looking through me

Category: Uncategorized

May 14, 2015

white space

Too much white space. That was my first thought.

The image to the left of the text looked awkward and unbalanced. I found another picture to pair with it. It eliminated the rogue white space. The flow improved. The spacing was perfect.

But eliminating white space in my life has never made the flow better. Excess margin is not a problem for me.

My calendar isn’t jam-packed, just full. Yet white space—margin—is more than what’s left around the edges. It’s a way of life. It’s the best yes, not simply learning to say no. It’s respecting that I wasn’t designed to go, go, go. None of us were.

Sabbath. Rest. Stillness. Margin.

It’s more than aesthetics. It’s nonnegotiable.

Quiet moments let me hear the uncertainty and worry thrumming through me. Only then can I trace them back to the source of anxiety gnawing at me.

In still moments I can feel the restlessness and see how it drains me. I can turn it back in fumbled phrases to the One who soothes the places left chafed from striving.

But margin isn’t one size fits all. Neither in quantity nor in practicality.

I need to turn off the TV, to be alone, to let my fingers drum a keyboard until free-form thoughts work their way to coherence. I need to read words of wisdom and listen more than talk as I pray. Those are my regular rhythms to maintain safe borders.

But that’s just me in this season. Sometimes I can handle tighter spaces; other times I have to clear the deck and sit in the openness.

I seek white space. I stake it out and guard it.

White space keeps the text and the images—the noise—from overwhelming my soul.

 

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May 8, 2015

nonnative species

Three coyotes crossed the road—at a full sprint down the railroad tracks, through the industrial park, at 7:20 a.m. Right in front of my car.

They looked healthy. Full coats. Loping gait. Tongues lolling. Another coyote or two appeared to be running ahead of them. A pack of coyotes deep in suburban sprawl? Were they out of place or was I?

It’s a dissonance I feel more and more often:

. . . A hummingbird resting on a chain-link fence. The diamond opening looming large around the tiny body.

. . . A mockingbird singing a spot-on version of a car alarm before transitioning into the warning beep of a truck in reverse.

. . . A Gerbera daisy sticking its solitary red head out of the drought-hardened ground—not a leaf around it—unconcerned with the critical photosynthetic property of leaves.

. . . An amaryllis trumpeting its arrival to the neighborhood.

. . . Six parrots flying overhead in bright green, squawking pairs.

Nature surviving in the middle of cookie-cutter city startles me. I assume the flora and fauna is out of place, but maybe it’s me.

Like the red-crowned parrots I’ve adapted well to an environment I was never meant to live in permanently, but no amount of time and familiarity will make me a native. I am a temporary resident.

The only home I’ve ever known will not be my forever home. A day is coming when fences and freeways and power poles and police sirens will be no more. The lion and the lamb will rest together; the coyote will cross the street . . . and neither occurrence will be out of place.

 

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