The Brink

There are no hills where I live. The good thing about it is that if you get out to the country you can see for miles and miles. I don’t live in the country so I can’t see much from where I am. Sometimes I go visit the hill country and I wonder how in the world those hills aren’t called mountains…they look so huge to me.
On my way home from work there is a part of the road where you curve out of a neighborhood and a scene opens up because there is a slight slope. The view on top of the slope allows you to see almost the entire lake with the city skyline in the background. It occurred to me one day that the view is to the west. I go to a parking lot there sometimes now just to watch the sunset.
I pulled up into this parking lot the other day and I was a bit perturbed that there were other cars there doing the same thing. I’m glad that people are taking time out of their day to watch God paint something new moment by moment instead of watching the nightly news or Seinfeld reruns, but they were in my peripherals. Something in me wants to go to the edge…get as high as I can and right on the edge…nothing to the right or left just beauty and majesty as far as I can see. It makes me feel like Elizabeth Bennett. I didn’t get to experience that the other day but I was surprised at how much I could feel that desire burning inside me.
I’ve never been one to fear heights. It exhilarates me to be at the peak or the top of something. Two of my favorite places as a child were on this cliff at the lake where they put a giant cross and this tower on top of a hill on Papa’s ranch. I would go up there by myself on holidays and sing and pray that nobody below could hear me sing. Its probably why I learned to fly, but I realized that having a giant piece of metal surrounding me takes away from the effect I was looking for.
There were small mountains (probably hills) surrounding the lake in the city where I lived in China. One day some friends showed me the trail to the top. We walked up there and climbed onto a giant rock that jutted out from it. You could stand up there and see the whole lake with all its islands and little pagodas sticking up everywhere and a giant city surrounding the entire thing. So mystic and eastern. The smog swept over the lake in wisps of fog…just for effect.
I knew I had to come back by myself early in the morning and watch the sunrise. So, a few weeks later, I hopped on my bike at 4:30 in the morning racing the sun and hoping I could make it to the top of the mountain in time to see it peak through. Unlike driving, when you are trying to get somewhere quickly on your bike you inevitably get the Wizard of Oz wicked witch song in your head. I locked up my bike and set up the trail. I was surprised how many others were there. Mostly pretty old people… I might even say elderly. As my legs ached I wondered how in the world these old people could do this all the time. But more importantly…why? I got to my rock and sat down on the edge with my walkman and journal. Soon after an old man hopped onto the rock with me…in his underwear. (different culture…you get used to it) I was frustrated with the distraction, but it soon became more distracting as he started stretching and flailing his arms. Then it came..a giant, bellowing yell. He began to yell from his gut out into the openness. More than an ahhhh…it was an ohhhh hohhhh…if you can imagine. He would take a stance, a deep breath and just let it go. It occurred to me as I looked out at the tree-covered mountains to my right and left that there were people all over yelling. What were they yelling at? How did I not know that this goes on? How can people be so weird and different? Why do I want to join them so badly?
Since I was a missionary at the time, I imagined they were crying out for a savior. Like they woke up to an aching body, feeling every bit of their humanness, pushed it to its brink…beat it up to prove that it wouldn’t get the better of them…that there is something inside that is stronger. And when they get to the point that only creation is limiting them to go any further, they suck in the air and cry out to God. “Why?!” “Is this it?!” “Why does it hurt so bad?!” “Do you even care?!” “Save me!”
I wish I was the kind of person who could stand up at that moment and yell like I wanted to. I had some things I wanted to yell at the Lord. But I didn’t. I sat there in my three square feet of American culture listening to Shane and Shane and writing in my journal. I went back a few weeks later with some friends so that we could yell together. We took turns yelling while videotaping it on our digital cameras. Needless to say, the authenticity and emotion were sucked right out of it. I thank God that I have a culture that I can identify with and feel at home in, but sometimes it makes me a little nauseous when I get a glimpse of it from the outside.
I’m on the brink of something big in my life right now. Maybe that’s why I feel like running and running and climbing to the edge and screaming out. I want to physically express what I’m feeling inside. We ache for the brink, that’s why we keep pushing ourselves to do things. When we get what we’re looking for, its never satisfying, but we are all deluded into believing that there’s something else that will satisfy. Its on the brink that we have all our hope stored up. We think its only the beginning of something even better but what if it doesn’t get any better than the brink? As fatalistic and negative as that sounds, I believe its true, but I believe at the core of it is the fact that we were made for something so much more than this world or this body could give us. We get to the brink and we taste it, we hope for it, it resounds with our souls, but the product is worldly and limited. The thought that death is the consummation of all our soul desires makes it feel a lot less scary and though I am on the brink of something so exciting in my life, it helps me to honestly sing along with my fellow believers, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come.”