts. The world grew bigger in my mind and before my eyes. I began to realize that there was much more “out there” than I knew—maybe more than I could ever know.

And that view was only the primer’s first lesson. There were other introductions to this immense new world, too numerous to count—a swaying cobra, hood spread, that rose up in the backyard and made us run away screaming; “wood-borer” bees, black and about the size of my ten-year-old thumb; the tangy taste of edible clover and sweet nectar of tiny white flowers that we were introduced to by Kenyan boys who became our friends. I can’t forget the sight of a lake, far below the high road, literally covered by flamingos, glaring pink under the harsh sun—surely it’s no exaggeration to say that they numbered in the thousands. And earlier that morning, a valley whose floor was covered in mist, tops of trees floating in the fog like islands on a gauzy sea.

Toward the end of my stay, we made a trip to the Masai Mara Game Reserve in western Kenya, near the border with Tanzania. The savannah held species of animals that I had seen in zoos, in pictures, or in dreams, all roaming free—elephants, lions, Cape Buffalo, giraffes, hyenas, zebras, gazelles. I was mesmerized . . . and terrified. We saw all these animals and more. We saw impossibly tall, striking Masai men and women who walked with a regal bearing, swathed in red and brown cloth and carrying spears. We saw hordes of children our age and younger that rushed our car at a rural gas station, smiling and waving and speaking Swahili to us. And we prayed.

This family prayed to a God who was infinitely larger than I had known. They lived in a fantastically immense world. Visiting with them had begun a process of inquiry in me that I pray never ends.

Walking the Circle

I saw a remarkable thing in a remarkable place, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Perched on the crest of Nob Hill, the church offers many beautiful sights to admire: ornate doors with biblical scenes played out in bronze relief, murals depicting the history of the city lining the cathedral’s interior walls, replicas of the Chartes labyrinth in a courtyard and in the sanctuary that are walked daily by seekers. But the most outstanding feature of the church may be missed by tourists whose eyes are drawn immediately to the more spectacular sights. This feature is a small chapel in the nave of the church. Its altar bears a triptych designed by the late artist and activist Keith Haring, a stainless steel creation that was completed two weeks before his death in 1990. On this altarpiece—a folding metal screen with three panels—is depicted, in Haring’s unmistakeable style, the life of Christ.

In the back corner of the chapel is a simple, glass-enclosed book. Called the Book of Remembrance, the leather-bound volume contains the names and death-dates of deceased men and women whose loved ones have requested their commemoration. The display case is lit from above by a single, bright light. Curious to read the names, I placed both hands on the transparent case lid and bent forward, pausing and reading each name and date silently. It struck me that many visitors must do the same thing, allowing these people who mattered and matter to others to live on through the simple act of an unspoken roll call. As I finished and turned to leave, moved, I saw the misty outline of my fingers on the glass shimmer and shrink beneath the piercing light, and the message was unmistakeable: life is fleeting.

Blue Star redux

Route 3 in Maine is designated a “Blue Star Memorial Highway.” The designation comes from a national movement, post-WWII, to honor America’s armed forces by placing this name on certain state and national roads. In 1945, the National Council of State Garden Clubs approved the Blue Star Memorial Highway Marker program, formalizing the program. During the war, family members of many soldiers put a small service flag on display in a window of the family home; a blue star on the flag indicated that a family member was serving overseas.

The plaques that alert motorists to those routes’ special significance also bear a blue star and read like this:

BLUE STAR
MEMORIAL HIGHWAY
A TRIBUTE TO THE ARMED FORCES
THAT HAVE DEFENDED THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The first time I drove Rt. 3, heading out of Bar Harbor back toward Boston, I happened to notice such a plaque, and I was puzzled. What did it mean? What was the background of this memorial? When I got back home I looked into the program’s history and understood.

But something else was bothering me. For a year I wondered why this sign caught my eye, why the phrase stuck with me.

