Thursday, Day 47: Clouds
When I was little, I was fascinated by clouds. I liked to
lie down in the grass and stare up at the sky. Sometimes I closed my eyes and
imagined I was lying down on a cloud. The cloud formed around my body, cradling
me, and I would forget that I was actually on a hard surface. At other times I
imagined eating the white substance—mashed potatoes or cotton candy, depending
on what I was craving.
At some point in the second grade, I learned what clouds
actually were. I was so fascinated by the fact that the science did not match
up to my imagination that I got a book from the library with photos of the
different types of clouds and (a simplified version) of the scientific reasons
they looked the way they did. I learned all of their names, learned to identify
them while lying on the grass. But I missed my old imaginary cloud-world. I
wanted it back.
Knowing what I knew about clouds, I was suspicious about the
Ascension story as a child. If Jesus ascended into a cloud and faded from view,
where did he go? I had been as high as I knew humans had ever been, at least
within the Earth’s atmosphere, looking down at the clouds—there was nothing “up
there” but more space, space a jet plane could move through to get us across
the globe to visit family. If astronauts had managed to break out of the Earth’s
atmosphere, even to walk on the moon, and hadn’t found heaven, where was it?
The first time I rode in a plane, I was 9 and headed to
Greece to meet the family I’d heard about and talked with on the phone but
never seen in the flesh. I don’t remember much about the long flight except
that somehow I ended up sitting separately from my parents and sister. An
elderly Greek lady kept kicking my seat from the back, and another kept turning
around to scold me, though I can’t remember what I was doing.
Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, because my most vivid
memory of that plane ride is waking to a bright light, and looking out the tiny
plane window. We were above the clouds! It was the most awe-inspiring image I
had ever seen. I could tell, for the first time, what the clouds actually were,
could see the misty particles that made up their ever-shifting shapes. But I
also felt in my body a deep sense of the mystery. I realized in my body that it
was OK to want to lie down on a cloud, even if that wasn’t actually possible.
It was OK to love the clouds both for what they actually were and for what I
had imagined them to be.
The Ascension seems to be about Jesus leaving for another realm
we can’t see or understand. But it is actually about trust. If the story
actually unfolds as we’ve been taught, God must have trusted humanity to some
extent. God knew we didn’t need the man in the flesh to make sense of his
teachings. Somehow the disciples had to believe that there would come a day (in
traditional teachings, on Pentacost) when the Holy Spirit would be present with
them always, and they would have to quiet their hearts and listen to make sense
of what to do next.
In a way, we have it a lot harder than the disciples. We
didn’t walk with Jesus, and we didn’t see him in those 40 days after his death
when he apparently continued teaching and making connections between the
scriptures of old and his own life. But we have both what we know to be true
and our own imaginations—the ability to see the clouds as ice crystals so light
and airy they can float, as well as soft beds close to the warmth of the sun where
we’ll someday get to sleep.
In the same way, we can try to make sense of Jesus’
life from an historical perspective, read the words in the Bible and try to understand them through a study of the art of translation and the cultural and historical context
in which they were written. We can study the different versions of the same
story by researching who the writers were, what they had experienced, and
what they were trying to accomplish.
But we can also take imaginative leaps, and this seems to me to be equally, if not more, important than the study. We can picture
ourselves on the Mount of Olives, looking up. We can still our hearts and
imagine what that would have been like, and feel that awesome sense of trust
that was given to us in that moment, and in the Pentacost that follows.
We can
hear God saying, You’ll have to figure
out what to do next without a man-in-the-flesh to lead you. You’re going to
make some mistakes, and you’ll need to figure out how to forgive and ask for
forgiveness, how to move forward. The world is going to change, and humans are
going to have more and more information to work with. You won’t be able to
literally follow everything I said or did in light of those changes, and there
won’t be definite answers anywhere. You’re going to inherit challenges you didn’t
create and you’ll have to sort out what responsibilities you have to address
them. You’ll have some random stories in a book and the holy spirit to guide
you, but that’s about it—you’ll need to form your own communities to find the
support you need along the way.
Addendum:
This is my last post in this series. This was an incredible project for me. It provided me with a new spiritual discipline. It reconnected me with my writer-self, a part of me that I had lost in the craziness of new job responsibilities and life changes. It allowed me to let go of my inner critic, to post pieces I would normally have spent months refining before showing to an audience. It made my previously private blog very public, exposed me in ways that required risk and trust. Thank you for reading along regularly, or showing up once in awhile. whether or not you talked with me about these posts or posted comments. I am taking a break from my "day job" at a college and Petalouda House to teach a study abroad, service-learning course in Greece, and I need to focus my attention to preparing spiritually, mentally, and logistically for that trip. (We do have someone living at the house to take care of things while we are gone). I hope to update this blog either during the trip or after my return with some reflections on what it was like for my spouse and I to take 17 students, our daughter, and her godmother to a country and nursing home in economic crisis and figure out what we can realistically do to make the situation better. Please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers as we take off for this new adventure! And, please continue to keep Petalouda House in your thoughts and prayers; we will regroup and begin future planning for the house when we return!
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