A feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It was an English physicist, Lord John Rayleigh, who in the late 1800s discovered how it is that the sky generally appears to be blue. Even though sunlight appears to be white, it is actually a combination of many colors. Each of these colors has a different frequency, wavelength, and energy. As light travels, it can be bent, reflected, or scattered, and it is this last option—the scattering of the blue light waves—that produces the effect of the blue sky. Blue light is scattered more easily than most colors because its wavelength is shorter.
A body of water, of course, can reflect the blue light of the sky like a mirror. However, everything in the water—mud particles, plant life, organic debris—will change the way the light is scattered, thus changing the intensity and hue of the color. This brook, rushing before me, reflected vividly the canvas of the blue Montana sky—a living mirror unclouded by anything. The brook is a living cup to hold the sky, yet the sky doesn’t seem to shrink into its brookish container. Rather the brook seems to expand as it takes on the largeness of the sky on its liquid surface.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel encourages us to be “brooks that hold the sky” (I Asked for Wonder, 1983). Here we stood, watching that prophecy fulfilled.
Now it is our turn to become a ref lection, to bring out the God-colors of the world on the moving surface of our lives. In certain moments, we can even act as prisms, like single drops of rain joined in a downpour, revealing the spectrum of colors streaming down from heaven.
to ponder
What debris are you holding onto that might diminish your ability to be a bright ref lection of God’s light? How can you allow God’s grace to carry that debris downstream?
When have you felt the joy of serving as a true ref lection of God’s light and color for someone? How did it make you feel?
walking on mars
There is always another one walking beside you.
T.S. Eliot
My son John is a real space cadet. For the better part of this first decade of his life, he has dreamed of being an astronaut. He has created numerous space suits out of aluminum foil and kitchen strainers and garden gloves and swimming goggles. His only request for Christmas this year was a pair of Moon Boots, a retro platform shoe laced with wide rubber bands that suspend the feet to create the sensation of walking in reduced gravity. His room is decorated with his detailed drawings of astronauts and shuttles and moon landings. Most days, space is the first and last thing he thinks about.
For his tenth birthday, we took John on a trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, where he rode the shuttle simulator and purchased an official NASA space suit which he proudly donned for a third grade biography presentation he gave in the persona of Neil Armstrong. John rattles off the names of astronauts the way other boys do baseball players. He knows every mission and every craft. If there was a Space Jeopardy, John would be Ken Jennings.
Our family nights sometimes include watching documentaries or movies that tell the stories of space exploration. Somewhere in this process of validating John’s passion, there was a desire ignited within John to build his own space capsule. “Sure,” we said, suggesting cardboard and markers and the usual random gadgets that served his past projects so well. But this was something different.
John was visibly troubled as he tried to explain to us that this time he meant a real space capsule. Like NASA has. He was devastated when we weren’t able to validate this dream. His spirit was crushed. We tried to get a toehold on something that would evoke the reality for him, so we ordered a cool tent in the shape of a space shuttle. And while John was polite about it, you could see the light of his dreams flickering lower.
The one spark that seemed to remain found an outlet in his prayer life. Each night, after thanking God for the people he loves and asking God to help those he knows need healing or encouragement, John would close earnestly with this final prayer: “and God, help me to get a rocket any way I can. Amen.”
The days rolled busily on, but in the quiet spaces of John’s spirit, the ember kept smoldering. Then one day, it reignited. He remembered that the Pacific Science Center had a real space capsule on display. He would simply ask them to sell it to him. Confident that he had finally found a solution, he composed a letter to the CEO with just such a request and mailed it, along with a picture of him-self in his NASA uniform, explaining how much he loved space and what good care he would take of the space capsule. He and his brother began to discuss how they would position the capsule in the playroom if it came and seemed buoyed in spirit by the mere possibility of it.
The school year ended and John enrolled in a fun summer camp at the Science Center. This allowed him to visit the space capsule frequently and to watch other groups learn about it. On the third day of camp, as John and I were walking home hand in hand, John shocked me by saying, “Mom, I decided today that I don’t want the space capsule.”
I had no idea what could be behind this sudden and absolute change of heart, so I kept listening. “Today I saw all these kids standing in line to see it, and when they get there, they have so much fun inside. If I bought it and took it home, none of those kids would get to enjoy it. I think it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”
Rain is Grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
John Updike
“Wow, John,” I said, “that is one of the most special things you have ever decided. Let’s tell Daddy about it tonight.” We walked on peacefully. John had released the capsule dream and his heart was free. On the way up to our apartment, we stopped to check the mailbox. Inside was a letter addressed to John Parrott from the CEO of the Science Center. It was a kind letter, with great suggestions to John about pursuing his dream, but of course contained the news, with regrets, that he could not sell the capsule to John (or anyone else) since there were over a million people each year that loved seeing it. It was a shared treasure.
