Placing Our Bets on a Long Obedience
We spent five nights in the Land of Enchantment - my husband and I - a month early for our third anniversary, and we’re lugging along 287 South now for our home and our dog. It was a memorable visit, although we didn’t have a huge itinerary like we sometimes do. Mostly we just lived and showered and woke as locals for the work week.
We would meet our fiery neighbor shaping away in her ceramics studio, her clay-hardened hands to the kiln, and she’d invite us to the house party happening that night. One friend of her group our age had gotten a billiard table, and they’d celebrate with a “pool” party, to which she’d attend in a full swimsuit. We bought four of her handmade plates and hoped that would make up for our regretful decline. We’d bump into her the following afternoon and exchange a few more stories at the donation-based consignment she’d recommended to us earlier.
We’d meditate horizontally next to a long-haired hippie at the Japanese spa and talk to him tipsy days later at the hotel bar. He slung an empty Ranch Water around and reminded us of an unmarried McConaughey. He lives in Terlingua but comes here to escape the heat. Well, that’s reason enough to go anywhere on earth, we tell him.
We’d walk through the rail yard in the morning for coffee and be tired again before noon. Maybe it was the hour time difference or the sleepy town or the elevation. Either way, we moved slowly and took long naps everyday. And we didn’t talk much.
I’m already very internal, relying heavily on the prodding of others to, left hand over right, slog the ten-mile rope out of the hat. Usually it’s Ryan hoisting me up by my bootstraps to engage, to tell him about my day, to reveal what it is I’m thinking about at the window. He’s pretty verbal, quiet on lengthier matters, but comfortable saying what he knows and what he doesn’t know in a day’s time. So what’s at stake when, for a time, neither party is forthcoming? Our marriage or perhaps the richness of it?
Both of us are pretty respectful in bowing to the silence, and if there’s nothing helpful to fill it with, we’re diligent to keep it. But something always comes, it always has - the reason it’s eating at him, what his coworker said. Guessing the temperaments of our children and what clothes they’ll choose for themselves each morning. Dissecting another one of my dreams that’s doing me no good and wondering how deep one has to get, how many night terrors before it’s enough to qualify for psychiatric help.
Those are, of course, loose cannon conversations. We have lighter ones. But how do you reconcile six days of togetherness and hardly any words at all? Was it unfounded, our being there? A waste of a perfectly planned holiday?
He’d turn his gaze up from a bite of crispy sea bass and tell me how pretty I looked in my red museum dress. I’d say thanks and we’d move along. As we walked like strangers through the crowded street market, I’d find his pinky and give it a squeeze. He’s still there, and in a swarm of pinkies, his is the only one.
The world seems fidgety right now about spending every day like it’s our last, hopscotching to our end with no breaks, wringing life’s towel for everything it’s worth. The absorbent urgency makes sense to me, or the sentiment does, but I needed a Xanax for how hurried I started to feel with him.
Do we have eternity getting to know each other like our vows proposed or will this, in fact, be it? We can’t know. Frustratedly, I would conjure a thing up to say, and it wouldn’t be mine or a prompting from the Spirit. Just a fuse of hot air into the atmosphere, contrived, taking up space and stoking the abhorrently forced fire.
We weren’t fighting or bored or glued to a screen, though any or all of those would have worked as excuses. We explored the land and were beside each other enchanted, and nothing compelled us to speak save what we instantly knew. The breeze felt nice, and we were full. He was handsome, and the houses quaint. We’d kiss with the windows open and then find sleep in a foreign place on our same, comfortable pillows we’d packed from home.
It’s our last sixty-degree morning, and I remembered a sentence, a burning bush. It happens that way, doesn’t it? Our minds and memories sifting through every word we’ve ever read until we’re left with the only clump of gravel that could - in an instant - convict, challenge, and change. You might recognize it from Eugene Peterson, but it’s credited to philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche in his book, Beyond Good and Evil. He says,
The essential thing in heaven and in earth is, apparently, that there should be long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality — anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine.
And my tendencies to rush what was here were all at once hushed. Not in a passive, sit on our hands and stay there sort of way. But in a peaceful, alluring one. Carpe diem later, but for now rest here. Tending, but not taking. Observing what we know and letting what we don’t fall around us.
There have been days, weeks, and months that we’ve lapped up and hoarded all that we could - all the love, lust, knowledge, and conversation that’d fit in our small vials until we realized again there’s still more to draw. Similarly, it’s been as a kid knowing Christ. Chewing scripture to pieces and hearing him loud. In the Land of Enchantment, though, when everyone’s quiet, can we buy back this time or is it gone for good? With still more to know, why not know it now?
When earth is chasing the lion and measuring their bounties, is it enough to just study his face? To eat together in a place far from home. To brush our arms against him to know he’s there in the crowd. To tell Him I’m tired and that the breeze feels nice. When we feel like slaves to the Atlantic, can we put down our buckets and use our hands for a drink? Drawing from the well what only we know and need, letting the rest fall away and trusting it’s being down there won’t be wasted for tomorrow’s meal. If this is truly what a life is worth, a long obedience in the same direction, surely we’ll arrive no more thirsty than before.
