dialogue in the woods

Matt and I are spending the weekend up at my bosses’ cabin in the Cascades.  We woke up this morning with the sun peeking through the trees into our bedroom.  Matt pulled the covers up over his face while I got up to slip on my sweatshirt, reheat a cup of coffee, and take our tiny dog Lucy outside. 

I’ve spent the last couple of morning hours tucked into an old brown recliner.  Lucy is asleep on a blanket in my lap, which also happens to be right in the path of the sole streak of sunlight beaming into the living room—no matter how hot it is inside, she always wants the sun.  I’ve got my cup of coffee and my copy of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies that I picked up at Powell’s bookstore last weekend in Portland.  I love flipping through used books… especially when I’m looking through timber beams at old, worn pine trees.  It’s grounding and slow, like time when you think about it. 

At the end of Lamott’s overture, she tells a story about a lost little girl saying to a police officer when she sees her church, “I can always find my way home from here.”  My eyes got teary when I read it.  I don’t even know why.  It’s just a lovely thought, I guess.  The kind of thought that squeezes my heart and reminds me why I love Jesus’ messy, broken church.  It’s like coming home. 

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write after that either.  I told Matt (who by this point is on the couch avidly working on his dissertation) that I was ready to take a break and do a workout, but then I changed my mind and said I needed to write instead.  Sometimes I get frustrated with myself for wanting so badly to have something to say, something to blog about—because it feels so good and fulfilling to collect meaningful thoughts and communicate them—but then coming up empty.  It’s like having wood, but no fire.  I start comparing myself to people who actually do have significant things to say, and I end up always wanting to write about someone else’s thoughts and ideas.  But today I’m realizing that that’s okay.  Brand new things can be shiny and beautiful, but so can old things—like aging trees or worn-in recliners or books that make you want to write as if you’re dialoguing with old friends.  I’m in the dance of human experience that draws each of us into something bigger than ourselves.  We’re meant to be mirrors of meaning to one another, and to reflect on that which makes life worth pondering in the first place.  So I don’t have to do it on my own.  I can sit in quiet spaces with authors and musicians and pastors I’ve never met and be welcomed into what a professor of mine would call the “Grand Conversation.” 

So thank you, Anne Lamott, for telling us about tide pools and alcoholism and feeling cracked and long walks on Belvedere Island and the gospel music that softened your soul.  And I’ll tell you in turn about sitting in a Snoqualmie cabin with my rescue puppy who’s finally sleepy and calm and how your stories remind me of my own home and Jesus and the Church that I love.