A Mystery of Life and our Belief in God

I’m a city person, and have been for most of my life, but in my youth I worked several years as a summer cowboy on a very large cattle ranch in Wyoming.   Two years ago my family and I revisited Wyoming.  I especially remember walking around the corrals during a Wyoming Ranch Rodeo in which a few of my relatives were riding. 

As I walked through the sagebrush, I found myself expecting my heels to hit the ground before they actually did – it was as if my body thought I was wearing my cowboy boots rather than my loafers.  I found myself reaching my hand up to grab the crown of my hat, in the way one does when wearing a cowboy hat, not the baseball cap I was wearing.  I found myself being alert to different sounds as I walked.  I’m not sure what I was listening for, a rattlesnake perhaps, or a changing wind – I don’t know.  I was just aware of feeling very different. 

My mind and body were transported back in time.  This reemergence of those particular habits-of-my-body and feelings-in-my-mind, were exceptionally surprising to me.  It was a mysterious experience that co-existed with the reality of also being a person who has not been around ranch life for decades.

I tell this story because I was able to identify some specific behaviors and broad feelings that accompanied this revisit to a place.  The next story, a recent revisit to a former church, was also a mysterious experience of feeling simultaneous differences and similarities in my travel backward in time.

The church, St. James Lutheran, is a prominent urban church in downtown Portland, Oregon.  It is where my wife, Jan, and I spent many partial years as we took a sabbatical in Portland, spent some time during summers there, and for a few years after I retired spent about 6 months a year.  It was a congregation in which the homeless, gay/lesbians and visitors of all stripes were always welcome, and in visible weekly attendance

A week ago, when my wife and I walked through the massive front door of historic St. James for the first time in almost 10 years, both my wife and I felt overwhelmed with emotion.  Jan felt at home, and had a powerful sense of comfort and happiness.   In contrast I felt nostalgic and somewhat gloomy.  In my head I could see the pews were good friends used to sit – now empty.   The toll of death and illness among friends has a tragic reach across time as one reenters formerly common space. 

Recalling the impact of my recent revisit to the ranch territory of my youth, I wondered what other ways this reentry into this church was having on me?   The high church traditions were still in place – even more so.  The flow of the people, some still remembered, was familiar.  The liturgy too was familiar – identical with my home church Lutheran congregation in Northfield, actually.   Yet here I was, mysteriously affected by what was in relation to what is.  

Perhaps to be mysteriously transported back in time, on occasion, so that our mind and our body are in two places at the same time, is a special gift allowing us a personal, small glimpse at how the magnificent mystery of a belief in God works in us all.

Bruce