It took another drive down Route 3 to unveil my eyes and show me the reason. Understand the physical layout of the road; as you approach the town of Bar Harbor, you’re aware that open water is on your left, but the view is largely screened by trees—that is, until you come around a bend and the trees taper off, and you’re greeted by a sight that takes away your breath. As my wife and I drove the road, this time heading towards town, I looked left when I knew the sign was coming up and saw something completely different. I glanced at the sign, but only fleetingly; my eyes were drawn towards the expanse of water known as Frenchman Bay. Spreading out before us were the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, dotted with green islands and wreathed, early on this summer morning, with mist.

The revelation hit hard; the first time by, I had been so wrapped up in the details of the sign that I had completely missed the majesty behind it. It reminded me of a story my mother had told me some years earlier. She had been driving with her mother, by that time in her mid-eighties and growing more fragile by the day. My grandmother had pointed enthusiastically to something by the roadside and fairly shouted “isn’t that beautiful!” My mother, following the crook of her finger, saw only a ramshackle barn falling to pieces, and replied, “what, that piece of junk?” My grandmother, with joy in her eyes, said, “no! Look past the barn.” And my mother saw a spreading oak tree in the orange blaze of autumn’s glory, and was humbled.

That was how I felt.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

A Window Seat

At church last Sunday, my mind wandered. It was not the fault of the preacher, whose sermon, despite its low-wattage delivery, was simple and profound. It was rather the fault of the artist who had designed the stained-glass windows in the small chapel we occupied. These windows, each given in memory or honor of some long-dead parishioner, depict in rich color events from the life of Jesus. They are beautiful but relatively standard fare—besides the one detail that so captured me.

Several of the scenes—a miraculous healing, the Last Supper—take place indoors, in what appears to be a medieval house. In the very back of these rooms, almost unnoticed, are small windows. Far from static, monochrome panes, these windows are alive with the color of a stormy day—blue shot with gray and white, growing darker as your eyes ascend from the bottom pane to the top.

The windows are stunning for something beyond the color and the light. No landscape is visible through them, no figures, buildings, trees, hills—only that luminous sky. They simply hint at what must lie beyond the glass. Is this world of the gospels a land of dust, heat, and light, as we commonly conceive of 1st-century Palestine, with water-pots, camels, Roman legionnaires, Solomon’s Temple? Or is it the countryside outside 17th-century Amsterdam, with canals, windmills, oxcarts and an autumn storm coming on? We don’t know. Our thoughts are not limited to a scene laid out before us. We may dream of a world in which Christ walked among the landless and the broken (for the poor are always with us), blessing and healing them and confronting the religious establishment of the day, either in the courtyard of the temple or on the steps of the cathedral.

This window-maker was a great craftsman, without a doubt.

Divine Topography

In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare wrote of “unpathed waters, undreamed shores.” The great playwright lived during the golden age of geographic discovery, when new lands still were being discovered and the general perception of the world was being radically stretched.

Compared to Shakespeare’s time, there’s very little we don’t know about our planet. Satellites, GPS, topographic maps, the USGS, Google Earth, etc. have reduced the globe to a series of quadrants, gridlines, and compass points. Much of the mystery is gone when one can learn all one needs to know about Papua New Guinea on the Internet and then buy a plane ticket there with a few mouse clicks.

One thing is certain, though: we still have to bow a knee when we consider the earth itself, God’s true creativity on glorious display. Who knows what any of us might have crafted out of the unmolded clay that became the world? The fact is, God made a wondrous place. Yes, scripture says that the fall broke the world, and human beings continue to do their worst to accelerate the destruction, but think about it—have you ever stood on a rocky beach, spray whipping around you as the sun sinks low in the western sky, and stared at the “unpathed waters” stretching out before you? Sure, some map somewhere has got your line of vision charted, but who cares? You are looking into the very heart of mystery—the heart of God.

God, I am humbled by the mystery of You.