Yosemite is one of my favorite places on the entire Earth.  It’s a place where my love for God and geology intersect.  In these exact coordinates in the universe, God and Earth are exposed and revealed in such a way that they are both breathtakingly clear and yet all the more mysterious.  In his book, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking says that when we understand eternity, then we will see the face of God.  In Yosemite, I come as close to that as anywhere I’ve ever been.

A month or so before AD and I married, we hiked Half Dome, which is that huge “half dome” shaped granite rock you see in the distant background.  When we set off on the hike, I didn’t really know if I could make it because it’s a mostly vertical, 20-mile round trip, give or take.  But I decided that day that I would go as far as I could go and when I could go no more, I would go back.  So I would go as far as I could go and then I would rest.  And then I would get up and go some more. And eventually we made it.  I recall that it took about 12 hours, maybe more. Such is life, one step at a time.

As we walked along that day back in 1998, not fully aware of what was ahead for us, not knowing if we would make it to the top or have to turn back, we imagined that some day we would have a little boy or girl and that we would take them to Yosemite.  There has been a lot of stopping and resting along the way in those past 12 years, but on this trip, that dream came true.

The other day I was on my way to pick up Sean from school when I saw a man bent over on the sidewalk.  That is not something you see around here everyday, so it caught my eye and I slowed to see what was going on. And I couldn’t quite tell.

I couldn’t tell if he was having a heart attack and had dropped to his knees. I couldn’t tell if he had been jogging and was winded.  I couldn’t tell if he had stopped to examine a bug or perhaps he had just stopped to tie his shoes. But something about it sent my antennae up. Something was not quite right.

But I was running late as usual, so I didn’t stop.  After I retrieved my child from school, I circled back to see if he was still there.  He was, so I slowed and rolled down my window.

“You doin’ okay?” I called towards him from a safe distance.

He looked up, surprised.

“Yeah,” he sighed.  Then, “No. Not really.  I’m having a really bad day.”  He sounded tired, not so much in body but in spirit.  A fatigued spirit is the worst kind of tired; no amount of sleep or vitamins can restore a weary soul.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically and empathetically. I’ve had a few days in my life where I’ve wanted to collapse in a heap on the sidewalk and cry.

“You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?” he asked from the sidewalk.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” I said.

I look in my rear view mirror.  I can see Sean looking at the man through his rolled up window.  He is taking it all in with curiosity as though he is watching a movie waiting to see what will happen in the next scene.

Without any cigarettes, I could see that there wasn’t much beyond sympathy I could offer him, so I promised that I would send up a prayer for him.

Offering to pray for someone is a risky thing, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t do a whole lot of that sort of thing, particularly with strangers, but there was something desperate about the way he was hunched over on the sidewalk that evoked an upwelling in my heart and a desire to do something to relieve his burden in some small way.  He could have told me where to stick my prayers, but he didn’t.

He smiled just a little. I thought I saw a glimmer of hope, a tiny spark.

“Thanks man, thanks for stopping, thanks for checking on me, thanks…” he rambled.

“Hang in there,” I said. It didn’t quite convey the encouragement I wished for him, but it was all I could think to say.

He cut such a sorrowful figure standing there that I couldn’t help but to wonder what it was that had brought him to his knees on a sidewalk in the middle of the day.  I could think of a hundred things, maybe a thousand.

As I pulled away, Sean asked how we were going to pray for him.  “We don’t even know his name,” he pointed out.

“That’s true,” I said. “We don’t know his name and we don’t know what is troubling him, but God does.”

As we drove home, my little boy and I prayed for a man on a sidewalk.  It was all we could do.

Yesterday I was eavesdropping chatting on Twitter and I saw that my friend michaelsownmom was talking about how her little boy waved and shouted a greeting at a woman who was walking down the street, but the woman didn’t respond. And understandably, that bruised his feelings just a little.

I replied to her that my six-year-old does the same thing – if someone is walking down the sidewalk in front or behind the house, he’ll stop what he is doing and holler Hi There! and wave with his hand high in the air, sometimes until they are clear out of sight.  I added that I really have to fight the urge to stifle him, but really, why?

MichaelsDaddy chimed in that he sometimes feels like he needs to protect him from the rejection of those who won’t respond in kind.

I think every parent can relate to that, the overwhelming urge to protect our babies from the hurts and rejections of the world.

