Childhood in the wild
Childhood in the wild
My childhood began on the water. I
remember how much I felt God’s presence when I was a small thing, playing with
small things in the water. I lived on a creek in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
I walked the bed of that creek every day. My life was immersed in that water
filled wonderland. My friend Mary Neel and I traversed sand and bog and branch
and vine, day after day, until our little hearts were content. I was nurtured
by the closeness of nature. I was nurtured by the ease of nature. I was
nurtured by the creativity of nature. I loved to be outdoors. The rhythm of
childhood was certainly set to the beat of the river, the land, and my
exploration of that topography. Later, when we moved from that house on Silas
Creek, to a house on the campus of Wake Forest University, my first impulse was
to look for my playhouse in the woods. I found it.
The Reynolds
family, who gave Wake Forest its land in the late 19th century, had
a “bungalow” behind our house. Its surrounding land was called Reynolda Gardens.
These thick forests and high trees became the wonderland of my heart. The
forest was filled with lakes, streams and broken limbs to play on. Later in
life I worked at a museum there, the Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
Interestingly, I had my first date with my wife on the grounds of this home,
took wedding photos on the grounds of this home, met Dean Jones on the grounds
of this home, and a whole host of other deviance occurred in this holy ground.
My brothers Benjamin and Jonathan, my neighbors Stephen and Garret, and friends
like Michael McDowell and Mary Neel, spent hours and hours building forts and
catching salamanders in the woods of Reynolda Village. The water, the woods,
and the wilderness were a net that captured my imagination. This was the
beginning of my pilgrimage. This place was Zion for me. It was sacred.
It makes sense
that I tried to baptize myself in one of the creeks that runs through this
land. I think I was unsuccessful. Yes, I was. But, even though I was crazy as I
tried to baptize myself, something deep inside of me was being magnetically
connected to that childhood stream of conscience. Larry Lewis, in his book, The
Misfit, explains that reaching out towards flowers, wind, water, and
the world, is a “gateway to the void.”
We all are confronted, even early in life, with “the void.” Its emptiness calls us to be more fully alive. The void
is one aspect of the reality of being human. We are called as people, and
certainly as Christians, to reach towards the void. And as a Christian, because
Christ did take up residence in a human
heart, and become Emanuel, I no longer have to wrestle with the void, with the
spaces between. Perhaps one of the greatest joys as Christians is this
realization that Christ came to fill this void, died in that void, descended
into that void, and has given us new life. In Christ, there is a new creation, and
in Jesus we have a man that was fully willing to fill that gap, that void, and
that tremendous space inside of our internal landscape. The cross is nothing
less or more than God’s rescue plan for the void.
Unfortunately, we
are not a lot like Jesus. We are more like Jonah, who though he was given life
in God, decided to start walking away from the void and from God’s commands. As
humans, we would rather be filled with entertainment in order to fill that
void. We who take up this cross, and walk this pilgrimage of life expose
ourselves to judgment, ridicule from others, and bitterness from our culture
and world. Yet we find that our misfit-edness is our grace. The divine love
given forth from the belly of the Father, to the Son, and back to through the
Holy Spirit in love is “not protection but the sustenance, the radical support
of knowing God’s promise is best remembered in the void.”[1]
Love lives in the void. Was it not Jesus Christ who entered into the void,
entered into a place that we cannot imagine? In fact, in our creed, we say, “He
descended to hell.”
Agape love is bred in this void. The
small Greek word, agape, reminds me of the patience God gave me in that last 20
minutes of our pilgrimage through Pittsboro. Patience is not ours. It is the
life and patience of God, in Christ, that surrounds us and turns us away from
our own impatience. God gives it to us freely.
The love of God, expressed in patience, would like to give itself away
and not be God. God is so generous that God wants to become a slave and die on
a cross, despite God’s absolute joy and complete wisdom. God is so humble that
there is no room for God’s possession even of God’s self. Jesus is the
cornerstone to this paradigm of agape love, self-giving emptiness and kenosis.
God simply wants to be given away. This is agape love, and this is the love
that is constantly branded upon us as we walk as Christian pilgrims. Our
pilgrimage is to join into the invitation of this God who allows us to join
into the gift of this humility and agape love. God allows us to feast at His
banquet table, and He does not mind if we call him names, are dressed like a
bum, or have 5 million dollars. Now, what I am trying to say is this. God wants us to be In Him. If there is anything He is doing, it is that he is inviting us to be partakers in His life. We have decided, as Christians, to sell our
fields because we have found the treasure. Our treasure is at the banquet table of the Lamb. Rather than be claimed by other
treasures, we can be claimed as God’s own treasure and life, in Christ.
[1] Larry Lewis,NM, The Misfit: Haunting the Human, Unveiling
the Divine. Orbis Books: Maryknoll, New York. 1997, p.18
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