Foreign Grounds - Familiar Wounds

There seems to be a screaming cacophony playing itself about, a cry for reconciliation – both within the walls of my small world here and in the lands beyond them.

Middle Eastern news reports speak of sham democratic elections in Iran, now leaving the country in a spotlight of quandary. Drug wars and the hands of narco-politics are replacing affiliations formerly held by Westerner’s who thought of Mexico as a convenient and safe winter getaway. Nepalese in Kathmandu question the legitimacy of their new government as Maoists refuse to bow out of office quietly and threats of returned Civil War are rising. Accounts of soaring unemployment rates and bankruptcy have become the background hum of our days where fret and fear are hyper-inflated to full capacity.

The momentary ground I sit on is one at first glance disparate from those making headline news – but a closer looks reveals common cries emanating from worlds sitting in counter hemispheres.

Unlike the streets of Tehran, rural Alberta hosts few protests to challenge voter efficacy – but as I walk through my known avenues of ‘home’, a thousand silent rallies march about in my mind.  The causes differ, but I believe them worthy of a voice.  I’m sad for these streets – for the stories and lives that flow through them. I’m sad for the fight here. I’m sad for failed marriages, for brokenness in families that I knew so well - for the happiness that I remember they held. I am sad both for what has changed and what has not. I am sad for the knowledge that much of what I now see, really has always been.  Like the Iranians, my prestige for where I come from is suffocating under a truth that continues to ripen and expose, I am sad for the realization that our home can also possess our hell.

Narco-politics is a foreign term in my prairie town. We do not commonly experience the carnage that comes with drug related violence, nor do we witness known political corruption where a shiny profit can be turned for an easy exchange. Transactions of substance are calculated differently here – but they are not absent, and they certainly are not free of death.  Relationships are severed where a bar stool is more worn than the empty seat at a dinner table.  Addictions and their harrowing consequences are passed off as being recreational pastimes in a town where it is commonly said “there is nothing else to do.” ‘Fun’ and ‘amusement’ however seem temporary, withering under the reality that control is lost to the user, now a slave to a substance, mastered by a need. Like the people of Mexico I see that those I once respected and believed to be outside of it are not, I see that we are all people bound by addiction, myself no different, and that our worlds and are securities are contoured by the vices we wish to be free of.

Neither war, nor serious conflicts have touched the ground of my country for centuries. We have sent men to fight many fights, but we live mostly free of the the fear of national violence. I sleep at night with the sounds of prairie winds blowing the leaves outside of my window and coyotes barking into the black – I do not know the sounds of a country in terror. However, when I curl into bed at night to end my day, I cannot deny my internal conflict – a civil war within myself, a wanting to be good, an ongoing brawl to knock down my demons. Like the Nepalese I recognize that in spite of heartily seeking peace my old tyrants will surely rear their heads, I acknowledge that power is never easily dissembled. Like the people of Nepal my hope is that goodness will prevail.

Media fixations tend to center themselves on corporate bankruptcies and government bailouts – but the global recession has left no corner of the world untouched.  The bounty of Alberta’s oil money has dried up with the receding sea of drilling derricks that no longer adorn (or disfigure) our wheat fields. Our highways are given the grace of a lightened load where service equipment traffic continues to decrease - but our pockets feel much lighter as well. In times of terrifying economic uncertainty these headlines are not far from home – and the question they pose is more paralyzing than the financial fear attached to them – will we dare to ask “who are we without our money?,” “Who will we be when we cannot afford the toys and the lifestyles that we use to define ourselves?”  I am certain that one can recover from the downfalls of economic regression – but less sure that one can recover from living as a stranger to oneself. I pray that we will ask ourselves who we are and that our answers will provide reconciliation to reality, to ourselves, and to one another.

A thousand stories. A thousand subjects. A thousand lands.

Different, yet the same.

Segregated, yet connected.

Theirs, yet ours.

Humanity cries for reconciliation, for wholeness.

I know it only in their stories because I know it also in mine.

audeamus – ‘let us dare’ to recognize our collective humanity.

May we see that our torments are communal, that foreign grounds bear familiar wounds, and that reconciliation is possible.

 

 

 

 

a daring sky

I find myself again on the prairies where the weather becomes the fixation of most all conversation. I remember it always to be this way.