John was prepared. The Holy Spirit had gone ahead of this letter, transforming its effects by transforming its recipient at exactly the right time. God had not magically produced the rocket of John’s dreams, but he had launched John’s dream to a higher orbit.
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work,” our God tells us. “For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think” (Isaiah 55:8–9).
John was at peace in a deeper way than I had ever known him to be, even as his dreams of space were, once again, necessarily delayed.
Perhaps John will walk on Mars someday. How can we know what the future holds? So many of the things I pray for feel as impossible as a rocket being delivered to my apartment in downtown Seattle—and forget about walking on another planet! I am praying for the complete healing of my friend with cancer and asking God to do this “any way he can.” I am praying for a free beach house for one week of summer vacation for my prayer partner whose ministry budget can’t bear the burden of a family vacation this year. I am praying for things I can’t even say out loud.
What I’m trying to learn—what I’m struggling to remember—is that I can trust these outlandish requests to God. He knows the best way to respond, and he will. He will send his Holy Spirit to move and work within each desire. And since my Father knows every star by name in the entire expanse of space, I won’t be surprised one bit if there is healing, and beachside rest, and maybe even a vacation to Mars.
to ponder
What dreams or desires have shaped your prayers and petitions?
Have you ever had the experience of being transformed in the process of an honest, heartfelt prayer request?
deep waters
The brisk swell Rippled both shores.
T.S. Eliot
Today I was a trial jur
or. The trial was presided over by a prominent Seattle judge. As he entered the room, black robes flowing, we responded in unison to the command to “all rise,” and we took our seats again only at his bidding. The case was a colorful one that included a charge of blackmail at the Pacific Science Center. The atmosphere was hushed and edgy. Each juror weighed the matter. Before the trial, the judge addressed the jury with solemn words of responsibility.
Only these words weren’t directed toward us as impartial members of a jury designed to carry out justice but as parents of the children who were taking part in this mock trial. Each of us had a child who was about to serve as an “expert witness” for either the prosecution or the defense.
When the judge addressed the parents, we felt the full weight of his charisma and character. He commended us for allowing our young children to participate. He underscored the importance of these very crucial years in the stockpiling of wisdom in the hearts and souls of our children. To drive his point home, he compared the coming teen years to those tense and inevitable moments experienced in NASA’s Mission Control when Apollo 13 was on the dark side of the moon and there was a total communication blackout for several crucial moments. A small explosion—causing the loss of oxygen, water, and use of the propulsion system—had caused the astronauts and their craft to be adrift in space preceding a dangerous reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. With a damaged heat shield and limited resources, Mission Control had to guide these men back to Earth with creative science (including a sock as a filter), guts, and prayer. Anyone who has witnessed footage of these moments, said the judge, is fully aware of the emotional charge of this blackout period—and the sheer joy that accompanied that first sight and sounds of the safe astronauts. As parents we will be waiting at “mission control,” eagerly watching to see if all that we have built into our children will make it possible for them to navigate safely back to earth following the space odyssey of adolescence.
Knowing what is right is
like deep water in the heart;
a wise person draws from the well within.
Proverbs 20:5
As parents, we all want to help our children fill the pools of their soul with deep waters that will serve as a future well of wisdom. When we meet someone who seems to lack wisdom, we rightly describe them as “shallow.” Shallow is the opposite of everything we hope for in ourselves and in our children. Shallow won’t sustain life in the wilderness, let alone the wasteland.
One of the things I appreciated about Jackson’s prekindergarten teachers is the simple ritual with which they began every school day. After coats and boots and lunches have been tucked into each child’s cubby and hands have been freshly scrubbed, each child is invited to the table where the teacher is waiting with the “morning mystery.” These mysteries range from the simple to the sublime—What do you like about your name? What is your favorite superpower? What do you think it means to have compassion?
As a parent, as soon as I heard the mystery question, I had an instinctive feeling about what the answer would be. It was all I could do some days to stand quietly and patiently while little Jackson silently and thoughtfully pondered these deep matters for what seemed to me an inordinate amount of time. Over the course of the year, I began to understand something new.
So often I find myself acting as if I am filling up the soul of my children like I fill up a small plastic kiddie pool. With hose in hand, it is my job to pour the water in until it reaches its full capacity. What the morning mystery revealed to me was how much the souls of my children are filled to their capacity not by my chit-chat, but by the Living Waters already within them. My job is less about filling them up myself and more about helping them to dip into those waters already present.