If I am to be honest though, I think one reason I want to temper Sean’s enthusiasm in shouting greetings to all who pass is because, for reasons unbeknownst to me, it’s a little embarrassing. We tend to not do that kind of thing much these days and our world is probably a little darker for it.

But like MichaelsDaddy, also known as Tom, I too want to protect my baby from those who won’t acknowledge him or respond in kind.

But the cold reality of life on this planet is that there will always be a steady stream of rejection to be had.  So, from a practical standpoint, why not start practicing now?  Why not get used to rejection from complete strangers so that way when he grows up and is on Twitter and gets notice of 14 unfollowers, it won’t hurt his feelings. As much.

But immeasurably beyond that, to stifle him would be to counter the exact thing I’m trying to teach him – always reach out, always extend kindness to others,  even when it is not acknowledged or returned.

About 14 years ago, I bought a huge, down-filled, ridiculously expensive Henredon sofa. I had it made in this exquisite blood red damask fabric and it was a vision of beauty for all who laid eyes or butts upon it.

Luckily, I bought the sofa before I met AD because he would never authorize that kind of spending.  Not so lucky is that it never occurred to me that once you spend that kind of money on a sofa, you are loath to ever get rid of it. And trust me on this:  There is not a sofa on the planet that you will want to keep your entire life.

Well why not just get it recovered you might ask? And that is a reasonable question. The problem is that I could buy a brand new sofa and maybe even a few other things for what it will cost me to have it recovered.  It will require a substantial outlay of cash and outlaying of cash is just not in our immediate or foreseeable future.

So then, right now I have a formerly glorious red sofa that has turned a sad shade of pink from the sun and suffers a terminal case of thread rot. And if I may be honest, the giant expensive, formerly glorious, now ugly sofa is really getting on my nerves.  Every time I walk through my living room, it pains me to look at it.  It is the Norma Desmond of the sofa world.

Last week, as I was pulling into the neighborhood I saw a Thomasville truck in front of my neighbor’s house and two men were hauling in a houseful of brand new furniture. I slowed to gawk at the spectacle of it all.  And I may have pressed my nose against the car window and drooled just a little.  I coveted. Oh yes I did. I coveted with a vengeance.

With a heart drenched in envy, I continued around the block towards home, driving past the house of a woman whom I only knew in passing. But she doesn’t live there anymore. She lost her battle to cancer about this time last year leaving behind a husband and a ten-year-old boy.

Maybe she left behind a really nice sofa.  Or maybe hers had thread rot too. I don’t know.  But either way, it didn’t matter.  She left it all behind.

* * *

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.   Matthew 6:19~21

In his famous poem Ode to Immortality, Wordsworth wrote that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

I’ve always loved that imagery. I love the idea that at one time, in some unknown form, we dwelled with God, that we communed intimately with him, knew every line in his face, the softness of his hands, the sound of his voice, the warmth of his embrace.

And then we were born.

No wonder we come into this world wailing.

As we are awakening to a new world, we are dying to another.  Every minute of life carries us further away from whence we came; the older we get, the less we remember of it.

Last Sunday evening during Children’s Bible Hour, the children were asked to draw a picture of God.  Sean immediately got to work. There was no question in his mind what God looked like.

The teacher called him to the front of the class and asked him to talk about his picture.  He held it up and told an audience of 30 or so children with confidence that he thinks God is a happy face in the sky with a beard and some swirly lines.

The teacher nodded and said with a sigh that he was sure there was a message behind his picture. Sean shook his head. “There’s no message behind the picture,” he said and then he showed the teacher the back of his paper.  Blank.  No message.

The next day, as we were eating breakfast, I saw the drawing at the end of the breakfast bar. I picked it up and looked at it again.  I asked Sean to tell me more about it.  “Well,” he said pointing his fork, “The smiley face with the beard represents God and the swirly lines are a gust of wind.”

I was intrigued by the idea of God as a gust of wind.

As I looked at the picture, I thought of how many times God has drawn near to his people in the form of wind – sometimes in a violent gust like in Acts 2:2 and other times as gentle as a whisper as in 1 Kings 19:12.

I thought of how the Greek word pneuma is used to mean both wind and spirit and how the Hebrew word ruah is used to convey both wind and spirit but also breath – the very essence of life.

And then I thought that maybe he has not yet travelled so very far from whence he came.

And I wanted to stand just a little bit closer to him.

* * *

More esoterical musings on the nature of God from my She Speaks peeps over here.