The first time I found myself today was on my routine morning run, when I finally panted, "God, I need you to crack open my heart...'. I waited for the result, for an answer. ...not much came, at least right away. Often, I've observed, God needs a little time. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is me who needs the time...to be able to receive Him. A few bends on the wooded path later, I breathed, "...it feels like I'm reaching into something without being able to grab anything".
I need time. Time to breathe my way into the chaos of my cluttered and spilling-over mind and heart. So many things going on, so many concerns, so much transition, so much unknown about the future, so much that seems beyond my capacity to manage, to understand. A swirl, it often is.
The morning sun bouncing off the crystal blue sky was reflected in the brook beside me (a Psalms-like shift here). The waters are loading up on the unrevealed, yet imminent colors of Fall. A slight ripple accentuated the shining rocks underneath it; all was moving somewhere. The air was cool; the day's warmth was encroaching. I felt that wonderous sense of anticipation. It was great to be alive.
I ran farther than I anticipated and had to stop, to gage a direction on how much more I could do. My back was towards the sun and my breath was forming a shadow of cloud. Steam rose from my skin. Hot and cool were dancing together. I wondered, in that moment of pause, of catching my breath, how this and the earlier seemingly unanswered prayer were now intersecting.
I saw a smattering of yellow-headed flowers and wondered about the cluster of them that had so impressed me last year. I saw trees strewn everywhere. Plants had exploded in every direction over the summer. Moss was verdant. Fungus was creeping. Birds were yacking away. A jack-rabbit darted in front of me. It was utter chaos. Not unlike what I feel, at times. Too much, too everywhere. Too out of control.
And yet, there was a sense that all the chaos and disarray was still subordinate to an order that presides over all of it. Nothing was really out of control. All was still ordered. The chaos was really only the current nature of my experience with it, in a small place, in time and space. The stars will still watching it all last night. The sun still arrived, right on time. The flowers will doing their vaporish thing, as they do every year.
All is well. And, I can sit in it and wonder about it, and wait for the greater of it to prevail. ...even in the chaos of my mind and heart. He did it...He cracked me open.