Ten months ago, my father-in-law passed away. He was an amazing man, larger than life; he served as the president of two thriving Christian universities for over twenty years and pastored healthy churches throughout his life. He was bright, gifted, driven, and his zest for life was as unflagging as it was contagious. His motto, inscribed over the doorway to his study, read, “Jesus led me all the way.” To those of us who knew him, these words rang out as the truest of testimonies. To my children, he was simply “Papa.” And for the several months of demanding illness that led to Papa’s death, the children earnestly prayed every night for God to “help Papa get better.”
Following Papa’s death, I found myself sitting down for our nightly prayers with trepidation. Would my sons find that their seemingly unanswered prayers for Papa’s healing would hinder their ability to trust? What would this teach them about God? I wondered how I should coach them theologically and emotionally regarding this turn of events. Then, to my great surprise, I listened as my son Jackson began a new prayer ritual the very day he learned of his papa’s death, a ritual that he continues nightly to this day.
“Dear Jesus,” he prays, his small hands folded and his eyes scrunched shut, “thank you for letting us get to know Papa for a little while before he went to heaven.”
Jackson had drawn from the well within and given to me a cup of cold water to refresh my grief-parched soul. Somehow he knew what was right in that moment, in the depths of his soul—gratitude for the gift of his papa, for the joy of having known him. He also knew, with the certainty of a child, that it was time for Papa to make heaven his home.
This is wisdom. This is knowing what is right. This is what will get Jackson—and me, back at “mission control” with my eyes locked on the monitor—through those silent years on the dark side of the moon. This will see him home.
to ponder
Have you ever felt like someone you love was on “the dark side of the moon” and out of reach for a season? How did you endure during the break in communication?
When have you been surprised by the deep wisdom contained within someone you know and love? How has it impacted you?
living fossils
Shantih shantih shantih [Peace which passes all understanding].
T.S. Eliot
Today was an adventure. My two boys and I piled into our Jeep, collected my mom and aunt, and hopped on a ferry to Whidbey Island. It’s become our tradition in recent years to plan one special outing each summer that incorporates just the right amount of adventure with just the right amount of physical exertion for a grandmother with diabetes and a great-aunt with a bum knee. The two women are brimming with life yet burdened by limitations of aging.
Today was loosely planned as a garden tour. Stops were mapped out at Hummingbird Farm, which has been compared to “The Secret Garden” in its English beauty; Lavender Winds Farm, currently alive with scent and hues of deep purple and blue; and my personal favorite, Greenbank Farm, where loganberry grows in all its glory and where we consume ridiculous amounts of pie at Rustic Café.
A day like this makes sense—special family time and shared memories that will become stories we tell around future tables spread with holiday feasts. As it turned out, we also saw two little fawns that hadn’t yet lost their spots, and we staged a wonderful treasure hunt for leaf skeletons. Gathering these delicate skeleton leaves—that look for all the world like fairy wings—weaves connections across generational lines.
So do the moments like those in the car when ten-year-old John—whose responsibility it is to hold the map and navigate—reads in the guide, “Half the fun is just getting there” and “If you like a maze, you’ll enjoy this.” He liked the challenge of following such admittedly hard directions. Conversations leisurely unfold among us. Aunt Jill, John’s great-aunt, discusses with him the unusual use of the word legend as it relates to maps. I share a rare moment alone with my mom, basking in the sun on the deck of the ferry, the sea breeze blowing salty air in and out of our unhurried conversation about books and friends and even painful family history in a way that seems to mimic the flight of the gulls bobbing in the air around us.
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
These are all good things. Deeply good. But they are not really the purpose of this outing. At the heart of our one-day journey is a more solitary goal—renewal. We each seek, in our own way, much needed moments of pure joy and inspiration, of deep peace and true rest that form the shape of our souls. We long for these moments, but they can never be scripted or assured. And so beneath the surface of our activities, we all are keeping one eye open for these grace notes to float through the melody of our moments.
For Jackson, this moment seemed to come as he skipped the soft paths of a labyrinth, smelling the lavender winds mixed with salty sea air gusting from nearby Puget Sound. For John, it was in-land, along the woodland path through the deep forest trails. Aunt Jill heard the melody in the stillness and silence that formed the restful heart of the gardens—she said it was the quietest moment she had experienced in the three years since she moved to Seattle. For Mom, that moment of joy involved the sight of my crisp white T-shirt covered in chocolate fingerprints from my sons’ post-ice-cream-cone hugs.
The First Drop of Rain Page 11
