God in the Yard: Karen's Journey, Part 3

Sitting in my living room alone one evening last week, I read through chapter three of L.L. Barkat’s book God in the Yard, entitled “Look: contemplation.” While thankful for the two housemates I live with, I was happy to be alone in my apartment and able to sit quietly with this book. Certainly an easier environment in which to “contemplate” then when the sounds of everyday life pour in (dishes in the kitchen, music in the background, running water in the shower). Quiet.

This week, Barkat gave me trees and bushes to consider, as she wrote about “marking a temple” in her spot of the woods, the idea of a hallowed space that allows you to openly and willingly take in your surroundings. Her words immediately prompted a memory of one trip I took to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in New York City. I went alone during cherry blossom season and after strolling around the gardens for a bit, laid down under a canopy of cherry trees, the soft grass under me, the amazing pink blossoms reaching over me, glimpses of sunlight sneaking in. My shoes were off, I wiggled my toes, and I just laid there. I stopped. Barkat quotes DaVinci who said, “Do not despise my opinion when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes...” How hard it is for us city people to stop! Maybe it’s hard for country people to stop, too, but my 17 years of life in NYC have taught me that there is indeed a drive and pace here that is faster than almost any place I’ve been.

Jesus stopped. He stopped for people (those most overlooked, those in the public eye, those in the middle) and moments (healings, meals, conversations) all the time. He didn’t just always sit with the Old Testament Scriptures but was in His Father’s world. The created world. The rivers and mountains and valleys and trees and bushes. Which is a huge part of contemplation. Quoting Calvin Miller, Barkat writes, “Christ doesn’t just lord it over the natural world. He inhabits it.” WE are part of God’s natural world because He created us. And we bring to our understanding an “inner landscape” that as Barkat suggests “...may be crucial to the contemplation process.” So, why not lie in the grass, under a tree, or near an oft-forgotten bush? Take God’s written word and stop for it- let it settle in and take root; but also, stop for God’s created world and realize that He is speaking as much through it as through any word on a page.

“Ever present, never twice the same.” (Anonymous) O, that I will stop more.