At our staff meeting on Tuesday, we were reflecting on our comfort soul food--those books, places, spiritual disciplines that we fall back on when we're in need of a faith boost. Brittany, our associate pastor who's heading up our Andersonville launch and who also grew up in downstate Illinois, said that one thing that she misses is cornfields. I knew exactly what she meant.
It may seem odd that cornfields would be a place for spiritual sustenance, but we all have our holy ground, and wide open spaces with crops growing as far as the eye can see are in short supply in the city. I miss that.
I'm often asked how we've adjusting to life in the city and I usually answer that it's unlike anything I've ever experienced. In just about every other place I've ever lived, I'd always say that the town/suburb I live in is "good" or "fine." I don't think I'd have used adjectives much greater than those. Now I say that about 75 percent of the time, the place where I live is "exciting," "energy-giving," and "unpredictable." The flip side, of course, is that 25 percent of the time, I'd use adjectives like "draining" and "difficult." Which would you choose? Living in a place that's "good" all the time or a place that's usually "fantastic" but the other part of the time is "draining"? (Of course, option c is a place that's fantastic all the time!) Obviously we're opting for the 75-25 option, but there are days I wish I could plop myself down on a country gravel road with corn as far as the eye can see and just listen to nothing.
3 comments:
As an Iowa native living in Chicago, I, too, have to drive into Iowa a few times a year and see the cornfields. It's one of the few times I feel like I exhale all the "city" and recharge.
Having grown up first in the Poconos in Pennsylvania then in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, for me it is the mountains. Even rolling hills. When we drive to Florida I can't wait to cross over the Tennessee border then drive through some mountains. And one of the most beautiful and spiritually refreshing places in the world to me is crossing over the Blue Ridge Parkway heading either into or out of the Shenandoah Valley. And I love, love, love living in Chicago, wouldn't change that, but like Jenn I need that 'recharge'.
Purty good. That's how I describe my hometown, my home state, that feeling of openness and appreciation you find in the middle of a bean field, with miles of corn and beans stretching in all directions. Like your "fine", it's not meant as a derogatory or pejorative descriptor of Iowa and its people. But rather it describes that sense of wholeness, completeness that comes from the overwhelming capacity of the land to grow things, including people. It's like looking at Hoover Dam or the moon at night. There's an immenseness to it that by sheer size and potency is calming and assuring. In recognizing my smallness in the context of those fields, I feel affirmed to be just what I am and no more. No need for "exciting" or "energy-giving". Purty good - it doesn't get any better than that.
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