Listening to the water at the edge of things

The storms over the weekend have moved on to the Midwest, and have left in their wake pristine skies, clear air, and, best of all, snow-topped mountains visible right from our driveway. The San Gabriel mountains, looming over Claremont, no longer seem sere and stony; instead, dusted liberally with snow from their summits all the way down to 3,000 feet, they seem to bear a closer resemblance to the mountains of my earthbound, low-altitude imagination. These are mountains that lift my eyes, instinctively, from the roads and the buildings of our valley to the empty expanse of the sky above; these are mountains that make me long to listen to stillness, to the ageless sound of orogenesis, to the sound of water at the edge of things.

[Reality check: As I write these last few words and contemplate what mountains make me feel, Joshua, who's sitting on the couch next to me watching TV, throws a huge temper tantrum when I can't find the latest "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!" episode that we recorded -- the one "with a big house". He then runs to his room, where Fiona and Emma are napping, and yells at Fiona; I run after him and grab him out of the room before he wakes Emma up. In the midst of his screaming and crying, he forgets that he needs to pee, and proceeds to wet himself and the living room floor. Quite an earthbound, Antipodean moment to the reflections five minutes earlier.]

"The sound of water at the edge of things": that's a phrase that I've borrowed from Anne Lamott's irreverent, sassy and moving collection of essays, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. After the children's sermon one Sunday at her church, the pastor asks the children to close their eyes for a moment; she then asks them what they heard in their brief moment of quiet. Most children replied that they heard dogs, cars and other sounds that comprise the undistinguished aural background of our lives; one, however, said he had heard the sound of water at the edge of things. All of us need to hear that every once in a while.

In every dream of heaven I've had, I've seen mountains. Mountains of various shapes and geologic origins figure prominently in the history of God's revelation of Himself to us: consider Mount Sinai, the Mount of Olives, Mount Nebo, Mount Carmel, the mountain where Elijah and Moses meet Jesus, and the mountain where Jesus issues his final, great command to those who would follow and listen. (I think I might have even written a paper on mountains and high places in the Bible for a class in college.) And so, seeing the snow-covered mountains this morning, after a few days of rain or dense clouds, my thoughts turned to heaven once more.

Life without the reality of heaven seems to me almost like trying to imagine a two-dimensional earth, without depth, without an infinite sky to put into perspective all that we construct for ourselves on the earth. Without the mountains and the sky, all I would see each day would be the dreary monotony of my muddy, misshapen feet. The startling, illuminating reality of heaven provides depth and clarity to my life; set against the presentness of heaven, my feet (and all my other grouses and angst about life as a thirtysomething husband of one, father of two, maybe three . . . ) become less urgent. When the sound of water at the edge of things surprises me, I do my best to listen. When God peeks in, like the sun, through the clouds of my tendentious stubbornness, I do my best to pause and see where the light falls and what shadows it casts.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I was only vaguely aware that I had a bad dream last night -- something to do with Harry Potter and cockroaches, I think. The more I tried to remember the dream, the more quickly it slipped away. Soon, I could only remember that I had a bad dream, but I could not remember the bad dream itself. I hope that's an echo of what heaven can do for us. I believe that when I take on fully the form and life that God intended me to have from the beginning of Time, I will only have the filmiest memories of the failures, the weaknesses, the scars, the pain, the regrets and the sorrows that I feel so keenly now. Every atom of my body yearns for that great liberation. And I think we'll all have a blast at the great wedding banquet up there.

* * *

Thinking of heaven also makes me reflect on the paths that lie before us. I learnt in Finding Nemo that all drains lead to the ocean; is that so for the paths and choices that present themselves before us? A week ago, I made a difficult choice to close the door to one possible path, a path that had seemed enticing, exciting, even liberating. Rejecting it was hard. But new doors have opened in the midst of dead walls. Life and opportunities, like dormant seeds in the ground awaiting winter rains, present themselves when we least expect them.

Two thousand years ago, a young, bewildered girl faced an impossible choice between the safety of respectability or the scandal of obedience. She chose to obey, with celebrated humility, serving forever as a reminder that God can make heaven in the hearts of the most ordinary people.

In her poem "The Annunciation", Denise Levertov reflects on the choices that confronted Mary. Levertov describes Mary as someone with the freedom to accept or reject the choice that Gabriel had laid before her. Levertov then reflects that most of us will find ourselves in circumstances similar to Mary's:

Aren't there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or a woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

Contradiction and thoughtful ambiguity, instead of unconsidered certainty, provide meaning in the fabric of our wounded lives. (For wounded we are, and wounded are as good as we will get.) In the shadowy forms of our present realities, we may discern the faintest echoes of heaven; thinking of heaven, our minds must trace the human arc earthwards once again, for we are, after all, earthbound creature. For now. For now.

And for now, the pathways open and close before us. Each day, in the midst of mundanity, we encounter moments requiring courage and obedience. In the midst of our unextraordinary, unremarkable lives, God's breath can fall, unbidden, on us, like a draft of fresh air in a stuffy room, like the morning sunlight streaming through my window that warms my feet, like the sound of rain, the sea, the water at the edge of things.