When you stand on a high place and view the landscape below, you are forced to let go of the details. An entire forest becomes a mossy blanket laying over the land. Some part of your mind knows that every tree in that forest has its own story and unique set of particulars, but there is no room in your mind for these details. A reflex action causes you to relax and let go of the details of your own life as well. This is the magic of the mountaintop. It is the therapy of the long view.
The closer look is the practice of zooming in until familiar objects become strange landscapes with surprising beauty and deep lessons. The closer look often means getting on your knees or laying on the ground. It is the more difficult discipline. It takes some effort to hike down a mountain, but any sound or thought can pull you out of a closer look. All you have to do is lift your eyes to reclaim your former life.
Do you have the perseverance to find something unique in one leaf, pulled from a tree full of leaves that any reasonable person would say are identical?
Or did you want to be a reasonable person?
Both the long view and the closer look are contemplative luxuries we sorely need but rarely embrace. We live our lives in the middle view. There are trees – if we notice them – but forests and leaves are almost incomprehensible to modern humans.
Because Laity Lodge is set deep in a canyon, I find it lends itself more to the the closer look. This is a place that calls us to radical introspection. Rub your hand along the rough rocks of the fountain and suddenly your life appears at the end of your nose. Will you embrace a searching and fearless encounter with yourself on a weekend in the cleft of a giant rock? The secrets of your heart may remain stubbornly hidden unless you prove your resolve by first looking into the heart of a pebble.
Peel some bark from a Juniper and smell it. Taste a blade of grass. If you are lucky enough to stumble across some chili pequin in season, bite one and feel the pain. Pull a naked wildflower close enough to see its stamen and pistil and try not to blush. Every small thing at Laity Lodge mocks the skimming and hurried glances of reasonable people.
Have you seen the curious pattern of stones in the chimney of the Great Hall? Have you wondered about the person who laid them? What strength of spirit gave him the freedom to abandon straight and expected lines? Have you gotten on your hands and knees to feel the lovely flagstone floors of the Halls, Great and Dining? Have you descended the staircase of Black Bluff to the bottom and seen the dwelling place of Kokopelli?
Listen to me now. This is important:
You cannot live well in the middle way. The Via Media makes for good neighbors and practical politics, but if that is all you allow yourself, your soul will whither. If you never pull your eyes up to see the mountains or down to see the grain in your leather shoes, you will live the life of a drone, a lock-step marcher, another person living a decent and altogether reasonable life of desperation.
Do what you must to buy some time. Sell your possessions and give your riches to your poor soul. Endure the stares and giggles of reasonable people. But for God’s sake, open your eyes.
You will never see anything…
The outside fireplace at Laity Lodge
until you open your eyes…
cock your head to the side…
and take a closer…
look.
Pilgrim
I’ve known about this looking you describe, I think I’ve even practiced it a time or two….
…but I’ve never felt so compelled to embrace it as I do after reading this.
My soul thanks you, Gordon.
Welcome back, Pilgrim. In every sense of that phrase. Every one I can think of. And thank you for this glorious writing and the lovely photos, too. This is a tough week for me and I need this reminder to step back and to step close and REFUSE TO BE REASONABLE.
I spent three hours next to that fireplace during a morning session this fall. I was rather entranced by the middle view, I think. Never saw what you saw, and I even had my camera along.
Thank you, Gordon. You make a mighty fine ophthalmologist.
Jennifer,
I’d been going to Laity Lodge for 15 years and never saw the fossil fish in the fireplace. I must confess that I never did see it on my own. Paul Soupiset asked me if I had seen “the fossil fish in the fireplace.” I went looking for it, first in the Great Hall fireplace and then outside. I was shocked to find it right there in the center of the fireplace, almost like a featured work of art. Now it seems painfully obvious to me.
I appreciate that the Laity Lodge staff never mentions the fossil. It’s just there for those with eyes open. (Or for those of us with friends who have their eyes open.)
p
This really resonates with me. You cannot live well in the middle. This is what we mean when we criticize compromise. It’s not that we should never compromise, but it we let ourselves be defined by compromise, then we have no center.
Marcus, amen to your extension of this life metaphor toward compromise. I hadn’t thought of that. I was talking about our default view, which is to keep our eyes in front of us, take care of business, mow the yard, go to work, etc. We live in kind of a middle view. Neither micro nor macro. We can’t see the forest or the leaves for the trees.
Ironically, I don’t think that many of us even pay attention to the trees in our middle view.
The whole atmosphere at Laity Lodge seems permeated with an eternal presence that shows up in strange places, like the fireplace fish fossil. I am intrigued about this conference grounds and would love to attend a writer’s conference that might ignite my writing to honor my Lord. Hopefully there will be an advance notice for the October or November dates in 2012.
Kathy, I’m a writer myself. LL is a powerful place to be writing. Almost too powerful. I find I’m better off experiencing things, paying attention to what is happening to me and around me, and taking notes. Then I get off later and write about it.
Keep an eye out on this website. The Writers Retreat will be listed here as soon as the date is set.
Oh, my. This so reminds me of a passage in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a book I found unexpectedly gripping).
“You’re not *looking*…. Narrow it down to the *front* of *one* building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”
http://grammar.about.com/od/advicefromthepros/a/pirsigblock.htm
Kurt, I LOVED that book in college. Then read it again sometime in my 30s I think. I might have to go back for another look..
The writer in me agrees with Pirsig. You don’t start writing by thinking about what you might want to say to a reader. That process is death to the writer. It turns you into a peddler of cheap ideas. I say cheap, because most of the ideas I could come up with would be cheap and easy – ham-handed things that belong in a third rate “how to” book.
You begin by opening your eyes to the world around you and noticing things. Pick any one thing and then write about it. Once you change that perspective, you also begin to unlock the keys to your own unconscious mind. With a well sunk into those depths and your eyes open, you’ll never have any trouble finding something to write about.
Pilgrim, I read this right after having spent about an hour doing a pen and ink drawing of a vegetable I bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. I don’t even know what it is called. I bought it because of the beauty of its form. It looks somewhat like a cabbage but only has a small pointed head. I knew I wanted to look at it closely. I suspected that looking at it intently would be good for my soul…but I hadn’t yet put the words to the suspicion or the experience. Thank you for the way you say – and see – things. I find your writing helpful and clarifying.
I find hope in what Pilgrim has written….
He offers a new way to look at life that really isn’t new. It’s as old as the Incarnation.
And didn’t Emmanuel come to make all things new?
Thanks, Pilgrim.
There have been times that I have been almost too shy or embarrassed to tell folks about what I see in the monarch butterfly… but for the fact that I know it comes from Him, I’m only responsible for putting it out there for others to find if they are looking. Thanks for this encouragement, Pilgrim. I appreciate you.
Yes–the dull drone of the middle way. Thanks for this admonition. I am tired today from all the clamor of this season and needed to hear this. I’ve been living in the middle where nothing is distinct or impressive. We were meant for a full life. Thanks for the gentle “kick” to return to it, not-far-from-me, if only I open my eyes. Bless you, Pilgrim.