On Sunday we sang the lyrics
“I am alive because, You are alive in me… ”
Sometimes songs we sing on Sunday stay with me during the week. This one had fresh meaning as I sang.
I had just returned from a solo trip to the hills around Takapo, chasing deer. It struck me that there was a parallel between the song’s lyrics and what I experience on such occasions.
I am alive…
I am never as aware of my aliveness than when on my own in wild places. Every aging joint, every foot-fall, every breath, every heartbeat, every wafting scent. The laughter of tiny streams. Felt. Heard. Seen. My decisions are more conscious. I take notice of the paths I take, the safe routes, in and out. Moment by moment I monitor my hydration and energy levels, the spreading and retreating cold in my toes and fingers. I’m alert to every movement in the tussocks and flax. Signs of life. A deep consciousness.
The morning light…
I began walking in the frozen night, under a crystal-clear starfield, and watched dawn spread across the silhouetted Eastern range. First the softest pink tint, then yellows, then enough light to see by, finally early shadows, and a just perceptible warmth. Not just the light, but the wind too. Air-cooled at night over snow falling toward the lake. Later pausing and rising upward, as it does every day in one giant in-out breath.
The hope that calls me home…
Although I am driven to go to wild places, to solitude, there is always at some point a desire to turn for home. Not for soft beds, hot showers, the city. For someone. Anna. Wherever her arms are wide open I am home. I turn toward my beloved.
I cannot know how imperfectly knowing God changes all of this. Am I more alive than I would be? Has there been a slow transformation? Does love awaken my senses? I do think of God in big spaces, my imagination stretched as wide as the Southern Alps and overwhelmed. I do not know why they, and not the hills of Palestine are my inheritance, nor how to bring this back to my urban life. I read that worship is a long loving look at what is real. People are harder to see that way than streams and trees. Though not impossible-after all I have come love matagouri and wild roses. But still I wonder, can I call God my beloved? Do I return to their arms?