How we love the bonds that keep us from flying

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2-

I grew up surrounded by dark green cottonwood trees painted against a flawless Wyoming sky of perfect blue. The horizon in any direction was edged by pale granite lazuline mountains that granted the same reassurance in their presence as would a dog sleeping at the foot of one’s bed. We were all protected and somehow aware that we were under the watch care of these quiet, loyal, ancient stone guardians.

Before I started the first grade, we moved from our town of 2,000 to its outskirts, the east side of the Big Horn River; an area unofficially but ubiquitously known as “the heights.” From then on I was surrounded by space, most of which was made up of alfalfa fields framed by slackened strands of barbed wire fence to keep whatever horses or cattle in their places. The fences by no means meant “keep out” to humans – at least not to us kids.

Our neighbors’ fields were just as much a part of my turf as was our own yard, which itself was actually quite small. It was in these fields that I raced with my dog, built snow forts, inhabited my own “fortress of solitude,” built a tree house, dug underground shelters, pole vaulted fences and ponds, caught frogs, climbed trees and practiced boomerang Frisbee.

In one of these fields on a summer afternoon a friend and I noticed a scuffling on the ground in front of us. We could not make out what was causing the movement. I immediately assumed the worst and concluded it was a child-eating snake. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from drawing closer to the disturbance on the ground.

To my relief, we found it was a bird. One of its legs was entwined in a short single strand of dried weed that tethered the bird to the ground. The commotion we had seen was the bird trying again and again to fly off, always thwarted by the twist of weed.

I lifted the frightened bird and couched it in one hand while undoing the thin strand that had wrapped itself under one wing and once around the leg. Once freed, the bird got to its feet in my opened hand and looked into my eyes. It perched on my finger for a second or two and then flew off.

Today we seek God’s help with our disentanglement. For we are called to live a life from above, and yet we are ensnared by bonds and attached to the life below by cables made of materials we, in our folly, consider agreeable and harmless. We insist that we can live as citizens from heaven while carrying with us the cares, concerns and adventures of the world at our feet.

Who among us would not like to fulfill our personal goals and also serve God? Which of us would turn down the opportunity to do exactly whatever we wanted and believe that this alone would be our acceptable service unto God? Who can resist the irresistible inclination to both befriend the world below and serve the King above?

It seems quite natural that we should be able to synthesize an existence that borrows from both worlds – to homogenize a palatable essence made of what we might call “the best of both worlds.” While this is a keen idea, it is not a Christian one. Mind you, Christian thought is very easily polluted by this blending of spirituality and worldliness, because the mixture is powerfully attractive. It is quite human of us to want to compromise two disparate realms into a single agreeable one. Where we offend the world, we justify our faith; and where we offend our faith, we justify our sophistication. Rather than live in one realm we are vagabonds in both.

As Christians, our faith demands of us a singularity of purpose and satisfaction. “To live is Christ,” said Paul. We are to detach ourselves from everything else, leaving ourselves completely free to serve God in whatever way he would like at the moment.

The psalmist says he watches the hands of God like a handmaiden watches her mistress, looking for the slightest indication from the master’s hand that God’s mercy and some obedient response is about to come due (Psalm 123:2).The life fully free to serve God at every instant is watchful for any inflection within the current moment to indicate God’s wise and loving presence and direction.

Before we consider detachment, we have to see Christ. Otherwise this is just a religious exercise. Something must pull us away from the world we fancy, the cares we adore and the concerns we caress.

Seeing Christ is the essential first movement in the believer’s soul that will draw him apart from all else. Fail to see Christ, and no real detachment that benefits the soul will follow. Whatever else can be said about the condition of one’s soul at this point, it must be said that the soul remains entangled. Not homogenized; not synthesized; but strangled.

We try to live with ties that bind us to God and ties that hold us fast to this world. Although we talk and sing of flying, the entire Earth is shackled to one of our ankles. We can no more fly than we can pull the planet skyward with our frail wings. We are perilously suspended between two domains. In some awkward way we are built to fly, but, to quote a Pink Floyd song, we are “earthbound misfits.”*

Like that little bird on that summer day, we will require assistance with our disentanglement.

*(From their Division Bell album, 1994. Song: Learning to Fly.)