I’m on “staycation” this week with plenty of time for projects and personal interests and maybe even some play.
But I’m definitely going to walk a lot this week. Sometimes I enjoy walking the “mean streets” of downtown Plainfield. In a hokey way, it stirs up sentimental feelings of belonging and community. But this week I’m bored with my regular route, so I headed to a newly discovered park in a nearby town. The walking road (it’s not really a trail) winds back and back to a playground, amphitheater and community building overlooking a pond. While the pond is hugged on one side by a line of tall straight trees, when you sit in the Adirondack chairs on the back patio of the community building and look out over the pond, it is a nice slice of sky.
It’s my new favorite place. Yesterday, I paused my ipod and just listened to silence. I was the only one there. No other cars or people--not even any insect-buzz. The only other creature was one dark hawk waltzing above the trees in hypnotizing figure-eights. I waited to see if it would dive for food – but it just kept catching the next breeze under its wide wing-expanse.
Now, I love my intimate fenced-in back yard. And I’m grateful for the town trail that brushes past front porches and bisects traffic. But sometimes I want to be in wider spaces. I remember the post-college summer I spent in Montana where the sky would swallow you up. We would drive up to the peaks to watch the sunset, or pull over to watch lightning tear up the horizon.
In the Bible, King David celebrates how God brought me out into a spacious place, and follows that up with a declaration that God rescued me because he delighted in me. (Psalm 18:19). Another version says it more plainly: God stood me up on a wide-open field.
This verse has always been meaningful to me, but I could never really explain why. The picture of God bringing me out into a wide-open field is freeing to me. And I know that freedom is God’s thumbprint on any life.
Today, I headed to another park in the opposite direction. The trails there are lined by tall grass or covered over by tree-branches. I took a right turn on the “bat trail” (which freaked me out a bit) and entered the woods. To my left and to my right was bushy, verdant growth. I was imagining and acting out a scene from the movie Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis. And I wondered what creatures might be hiding under all that green.
I prefer spacious places. No enemies. No hidden snares. No fear. No smallness. No cramped quarters. No dark and shady places. No obstacles. No climbing or digging or ducking. Just space, and plenty of it.
And symbolically and spiritually, that’s what God wants for me. Spacious living! He delights to rescue me TO spacious living, and FOR spacious living.
So I am seeking out these slices of sky; searching for these large, airy places. And maybe, I’ll lay on my back and watch the cauliflower clouds roll past. Or maybe instead, I’ll fling my arms open and spin around like I’m in a music video. And then there is also the option of riding the wind in figure-eights with the hawks! I’m definitely starting to feel His delight again.
