God's Country

Bridal Veil Fall, Yosemite, July 4th 2010

No matter how many times I make the trip to the Yosemite, each time I enter the Valley I am stunned anew. My eyes well up with tears and I’m left breathless at the sight of it.

I’ve struggled with my faith for years. The best I can say at this point in my life is that I embrace uncertainty. But as I take in the vast meadows of wildflowers pressed up against towering granite cliffs, deer grazing peacefully, bluejays and robins swooping low over the meadow, painted lady butterflies dancing on the air current, I can’t deny some kind of divine intelligence is at work here. Every butterfly, every fallen tree stump, is a unique work of art. I am probably guilty of overusing the word awesome, but in this case, it is truly…AWE some. Awe-inspiring. Enough so to drop me to my knees to say a prayer of gratitude, or at least acknowledge the creator with a “Dude, you rock!”

On the journey here, driving uphill through endless giant sequoias for so long I felt like we’d never get there. Then, we entered a long dark tunnel with only a pinpoint of light up ahead, and as we finally emerged into sunlight again, we were overwhelmed with a brand new landscape. Majestic granite walls painted all the colors of the ages surround us, sunlight filtering through the crags, waterfalls to our left, to our right, dropping over 5000 foot cliffs. Stunning, magnificent, heart-stopping wonder. Even as a writer, I’m at a loss to describe it.

Oh how I needed this. I’ve been so consumed by the stresses of every day life. I’ve forgotten what is real. That’s a good question to ask myself right now. What is real, anyway? What we believe is what becomes our personal reality. Lately, stress has become too much a part of mine.

Sometimes I forget that my daily reality is just one tiny part of what makes the whole of me. Independent of my career, my tax returns, my problems, I am a free spirit. Too often I forget that I’m capable of anything, that I can have big dreams, that life doesn’t have to be the way it’s programmed now. But in order to change things, I have to first change my mindset. Stepping into God’s creation is a great way to do it.

Even driving here, hour after hour of wide open farmland, rolling hills untouched by man, it’s inconceivable that this is California. There is so much more to this state than Hollywood, and L.A. and so much more to me then just who I am in L.A.

As I write this now, it is sunrise. I’m sitting with my laptop alongside the Merced river, swollen high with melting snow. The sound of rushing water is almost deafening, the air smells of a woodburning fireplace. A chickapee just flew up and sat beside me. Wow. Could life be any more perfect? This perfect still moment gives me the space to reflect, and in doing so I realize how much life is like that journey to Yosemite….the uphill climb that goes on forever, the dark tunnel where you can’t see what lies ahead, but oh my god, you have to just trust and hold on, cause when you get there, you’re not gonna believe your eyes. So much beauty lies ahead, so much unimaginable beauty. Just trust, and be patient. It’s coming….So enjoy the scenery along the way, and be content in your heart, knowing that every moment of this journey is leading you toward something magnificent.

Awake

Driving my son home from Pre-k today, the sky was huge and ominous - a sky big enough to swallow you like a speck of dust. Pregnant grey rain clouds overhead threatened to burst again. But in between, patches of blue, and just enough sun to cast a soft golden glow over the suburban landscape. Rays of sunlight refused to be oppressed, forcing their way through in sharp streams of silver. My god, that sky, those clouds. I thought of the times I've stood before a Vermeer painting thinking, where are those skies? Do they even exist anymore? And here it was. Today. Just for me.

I was sitting at a stoplight, listening to Regina Spektor’s gorgeous song Samson, and everywhere I looked, the world was in technicolor bloom bathed in that golden haze. Sparrows perched on telephone wires shook the rain from their feathers and swept across wet lawns, feasting on seeds and worms. Perfection in creation. Spring. My beautiful, beautiful Spring, my favorite time of year. Signs of hope, rebirth, new beginnings. Every bud, every blade of grass poking its head through the hardened ground saying look at me! I begin again, I am reborn! And how apropos, I thought, that this should happen just as I feel my own heart is beginning to thaw,  as I shed old skin and wounds mend into silvery fine-line scars.

It was this tiny ordinary moment, sitting at a red light, when all at once, a gust of wind blew through the dogwood trees and tiny white blossoms fell like snow all around me, covering my windshield and the hood of my car, my son in his car seat giggling with wonder.

Heart-stopping. Breathless. Wonder. It overtook me, and I remembered… the world is actually a perfect place, and everything is as it should be. I forgot. I forgot for so long.

That tiny moment broke my heart. Open.

And I wept.

Because I had forgotten how it felt to be wide awake in the world.