Advent: Ponder

Sometimes it's good to step outside and take a fresh look at the house. There's so much we know and so much we think we know, that a fresh look from outside can help us to rethink what we've always taken for granted.

There's obvious stuff we can see, like the seams where an addition was built 60 years; or the stains left by algae, weather and city air over the past 20 years. Other times there are personal stories the house recalls, like the Left Behind cookout in the back yard one spring after the latest prediction of the Return of Christ went the same way that all the other predictions had; or that gray October morning in 2002 when I watched a social worker drive off with my foster son and my heart flooded with grief.

Other possibilities eventually suggest themselves, especially once you ponder the inside of the house. Can we change the layout of the first floor? Is another addition possible? Is there a better way to stpre everything? What others can the house provide sanctuary for when the need arises? Walls shift, doors open that I never knew existed, and unfamiliar corridors beckon me to a lifetime of discovery.

Truth is contemplative, so I explore it a composition notebook, or on the pages of Libre Office. Truth is interrelational, so I discover it in the twists and turns of conversation with good friends. When we were children, truth was revealed in what we read, or by a trusted source, like a father who told us that people reproduce by budding like yeast. When we become adults, we put childish ways behind us, and we begin to ponder things anew and reconsider everything we've been told.

The search for understanding can be unnverving, but it begins by taking a step outside and looking at the house from outside. And it never stops.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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