Searching for the Pole of Inaccessibility

“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.