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The solace of fierce landscapesTuesday, December 20, 2016
Luke 1:33 "Lara's Theme" echoed in the sunny, snow-covered ice-scape. Daytime temperatures barely rose above zero. No one out there walking should have survived. And I felt so cozy on my couch, covered with a quilt, watching the landscape flow up and up into the sky ... endless kingdom. The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. All that snow, and the tropical paradise in the Caribbean, and the desert of Somalia, and the mountains ... oh, the mountains. Everest and Kilimanjaro, Fuji and Rainier, the Swiss Alps, Appalachians, Apennines and Himalayas. Of his kingdom there will be no end. None of these fierce landscapes marks completion. God does not know borders. His love has seven league boots, and he walks with confidence and glory into each one of his children's lives. Mary holds her belly and wonders, "How can this be?" Gabriel rises in her vision for a moment, and then she is alone. No, not alone. God has crossed whatever border she imagined for herself and begun to make his home inside her. Might her body sing with joy? Mary's womb welcomes Jesus. "May it be unto me as you have said." In the midst of our very own polar vortex I cherish the warmth of my bed, and I listen to the echoes of Gabriel calling out to Mary, "Hail Mary, full of grace!" I can hold my palm cross made of olive wood from Jerusalem, I can rest without fear in the presence of God. I, like you, like every one of us, can wait for Jesus, walking walking walking in the kingdom which has no end. And praising God. Let the earth sing and let me sing along with it. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her king. There is no end to your justice and no end to your mercy in my life, Lord. No end to your love. |
I remember a scene in David Lean's film Dr. Zhivago. The doctor-poet had abandoned that military physician's position into which he had been kidnapped and was walking in the winter, into Siberia, through trackless snow. His beard caked with ice and his eyes wild with cold and loneliness, he frightened a passing family when he thought he knew them.