Alone and Together

When I think about it, I try to calm myself down and stop thinking - at least stop thinking about the checklists of life; the schedules and petty orders.

I try to just "be" here and there.

These are fleeting moments.  They sneak up on me and they're gone in an instant if they're not invited to stay.  There are side effects to these daybreaks: I get lost in daydreams, longing and an amped-up creativity.  So, these moments lend themselves to a pouring out of myself.  I like to write poems and songs, especially.  They're practically the same thing.

There is one particular song that I've been thinking about lately.  It's called "Brave Aurora".  It's about the experience I had in Iceland seeing the Northern Lights for the first time and how that event relates to the way that I experience love.

I'm not sure how many of you EPIC kids have seen the Northern Lights before.  If you haven't, imagine what you might expect them to be.  Just now, I almost opened up a new tab in my browser to Google "Aurora Borealis" so that I could give you a semi-accurate description of what the Northern Lights actually are.  It's junk having to do with ions and Earth's magnetic bands and blah, blah, blah.  The science is not as important as the experience.

What do you imagine the experience of seeing the Northern Lights is like?

When I hopped on the bus and headed out into the frozenness that is the hinterlands of Reykjavik I had an idea of what I might see.  I certainly had no expectation of any kind of cosmic spiritual experience.  I thought I would see some clouds of color kind of like a sunset, get back on the bus and check a global experience off my list.  I befriended a super nice British family on the way out there and we laughed and ate biscuits together.  When we got out into the middle of nowhere (in a country that is essentially the middle of nowhere) I stepped off the bus and almost biffed it on the ice.

A Phoenix kid has zero idea of how to walk on ice.  A Phoenix kid also has no idea of how to dress in actual cold weather.  Ever step into the walk-in freezer in O'Carroll Hall?  It's like that only colder, windy and without the turkeys.

I shuffled and slid across the ice to a place where I was alone.  I started to watch the skies.

Sure enough, over the ridge of the mountains, a green glow started to appear.  It morphed, and moved - it grew in intensity.  It was a bit elusive, almost fragile, like if it were a candle I could blow it out.  Essentially, though, it was what I expected.

Then there was a change.

The Northern Lights started to come through the sky to me.  What was a pretty picture that would elegantly fill out a frame became something more.  2-D became 3-D and it was unexpected, heart-quickening and, it seems funny to say it, almost dangerous.  An experience became an encounter.  I was by myself, but I felt a part of everything.  I was alone and together.

I think that most of us have an idea of how we will experience love in our lives.  We see others' relationships, we talk with God, we have relationships of our own.  We get comfortable with the idea we've formed about what an experience with love is... then we have an encounter.

The world had an encounter with God's love through Jesus Christ - an encounter that we are called to have as his disciples.  This is a radical love that added an unforeseen and unexpected dimension of depth.  The love of the Risen Jesus Christ takes directions which catch us vulnerable and off guard.  To love like him, our love cannot be a passive experience.  It cannot be distant or waiting.  It's cannot be politically expedient or put on hold until we get our lives together.

This is the time to love dangerously like God loves us.


What I'm listening to: