Part 3: Let's get Physical

Beautiful. A rustic barn with a fireplace, fresh cut green flowers hung from glass jars and lights wrapped around the beams like lace. The people that filled the room were just as warm: there was the rosy-cheeked and wrinkled, the rounded bellies, the frail, the loud; so many full of life and love. The rain poured on for most of the ceremony, but the barn was nestled in safe and dry under it's rafters and wrap-around porch. A great way to start a life together.

...

I'm sitting in the hotel again after a dip in the jacuzzi, feeling very fresh and settled in. It's very strange being here without my family, the quiet is consuming. I'm grasping to stop and cherish each little moment of this whirlwind trip, desperately trying to take advantage of the time to write and explore both the physical and immaterial.

The sound of the massive river. The smell of the empty barn in the afternoon, the burning wood stove and flowers filling the rafters. The fox in a field I caught dashing of with a rabbit in his jaws, the long-horn cattle in the rain, the red-tailed hawk diving through dark branches.

My friend Christin, who I miss dearly since she moved to Bellingham, reminded me once how we experience the Spiritual through the Physical. That, because we are physical beings, we must access life through our physical bodies. Like if I describe the physical bride: "wild chestnut curls atop a petite porcelain frame; she had a hearty laugh that all too often escaped her open jaws, tossing the curls about with beautiful abandon." This describes an experience so much richer than "the bride was beautiful, had a good sense of humor and seemed happy."

Those physical details help us access the great beyond that still often leaves us lost for words, such as the belief that we all belong somewhere. The mystery that somehow I still long to find that home on earth. The connectedness of us all. The magic of community. The sacred covenant of marriage. The divine awesomeness of nature. The incredible resilience of humanity.

I've missed feeling connected to God lately, forgotten how to access that part of my journey for many months. I've been floating, evading the God questions that feel too deep to ever get me anywhere. So, while I struggle with the vastness of my Creator, paying attention to physical details he created has been a remarkable exercise. The physical world is simpler to access than spiritual mysteries, yet is is not one against the other. Instead, observing the physical has been a more intensely intimate exercise in rekindling my thirst for the Divine.