Yesterday was the type of day that when I lived up north, I
would pray for snow instead. The local
weatherman had our high temperature predicted to be in the low seventies, but
if it ever got out of the 50s, I would be shocked. All day it was gray, cloudy, windy and cold
and then later in the day, just as I left to drive to the church seeking a good
walk in the labyrinth, it began to drizzle.
I began to feel a little like the Pink Panther, not the
bumbling French policeman, but the cartoon pink panther who would sometimes
walk around with a single cloud of rain right over his head, following him
wherever he went.
When I pulled up to the church, Robin opened the door for me
and asked if I was coming inside and despite the misty air, I said no, that I was
going to walk the labyrinth and that was exactly what I did, hands shoved in my
pockets, bitterness trailing after me in the rain. Walking the labyrinth has always given me a
sense of journey, a literal vision of paths we take. But when I walked that path yesterday, my
future seemed as muddled as the weather.
I headed out behind the church next, searching for the
bridge, a key focal point in the new book I’m trying to write and though the
path back there had been recently cleared, the bridge was now in disrepair and
the angel, the one that graces the cover of my latest book, had suffered some
sort of catastrophic injury and now had a jagged hole in her head.
And I thought, wow, even angels aren’t immune to crappy
days.
I was ready to leave the church, disappointed that coming
out there had not given me any real deep insights or at least vanquished the
cloud over my head, but before I left, I headed inside, so that I could say a
simple hi and goodbye to Pastor Debbie.
But in the few minutes it took to give a few pleasantries,
something quite wonderful happened.
Heather showed up with her four-year-old, a little girl carrying with
her a child’s Bible. And I flashbacked
to the story Bibles I had when I was little.
So while Heather talked business with Pastor Debbie, I found myself
asking this little girl about her book and sharing with her the stories I
remembered, while she told me what she thought the pictures were saying.
It is an interesting thing about the Bible that as I flipped
through it, it was virtually impossible to find a story that wasn’t horribly
frightening, especially to a girl who had just admitted that the movie “Brave”
frightened her.
Oh here’s Adam and Eve, followed by the story of their sons,
one of whom killed the other. Oh and
here’s God destroying the world in a flood and here’s God killing the Egyptians
in the Red Sea and here’s Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers and
here’s Daniel with the lions and why don’t we just skip to the New Testament?
I tried to stick to the positive. Joseph had a beautiful coat. Did she have a coat? What color was it? Purple, I think she told me, a purple
raincoat that was too big for her. And
after the flood? There was a
rainbow. That was God’s promise. Rainbows are a way God speaks to us. “I saw a rainbow,” she said.
Finally she pointed to the last page, to the three paragraphs
given to Revelation. “What’s this
story?”
By this time, I was standing with her in the office with
Heather and Pastor Debbie and both chuckled wondering how I would explain
Revelation.
“Here’s where everyone goes to Heaven,” I said. “The end.”
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading a chapter
from my book Sunburner to a class of
seventh graders. It filled me with joy
to share my book with them, to talk to them about writing after, to answer
their questions, to see their curiosity, to see the budding writers, the ones
who couldn’t help themselves but had to write every day.
I mistakenly thought that my joy was just an ego trip.
But sharing the Bible with that little girl yesterday made
me realize that the thing that brings me joy is simply sharing stories, in
telling stories, and in teaching, that it doesn’t have to be my story. All it has to be is a story I love, something
that is already a part of me and the story that is my life.
I finished the day watching the PBS documentary on the Dust
Bowl, a seemingly depressing way to end a dreary day. I have read about the Dust Bowl before, but
it was something else to hear ninety year olds speak about it like it had
happened yesterday, to see them weep still for something they had lost so long
ago.
One woman spoke of their move to California. She said their dad had rented a small house,
built on stilts on the side of a hill.
She said there were towering pines all around and that when they walked
to school, they frequently left without hats and coats because they wanted to
feel the mist that settled on the land each morning.
The land they had left wasn’t the only thing that was
parched, she said. We were parched too.
It gave me a new respect for cold, damp days and reminded me
that perspective is everything.
