the fog

Nature seems to speak to me as often as people do. As seemingly romanticized as you may think it is, the every day happenings of nature may be just as biblical as the man speaking from the pulpit. The rocks will cry out, the trees will clap their hands, the hills rejoice, the heavens display his wonder…we are spoken to in every day parables but don’t often have the ears to hear what is being said.

I’ve been going on walks…a lot. It seems that when life doesn’t made sense to me, the only thing I want to do is walk…maybe it’s a coping mechanism like at least I can create the illusion of going somewhere for about an hour before life goes back to normal again. Walking uphill isn’t easy and I live in a very hilly area. Running uphill is harder. Strangely enough, I’m developing an appreciation for it even though my lungs kill during this self inflicted punishment and let me just say my knees make me feel like I’m 67 instead of 27. I recently was talking with a friend and said I feel like I’ve been going uphill for the past two and half years.  Do you know what I mean? Like you’re pushing a 80 pound refrigerator up a gravel hill and getting absolutely no where. I mean, yes we do have to make it up the hill and there will probably be a lot of larger hills once this one is over with but sometimes we make things a lot harder for ourselves. My particular useless burden happens to be worry or fear…they are heavy. Sometimes bitterness, resentment or discontentment gets thrown in for good measure.

I’ll walk on sunny days, rainy, or what has been a common occurrence, on foggy days. Last winter was the first time I encountered Kandern fog. My usual path is one that goes up into the hills a bit and has a really beautiful view on a clear day. On this particular day, I started walking uphill and quickly found that I could only see about a few feet in front of me. Kind of a strange feeling, slightly disconcerting. I kept walking and absorbing what I saw around me…not very much except for the faint outline of the bare trees. Their lines stood out against the fog and it was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in a while. Their up-stretched arms unlocked my own sentiments of vulnerability and a silent plea to the heavens to make sense of this life.  I question God. Not something I am particularly proud of. Who am I to question the God of the universe? It does not seem like a smart thing to do. Unfortunately, I am not always governed by reason. I’ve been reading “Letters to a young poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke and he urges his friend “to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.”  I’ve hated the questions and all that is unresolved in my life, fighting against them and trying, quite aimlessly to “figure them out”. I imagine the easiest way to live so that my life stays preserved and comfortable. But this is not the way of God. I must give it up, denying the right to live my own life the way I think it should be. This is a hard one. I don’t want to die, to loose my life but amazingly enough it seems that is the only way to keep it. One of the many mysteries of this life on earth. Though it may be difficult, little by little allowing God to speak and to direct so that His plans are worked out in my life is the safest and most life preserving thing to do.  I’m reminded by a passage that says “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)  I know that I have the light of life already in me but I often do not live like I do. I have to remember that am not walking in darkness though it may be foggy. I don’t really know where my life is leading, nor am I holding the reigns but there is light where ever the Master is and I am with Him.

So this fall,  I’m once again walking along my old path, only seeing what is immediately before me because of this incredible fog, a sign of God’s grace because I most likely can’t handle seeing more. The leaves are shedding their glory but there is just enough golden flecks tenaciously holding on to tell me that it’s not over yet or more over, when those last few leaves do give up it’s not over then either. There is life after death. If you loose your life for Christ, you will find it. And lastly, when the sun starts making its way up towards the sky, the fog parts just long enough to send the most breathtaking shimmer through the trees. It stays long enough for me to say Thank You. Thank You God for roads that go uphill, for golden trees and the naked ones too, for the blinding fog  and the light that in its own timing will chase it away.