Life is a series of deaths and
rebirths. A series of lents and easters. Of winters and springs.
Last Thursday was my birthday and I said goodbye to living in the
Columbia River Gorge for the second time. It was a hot day, but I
couldn't stay inside the lovely library or cafe where I've spent most
of the last two months, not on a day of goodbye, a death, a Good
Friday. So I climbed Mitchell Point Overlook. Up to the top. I
sweated, my breath coming short, adrenaline pumping every time I
brushed a bush wondering if this would
be the time I'd get poisoned oak for the first time.
Oh, and I took two
people with me.
But we lived,
breathed, worked. And owned that mountain. At the top the air was
crisp, the infamous wind blowing, and the sky like a huge painting,
the clouds spread out in abstract puff and smears to the east and
west. Up there I was alive.
And then I left.
It was glorious,
the evening sun turning the water white. The twists and turns, ups
and downs of the mountains. The legs of the mountain chain spreading
out to give birth to Portland. Yes, I was sad, but I knew my death
was necessary—so that I could be born in Salem.
It is hot and
sticky here too. Cars and asphalt, cigarettes, humans of all sorts,
old, young, drunk, sober, pink-haired, and dressed in sparkling
slinky drag. The apartment is sticky, dirty, smelly, nowhere near as
pristine as it looked on our brief tour when we picked it out. It is
a hot, dark tomb, lying empty, waiting to be filled with life.
In darkening,
cooling evening, I play Vivaldi and clean. Bringing to life this
place, and with it my new hopes and dreams. I scrub counters and
shelves, unwrap dishes. Each one is born, a dish I packed away
months ago, now alive again, now in my own place once more. I stack
boxes, bags, papers, shift and move the mass of stuff beneath me, and
slowly the kitchen emerges, the living room, the bedroom.
Can this
resurrected apartment glow with the life of the immortal Christ?
At moments I doubt
it, but then that hope burns within me and I know that eventually it
will be shaped, born, and live, that it will become the home I hope
for. No longer will I wander like Jesus without a nest or den. As
soon as I lie down, I fall peacefully asleep, for you, O Lord,
bring security to my dwelling.
