Tag: gaps

Stalk the Gaps

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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.

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Stalking the Gaps Together

barnstormingblog3 Comments
nch20141

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
—more than a maple—
a universe.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

nch2014

I think there is a yawning gaping separation threatening us right now.

I feel a fissuring gap in my life. People who have eaten at our table, shared our home, who we have worshiped alongside – are now estranged, no longer trusting. This separation is buoyed by the chill wind of politics blowing bitterly where once there was warmth and nurture and caring.

We disagree.

We no longer understand one another. We no longer listen to one another.
The argument has become more important than the connection.

How can we even allow these gaps between us to develop?
How do we fill these fissures with enough of ourselves
so something new and vital can grow?
How can we stalk the gaps together, knowing how we are all exposed?

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 too holy for us to gaze upon. He places us there together for our own good. I see you there alongside me.

We are weak together. We are dependent together. We need each other.

Only His Word – nothing else –
can fill the open gaping hollow between 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.

Let it be so. Oh please let it be.

sunset722142

An Advent Paradox: Hints Followed By Guesses

barnstormingblog1 Comment

165770_1801190828697_1207615738_32169045_8245518_n

 

frost125141

 

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled…
~T.S. Eliot from “Dry Salvages” 

 

 

sunset831141

 

waterfalljasper1

 

 

We want to understand.
We want to know, not just guess anymore.

We want God to fit into the holes of our comprehension exactly like a puzzle piece falls into place in the space meant just for it.

But He doesn’t.  He won’t.  Our holes are rarely God-shaped.  They are ragged and changing moment by moment –  the hints are laid out and we make our haphazard
half-guesses.

The holes of our understanding gape so large that only God knows it takes the glue of faith to bridge the gap.  Our doubts are conquered, our conflicts reconciled, the impossible union of heaven and earth made possible through the Incarnation.

Perhaps that is what “holy” is all about – filling up all our hole-li-ness with His Holiness come to earth from heaven.

 

 

webhole4

 

 

spotlight

 

 

 

 

 

How Incomprehensible

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

cloudangel

eveninghilllight

redhawk

 

Where you have absolute solutions,
you have no need of faith.
Faith is what you have in the absence of knowledge.
The reason this clash doesn’t bother me any longer
is because I have got, over the years,
a sense of the immense sweep of creation,
of the evolutionary process in everything,
of how incomprehensible God must necessarily be
to be the God of heaven and earth.
You can’t fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being

 

spitbug1

 

cacti7

 

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
~Denise Levertov “The Mystery of the Incarnation”

 

sunsetpurple

We want God to fit into the holes of our comprehension exactly like a puzzle piece falls into place in the space meant just for it.

But He doesn’t.  He won’t.  The holes aren’t God-shaped.  They are ragged and changing moment by moment.

The holes of our understanding gape so large that only God knows it takes the glue of faith to bridge the gap.

Perhaps that is what “holy” is all about.

 

eveninglighthill3

 

rollingfield

Lenten Grace — Great Gaps

barnstormingblog7 Comments

photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Kathy Yates

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
They should remain open.
Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who also was and is his God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”

No greater gap was torn
than when Christ was separated from the Father,
forsaken,
choosing suffering for his brothers and sisters
by paying with his life a ransom we could never satisfy,
so dead broke are we
and captive to our sin.

Only the Word can fill
what remains open and gaping,
until we accept the comfort of his grace
freely given.

Grace great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
and restore us wholly to our Father
who was and is our God.