“We sure could use some rain,” plays out in harmonious floods through every local conversation; as soon as the words close on one set of lips, they start again on another.  “Sure wish the run-off could have filled the dug-out this year,” “Hope the moisture is on its way.” Most days the skies tend to withhold their bounty in spite of constant verbal requests.

The farmer’s fret blisters under this prairie heat where the absence of falling water will determine again what he will reap of a life sown in his beloved ground. The farmer’s yield is dictated by the ruling of an element he cannot control. He has surrendered; he works and tills and labors a land whose fruit ultimately is decided by a hand not his own.  The farmer is a man assembled in faith; he plants his hope with his seed and prays that both will rise from beneath their buried resting place.

I must believe that my being born here, calling this place ‘home’ for some twenty-three seasons of seed to harvest (well, to be exact, I guess I missed that first seed, as I ‘came to be’ somewhere smack in the middle of growing season) has put in me a potent wanting of those falling skies. My recollections of the earliest years are hazy – but what I do remember as constant, is a cry for rain. I remember parched grounds desperate for a swig of something that would keep them prolific and alive.

Little here has changed.

Bodies and the soil alike plead for rain. My petition is drawn for different reasons than that of the farmer, but we both yearn for a facet that will spill out mercy, for a gracious deluge that will feed something buried. Like the farmer, I pray for rain.

I like my sky the same way I like people: with depth and varied color, with dynamic character and pockets of surprise. I like a sky that stretches to define itself, a sky that will banner wondrous blues and then blow in dark corners to keep you guessing what it holds.   

I like a sky that refrains from overcast obscurity, one that keeps from that dreadful color called ‘gray’- which does little but ooze apathy in its choosing to be neither dark nor light. Gray must be avoided, for it is a compromise of what needs to be fully asserted in light or in darkness. Gray is half-hearted. I crave a sky that is about something – a sky that will boldly state that which it wishes to say.

In the face of wanting a torrent of rain - I temporarily love the soft skies, the happy skies; they remain calm, reserved for the exhibition of goodness where light transfers without effort, where warmth is blinding, and where creation manifests itself with brilliant blues and delicate brushes of white.  The light spans of sky are composed of modest strokes, they are humble in their presentation, they are quiet, and submissive to something beyond themselves. Soft skies are open, they are inviting, and they benevolently offer beauty where a distracted eye may easily miss their allure if not turned upward. Their message is not loud; it is one of beauty existing simply for the sake of the glorifying the beautiful.

Blue skies are lovely indeed – but their bestowal would go unrecognized and inadequately praised without the latter presence of their dark cousins. And often I find it is the dark that delivers. I crave that shaded transition; I hunger for what I hope will fall from weighted clouds.  I yearn for something fierce.

 

With a heart hungry, my beloved rain returns.

Forfeiting a solo performance, it comes accompanied with lucent flashes and hollers that captivate. I love the boldness of the storm, its raw expression. I love that it decides.  Dark clouds do not wait for you to finish your run when three miles of gravel separate you from your front door, they do not care that your car was washed just two hours ago and will now display murky spots instead of your gleaming efforts, the storm cares not that you left your clothes on the line to dry – it simply comes, self assurance streaming from every drop.

The storm is an activist for its anomalistic nature; it pickets luminescent skies and strident crashes of sound. We cannot deny it our attention; its beguiling nature pulls us from the places to which we have drifted, it brings us back. The storm demands our focus; it makes us aware - for it has something to say.  With such a hallowed performance I believe it worthy of my listening. 

I listen as rain pounds pavement, as it floods grasses and congregates in already fallen pools of itself. I listen as tiny drops jointly compose rhythms of deliverance where matter falls and is freed, and the fortuitous bystander gets to drink of the liberating waters.  It is here that my senses overload, incapable of devouring quick enough the sight of falling water, the kisses met upon my skin, the aroma of wet life.

It is here that my gaze is anchored on this masterful sky, on the beads of grace that fall from them. My romance with this storm rests upon just that - grace, upon an undeserved cleansing that frees me, upon waters that quench what has long been dry. 

Under His reigning sky something sprouts.  It is here that I know darkness capable of delivering life, that I am boldly reminded of grace and goodness disguised, and like the farmer I find that reaping what I sow is a matter of faith where my hands must be removed.

The storm beckons me in its boldness; it is daring. It calls us to live as it does, to shower dry grounds with truth, to extend mercy as it is so freely given. 

Audeamus – ‘let us dare’ to live stormful lives. 

May we be gracious to a world parched and waiting for rain.