open fields

Sometimes I daydream about William Wallace running across highland ridges with pack and sword, more like dancing really—such grace in that hard place—with bagpipes and percussion playing in the background, nipping at my heels, making the rocks comes to life, springing me up to the summit for the most breathtaking view of mountain, sea, sunbeam, cloud, and forest. Birds flying below. I stop to take it all in—to let my breath catch my lungs, my blood catch my limbs, my mind catch my heart.

Or better, I’ve just stolen Murron away from her hovel for a ride in the rain through forest glen, then the day breaking through the night, the sun breaking through the clouds, the sweat breaking through the horse’s powerful brawn, and we breaking through the trees into open fields as we gallop away from it all, running for that place where it’s not duties or expectations but romance that orders time.

Sometimes I just want to steal away, get as far away as I can. But if I’m honest, the thing I want most to get away from is me. And when I do take off, I usually realize that fairly quickly. I remember seeing the movie, City of Joy, where this guy was running away from his life, but he got some advice, “You can’t run from your demons.” They go with you.

That’s one of the things that’s so appealing about Jesus to me now. I have this me that I know can really drag me down. The dilemma is how to get away from me. It’s a paradoxical problem, and it seems like I need a paradoxical solution. And maybe it’s found in Jesus. He said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” That describes me. I want to both lose my life and find it, all at the same time.

I have this conflict. I want to go but I also want to stay. I feel like this world is not my home and that I was made for much more and better than this, but I also feel very grounded and secure, like this beautiful and strange place somehow was made for me. I feel like blowing this joint because this fallen world and everything in it is passing away, but I also feel like loving and saving it. I feel like this life I am living is one big trap of hopeless dreams, but I also have this sense that I am able to touch it and bring hope even so. And I feel like I have to make a choice. But maybe not.

Maybe traditional Christianity has something to say about this. It talks about God being three persons yet one, or three personalities yet one being. This is the Trinity. There is God who not only created everything but contains everything. The stars, the heavens, the ages, and the worlds all find themselves contained in him. And while that is unfathomable to me, it still makes me feel very secure, like I’m in a great big womb. The second person is called the Spirit or the Wind or the Breath or the Presence, and is just that—God as close as my breath. It is somehow by the Breath that I feel God, that I perceive something of this transcendant being that is so unfathomable. So not only am I contained by God, but I am a container for God, too. But there is still something lacking, something that could become very sterile and religious otherwise, another Person that makes life passionate. Messiah is the third Person I am introduced to. He is my savior, my rescuer. He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother, next to me on the battle field when all hell in unleashed. He is the lover who rides in to steal me away. He is the one who enjoys me and is enjoyed by me, the one who so romances me that I can’t wait for our next embrace. John felt this way about Jesus I think, when he wrote of himself, “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.”

If God is somehow three persons then maybe I don’t have to choose. I shouldn’t have to choose the stability of being grounded and content with the tiny home and tiny life that is chosen for me. And I shouldn’t have to choose the dignity and prominence that comes from being the mouth and finger of God, empowered by his very Breath. And I shouldn’t have to choose the romance of the escape, the rescue, being cherished, and being challenged by my friend and lover, Jesus. I should be able to accept from his hand whatever comes—to me, in me, and around me. But I think that I have to wait for him and trust him, because I don’t always see what’s really going on, and even when I do, I don’t see it fully.

But today I am longing for those open fields.