“A
pole of inaccessibility marks a location that is most challenging to
reach owing to its remoteness from geographical features that could
provide access. Often it refers to the most distant point from the
coastline. The term describes a geographic construct, not an actual
physical phenomenon.” --Wikipedia
I
long for this season of Advent to be my journey towards a spiritual
pole of inaccessibility.
I
imagine this pole of inaccessibility to be a frozen wonderland, out
of cell range, away from the noise and confusion of the world. A
place where silence, a clear conscious empty of troubling thoughts
awaits.
I'll
leave behind busyness, the shopping lists, lights to string, holiday
parties, cookies and decorations. I want the arduous, soul-cleansing
journey to the heart of being, to the heart of faith.
Yesterday
on the radio as I drove around running errands, steering my creaky
ship around icebergs of duty and responsibility, I heard a very smart
and accomplished film maker say, “This idea that God is going to
take care of you and comfort you and relieve you of your burdens, and
relieve you of your sorrows is a wonderful imaginary
idea.”
God
is as imaginary as this magical pole of inaccessibility. It is
imaginary only if your definition of relief of your sorrows and
burdens
means taking them away; poof-like, with an Abracadabra, and a
may-the-Lord-hear-our-prayer and suddenly what troubles us is gone.
Our
burdens and sorrows are exactly the places to most directly and
easily find God. Difficulties create the opportunity to experience
God's mercy. Not because God doesn't offer it unless we first suffer.
We're just more likely to be open to mercy when we are burdened.
God's
grace is so easy, so every day, so
small, so abundantly available that
we often miss it, or dismiss it. That smart film makers says, “There
is something in the world that does that (provide relief) sometimes
its nature, and sometimes it's music and sometimes it's love from
people who care about you, sometimes it's just quiet. I don't know
what it is.”
That
crazy God of ours wears everyday clothes. God wears the faces of
those we love (even the faces of those we dislike).
God comes disguised as nature, music, quiet, I don't know what.
God
comes in the middle of a fight when we remember we love this
irascible person arguing with us. God comes in the distractions, the
twinkling lights, the smell of cookies baking. God comes in the quiet
moment when we catch our breath from carrying a bucket full of duty.
God comes in the middle of the hardship to the pole of
inaccessibility.
“A
pole of inaccessibility marks a location that is most
challenging to
reach.”
Life
is shockingly
hard for me. Especially since
God gives
everyone else a pass. Everybody else floats
above the chaos and muck of life while I plod, hip-deep and sometimes
stuck fast, in the muck. I've spent
a lot of time sulking about the injustice of this system. Sulking has
the advantage of keeping you quiet and still. As I sat sulking,
friends and family started using words like surgery, divorce, tumors,
job loss and they were talking about their life, not mine. Life
taught me no one gets a free pass.
Life is hard on all of us.
I
want to lift Advent out of the muck of responsibilities, committee
meetings, errands and cleaning the house. I want Advent to shine like
a candle of hope, unsullied and remote.
God
has other plans. It is challenging to reach this place of hope. There
are mountains of tasks, swamps of despair, swarming clouds of the
gnats of responsibilities.
“Often
the pole of inaccessibility refers to the most
distant point.”
I
long for a bigger faith
life than my wishes for the magical, the perfect, the care-free. This
distant point that I've set my compass to is a
small pole in the daily choppy, icy seas of life. It is so easily
missed. What I want is acceptance
of a daily routine filled with noise, opposition, anxieties.
I
suffer because I want to be alone with silence, with perfection.
Instead I'm knocked over by the winds of change, the wave of turmoil.
I am prone to see these winds and waves as defeats when they are
really training in the art of living. They are the path to the pole
of inaccessibility.
Wishing
you God speed, sweet pea, on
your
journey to your own pole of inaccessibility.
