I wrote yesterday: "I cut my toes walking the razor's edge between faith and wisdom." That thought has come back to me over and over in the past twenty-four hours, and I think maybe it's because that's what really defines my faith journey: a walk along the razor's edge.
Or maybe it's a walk along the river's edge.
In trying to make tangible this idea, a lyric from one of Dan Fogelberg's lesser-known songs keeps playing in my mind: "Lo que es de Dios? Lo que es de mio? Lo que es del rio?", which translates as, "What is God's? What is mine? What is the river's?"
When we are faced with walking into the Jordan, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Either we stand there on the bank and watch our dreams and callings eddying and swirling and finally dissipating away, or we jump feet-first into the current, never looking back or considering all the shades of what-if that might have been suspended there in the air, displaced forever by the motion of our jumping.
But that finite moment, hanging in mid-air, is where I seem to be so often stuck. The words of another folk singer, Cheryl Wheeler, begin faintly to wend their way into my conscious: "And is it wise or lazy, holding tight to what you know? And is it brave or crazy, searching...?" I'm always searching that space, sniffing the air, calling out the subtle shades and examining them one by one, over and over, until I barely see the river at all. All that possibility, all that glorious, frightening, pregnant what-if, is always pushing me forward, holding me back, mesmerizing me with its always changing form reflected in the brilliant swirling dreamings of the river.
I've always said, "If you're going to dream, dream big." I recently revised that to say, "Dreaming is scary and dangerous, so if you're going to dream, dream big." I think I'm a part of a Bigger Dream, and I think I'm supposed to jump. But my toes are bleeding again because the river's edge just became the razor's edge, and I don't know how my big, scary, beautiful dream, alive with all the jubilant power of faith, squares with wisdom. But then rivers never were very square, were they? Only razors offer that kind of hard-edged certainty, and we bleed our frustration when we try too hard to walk that line.
It's almost a dream in itself, feeling my feet lifting lightly off of that painful edge and arching with sudden certainty, straining towards the current for everything they're worth. I suppose there's no going back now. All the what-ifs are disappearing behind me and I am discovering that I am de Dios, and de mio, and del rio, all at once.
--Teri.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
all we couldn't speak
I went "back home" last weekend for the funeral of my (step)grandfather, and wasn't surprised to see all the long-lost family members trickling through the doorway and standing in little huddles throughout my grandma's house. There were aunts and uncles and cousins and neices and nephews, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, and we all knew each other.
Sort of.
What surprised me was that the bottle-neck didn't start at the front door, even as all those people shuffled their way past the tight little entryway; it started on our tongues. I stood before two uncles of mine, brothers, whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years and hadn't spent appreciable time with, if ever, since my childhood. One I had memories with, one I didn't, but a casual observer would have thought that we were all strangers, searching for some spark with which to light the way of our dimly familiar relationships. That spark just didn't come in time, for most of us.
We stood there, drenched in the enormity of a loss that no one can really ever comprehend, grown by years of experience, worn by grief and triumph, having been transformed in our own ways by the events of our smallish lifetimes.
You'd think we'd have a thing or two to say about that.
But no. Even when we meet people we think about all the time, people who helped shape our view of the world, people who knew us well in our younger days, we fall silent and grope spastically for some meaningful thing to say. That hard eggshell doesn't even begin to crack with talk of the weather, or of the kids, or of our doing-fine-and-keeping-busyness. All of our career-talk and pleasantries bounce right off, and when the clock has ticked away on that small, precious hour of opportunity before we pass out of each other's lives again for God-knows-how-long-or-maybe-forever, all those words that couldn't come out stay bottled up, more potent and passionate and concentrated than ever before. That's how it is with me, at least.
So I couldn't look my uncle in the eye, or even shuffle my feet and cast a bashful downward glance, and let him know that I'm finding my voice as an artist, and that there were a few years when I was a child that his artist's voice made me aware that I might have one, too. I couldn't tell him that my oldest son might someday play the guitar like him, or that I cried the day that Dan Fogelberg died because I remembered my uncle singing "The Long Way" with my mother when I was barely old enough to understand the words, much less the meanings. I couldn't tell him that I saw the grief of grandpa Euel's death etched on his suddenly-serious face and that I understood the bond I saw there. I couldn't. I wish I could have. And I wish I could have told him that he's always held a special space in my heart where I keep my collection of heroes from over the years, all the formative faces, calloused hands and voices of wisdom that have helped me along the way.
I think I'm going to have to find a way to unstop that bottle-neck next time, at least slowly, before the chance is gone and all I couldn't speak becomes all I never did.
--Teri.
Sort of.
What surprised me was that the bottle-neck didn't start at the front door, even as all those people shuffled their way past the tight little entryway; it started on our tongues. I stood before two uncles of mine, brothers, whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years and hadn't spent appreciable time with, if ever, since my childhood. One I had memories with, one I didn't, but a casual observer would have thought that we were all strangers, searching for some spark with which to light the way of our dimly familiar relationships. That spark just didn't come in time, for most of us.
We stood there, drenched in the enormity of a loss that no one can really ever comprehend, grown by years of experience, worn by grief and triumph, having been transformed in our own ways by the events of our smallish lifetimes.
You'd think we'd have a thing or two to say about that.
But no. Even when we meet people we think about all the time, people who helped shape our view of the world, people who knew us well in our younger days, we fall silent and grope spastically for some meaningful thing to say. That hard eggshell doesn't even begin to crack with talk of the weather, or of the kids, or of our doing-fine-and-keeping-busyness. All of our career-talk and pleasantries bounce right off, and when the clock has ticked away on that small, precious hour of opportunity before we pass out of each other's lives again for God-knows-how-long-or-maybe-forever, all those words that couldn't come out stay bottled up, more potent and passionate and concentrated than ever before. That's how it is with me, at least.
So I couldn't look my uncle in the eye, or even shuffle my feet and cast a bashful downward glance, and let him know that I'm finding my voice as an artist, and that there were a few years when I was a child that his artist's voice made me aware that I might have one, too. I couldn't tell him that my oldest son might someday play the guitar like him, or that I cried the day that Dan Fogelberg died because I remembered my uncle singing "The Long Way" with my mother when I was barely old enough to understand the words, much less the meanings. I couldn't tell him that I saw the grief of grandpa Euel's death etched on his suddenly-serious face and that I understood the bond I saw there. I couldn't. I wish I could have. And I wish I could have told him that he's always held a special space in my heart where I keep my collection of heroes from over the years, all the formative faces, calloused hands and voices of wisdom that have helped me along the way.
I think I'm going to have to find a way to unstop that bottle-neck next time, at least slowly, before the chance is gone and all I couldn't speak becomes all I never did.
--Teri.
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