Boundaries

I would really like to do 7 quick takes but I haven't done seven things this week or seen seven sites or thought seven thoughts. But I was thinking about them, among other things, as I've been stuck in Joshua all week in my Daily Bible Reading Plan. I shouldn't say stuck. Of course I love all of God's word and am fed by it and would never fuss about the great privilege of being able to read, or listen, to any of it. Hem. So, as I was saying, as I was listening with rapt attention to the book of Joshua this week, and the long lists of where each tribe of Israel was going to get to dwell, and how the boundaries were sorted out, how they went up over that hill and along that brook and came down to hit that city, and how the other tribe was on the other side, I thought to myself, as I nearly always do, “what a lot of fuss, why didn't they just all go in and live together harmoniously?” Why, in other words, is God making such a big deal about where everyone was going to live?

I mean, I basically know why. God is not gnostic. He cares about the material details of our lives. He wants us to do certain things with our bodies and not certain other things. He wants us to worship in a certain way. He engages our senses and our material circumstances to teach us about himself. But, the modern western me thinks, shouldn't there be a balance between the material and the spiritual? Surely, if everyone was doing what they ought, they could all just move in and there wouldn't have be a long list of we're exacfly everyone lived, that I would then have to read or listen to.

But, you know, I'm running myself into boundaries all over the place. The biggest most visitble boundary in my life is the church wall. I can't turn around almost anywhere in my house without seeing it. It's capacious red brick cuts into the sky line and reminds me every moment of the fact that my whole life is tied up together with it, whether I like it or not. Most of the time I like it. Although every single moment I want to white wash it or something. My vines are growing up it so so so so slowly. But then there are the boundaries of the day. There are only a certain number of day light hours with energy to accompany them. There are the boundaries and limits of having six children, of having to fit them into the space that we have. The girls have to be in a room altogether, whether they like or not. Mostly they like it. But, you know, tempers flair.

Most interesting to me, lately, are the boundaries that come with writing. I always sit looking at a blank screen and think that I should be able to write about anything in the world, what's the matter with me! But an unbounded possibility of words actually produces nothing. It's returning to a constricted form, over and over and over again, that concentrates and focuses my fingers and brings, well, what would you call it? Some kind of life. The form and boundaries of seven quick takes, of doing it over and over again every Friday, is basically fun. If I could write poetry, I would bet that trying to pour all the beauty and meaning you possibly could into an impossibly small space would be so thrilling.

That's what it seems, maybe, as I stop fussing, that God is doing as he marks out and measures the land. He poured his own self into the narrow limited confines of the human body, all his glory, all his work. When he puts us into a small space, whether a small house or a narrow page or a bounded garden, it is so that there will be some kind of holding space, some kind receptacle, as a Christian I suppose I could call it a Cup, in which to poor something, lots of things–grace, mercy, suffering, joy, salvation. And the narrower it is, the more quickly it will fall out over the sides. The smallest town, Bethlehem. The meekest girl, Mary. The smallest capital, Jerusalem. The poorest of towns, Binghamton. The shortest person, me.