The gaps are the thing. 
The gaps are the spirit’s one home, 
the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean 
that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. 
The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; 
they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, 
the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. 
Go up into the gaps. 
If you can find them; 
they shift and vanish too. 
Stalk the gaps. 
Squeak into a gap in the soil, 
turn, and unlock…
a universe.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
~Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

There is a yawning separation threatening us all right now as we peer over the frightening edge of another tight election.

Once again there is a fissuring gap between us.

People who have eaten at our tables, who were good friends, who we have worshiped alongside – became estranged. This separation was buoyed by blowing of the chill wind of politics where once there had been warmth and nurture and caring. 

We disagreed then and continue to disagree. We no longer understand one another’s points of view.

How did we allow these gaps between us to develop?
How do we close these fissures so something new and vital can grow?
How can we stalk the gaps together?

Not one of us has the corner on the Truth; if we are honest with ourselves and each other, we cower together for safety in the cracks of this world, watching helplessly as the backside of God passes by, His face too holy for us to gaze upon.

He places us there together for our own good. I see you there alongside me.

We are weaker together when one side wins and the other loses. We are dependent together. We need to hold each other up as we look over the edge of the upcoming cliff.

Only His Word – nothing else –
can fill the open gaping hollow before us.
His Grace is great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
plant seeds for the future
and restore us wholly to each other.