Would you agree that Portland is an environment loving, dog loving, fast paced, technologically savvy, progressive (I did not say liberal), and hip city? Its bridges, rivers, roses and even parts of downtown Portland are beautiful.
I find it peculiar that the same folks who will not make eye contact with you in the mall or grocery store will smile and greet you when they pass by in one of our many parks. Do these same people haunt the social web sites and accumulate friends like badges of honor? If you'll look over the lettuce and say hello I'll follow you on Twitter, even if I can't walk as fast as you.
Do you ever take time to pause? How many of us will make time to stop and consider all our contradictions? Just as roses will reward the patient with a kiss of fragrance, pausing here and there, learning to be aware, and taking time to consider also has rewards. Did I mention patient?
For instance, do you really know what you believe? Does your life shadow what you believe or is what you believe a litany of contradictions that occasionally synchronize with what you say, but more often than not are like a book seldom read, a testament to inconsistencies and sometimes outright lies?
Maybe we don't stop or even pause because we are afraid to ask ourselves questions, questions that might sting at first, but questions that might widen our perspective, broaden our consciousness and actually help us live a fuller life. Did I mention patient?
What do you hope for? You can go deeper than a new iPad. Think beyond stuff. What do you hope for in the deepest part of who you are? Do you think about it much? If not, do you ever ask yourself why not?
What do you love? Can you get beyond sensory experience? Have you noticed that after all the analyzing there is further to go, but reason has sat down winded. When Lily asks me why I love her reason and my own understanding take me only so far. I can see the path continues on through the trees, but now we deal with matters of the heart where glib intellectual answers are as truncated as the unsubstantiated rational behind them.
Beyond the trails where the heart directs the path continues, but here it is a matter of spirit. The air is thinner and now you must be patient to learn how to breathe or you can't go on. Every time you come it is new. There is no Facebook, no cell phones, and no tape recorders. You know you are not alone. You know you have never been alone. You know that everyone you pass in life is intimately related to your own joy and your own pain. There is the sense that you can reach out and touch the heart of God.
This place has always existed and always will. It is the reason post modern humanity, like all its predecessors, will never extinguish the love of God. It is the reason our failure to make eye contact and greet one another is the greatest contradiction of all.
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