Can we just remember this is a beautiful world? For a
moment? Tonight, we went to a Shakespeare production in a park, beautifully
backdropped by the harvest vineyard, rolling hills of green and golden earth,
and the ridges of chehalem mountain and bald peak at our backs. The oaks
hovering over our heads were sparse, but offered the perfect shade for an
evening show, and the clean country air: perfect – pluperfect, perhaps.
Metaperfect, superperfect, extraperfect.
Just because man sinned does not mean God’s creation
invariably became un-good. I witnessed a piece of its marvel today. And
Shakespeare was an exquisite accent on the bountiful blessings of our
landscape, showcasing the creativity of the creation itself. Who spins words as
that, since?
It can feel wrong to revel in such things when, around the
world, people endure, and are contemporaneously enduring, agony, pain,
sickness, angst, suffering. As my best friend and his wife attend to her mother
who, even now, lies on what may be her deathbed; as malnutrition drags children
to their knees, and injustice psychologically scars thousands and is not punished,
remedied, or healed; as people die at the whims of country leaders sitting in
comfortable chairs – how can I be so insensitive and admire this world, sighing
at its grace, form, color, and clever creativity? This world that has, too,
inspired a million poems, countless plays, dances, celebrations, relationships,
love, painting, music, sports, books, and a thousand thanksgivings – can I
cherish so simple a thing as a sunset over a vineyard, tonight? Can I feel the
Spirit moving over the hills, and smell the heady wines in the air and the
sugar grapes at their vines, and can I wait on the Lord, and be still in the
wooded grove, listening to the whispering world sing praise?
If not I, then who? And so I must, and though I remember (or
try) all their pains, the glory is here, also. I am thankful for that. God is
not gone, and never was. But sometimes, I’m hard of seeing, poor of hearing,
and dumb of speech, and the country is the perfect remedy for this disease.
Lord, oh let me just be at peace with this beautiful sky full of stars for a
little while, and the poplars brushing with the breeze, and the orchards thick
with the redolence of green, and the apples collecting on the sidewalks and
thick in the branches, and the plums plump in the leaves, and the blackberries
bulbous on the vines, and the comfort of friends forever close, and the
patience of a picnic in the crook of the hill – I’m a lamb in the pasture,
forever by still waters and thick grasses lead, and let me follow, please.
We can remember it is beautiful. And then, when pain comes and passes we can look at beauty anew and richer and find it ever the more wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI liked, "God is not gone, and never was. But sometimes, I'm hard of seeing, poor of hearing, and dumb of speech..."
Seeing beautiful things with you, just in a different place. Love you Benny.