What's in your sack? the traveler, stooped from the heaviness, is asked.
My Mother.
Isn't she heavy?
She sure is.
Why don't you put her down?
I can't.
Well, why can't you stop carrying her?
I don't know. I've always carried her.
I know this: I, too, carry a sack, and am reluctant to set it down.
What is in the sack is not the primary issue.
Our sacks can carry a whole lot of things.
the anxiety of the day,
past grievances,
woundedness,
an unfair life,
an "unpaid" debt,
a preoccupation with busyness,
our desire for perfection,
self-righteousness,
our need to impress.
Whatever it is, we find reassurance in the weight. Whatever it is, every single one prevents us from accepting life as a gift today.
Awhile back I was traveling from JFK to Dallas. First Class. (It was be-nice-to-middle-aged-writers day.) Next to me, a young man (perhaps 30) works at his lap top. Until we depart he is conducting business on his cell phone. On his armrest table are reports and other paperwork. He is dressed in his business attire, a perfectly starched shirt, tie still knotted. His dress and his focus impress me. I am reading a novel. During the meal, he asks, "So, what do you do?"
I usually respond to that inquiry, "I'm a TV Evangelist."
Mostly because people do a double-take, and more than likely--for the rest of the flight--leave me undisturbed.
"I'm a writer."
"Like Stephen King?"
"Very similar," I say.
Then I tell him about my book
Soul Gardening. He tells me a story. "When I was a boy in northern Texas, my grandmother had a garden. And she loved
green beans. And she loved me. One of my favorite memories is helping my grandmother pick
green beans. Today, my life is good. I have a big house and a bigger mortgage. But that means that I work 60 hour weeks, and I have a hard time keeping up my commitments to my wife and three kids. And sometimes, I get a little overwhelmed. I've never told anyone this, but last year I planted a
green bean plant. In back of my house. It's not much, and it made my wife laugh, but it's amazing what it does to my blood pressure, every time I return home from a trip. It reminds me of my grandmother. Peaceful somehow. Strange, huh?"
No, I tell him, not strange at all.
Here's the deal: Everybody needs a green bean plant.
When he visits his green bean plant, he sets his sack down.
When he visits his green bean plant, he practices sanctuary.
A sanctuary is a place where I am at home with my own company.
A sanctuary is about union restored.
A sanctuary is a place of rest (Sabbath).
A sanctuary is about setting the sack down.
Sanctuary is that place where time is sacred.
In our hurried and over-hyped world, we need sanctuaries.
This is a simple truth. Just not so simple to follow through.
My sanctuary is my garden. Unfortunately, I have been away from home for several days, so my schedule is off-kilter. I miss my garden. Parts of my trip did not go as planned, so I'm out of whack. Anxious.
While I am eager to return to my garden, I miss the point entirely if I assume that my sanctuary is a place that I orchestrate or manage. As if the sacred present and tidy control are synonymous. Perhaps Hesse is right, "Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself." Even on trips when you are out of whack.
Spent
time this weekend at a Retreat Center --with a group of new friends from the Diocese of Tucson--in the Tucson Mountains. Around me, a 360 degree vista of the Tucson, Tortellina and Catalina mountains. In this desert landscape, the lines or outlines of rock outcroppings are precise, distinct and clear. This is a drawing in pen and ink. There are no trees, or at least none compared to where I live, so the sound of the wind is shaped by sand and stone. Their Pala Verde Tree is unlike our trees in the Pacific Northwest which all sport great leaves having no fear of a searing summer sun. Our forests are luxuriant and abundant. Here the landscape is minimalist. Stripped down. In the Pacific Northwest, our sky and landscape meld, and the tree tops look like great slashes of green paint, as if the Creator's hand and broad brush left the canvas there. Here, in the desert, the colors are reduced, distilled to their basic, simple essence.
This much is true: My heartbeat slows here. The elements here conspire to slow me. A part of me wants to know why, and figure it all out. Another part of me just accepts the magical elixir of this place, this sanctuary; this reprieve, container and breathing space. Last night just before dusk I wandered. I round a corner in the path and there is a stab in my chest. The cliff, the outcropping, stands in an eerie light. Beyond it, an almost full moon on a steel blue sky. In the dusk light, Saguaro Cactus stand, like grand pincushions, or sentinels, or long ago abandoned May poles. I take a breath and set down my sack.
The parts of the Christian story that had drawn me into the Church were not the believing parts but the beholding parts. Barbara Brown Taylor
