Under the Cottonwoods

And though the last lights off the black west went
Ah morning, at the brown brink, eastward springs.

I stood as a jaded witness to these “last lights” and the oncoming blackness of night, with the springing of dawn seemingly an eternity away—too far for the leash of hopeful expectation. It was the time of day when everything seems to take a deep breath, look over its daily adventure, and yawn with tiredness in realization of the unchanging cycle. This description was no injustice to my own state, and I walked beneath the towering Cottonwoods and sprawling fields with a deep sense of exhausted emptiness. The days had been dragging, and this one had been particularly sluggish. I walked on a familiar path—gravel, bumpy, and magically simple. The consistent “washboard” pattern bore a weary testimony to the inequality of use and repair. Perhaps I was treading on an odd image of myself: an unkempt dirt road in the middle of a desert. It seems to lead nowhere—but then again I’ve never reached the end.

The trees encircled me overhead—reaching out their long arms in a diplomacy I could not discern. Was this the kind embrace of a comforting friend? Or was this the overshadowing of captivity and hostility? Even this ambiguity would have been welcome within my own brain—where intense strife was painfully unmistakable. My mind was at war, and I could not tell where the arborical allegiance resided. Amid the peace and tranquility of my surroundings, with the softness of the golden sky, the refreshment of the cool air, and the soothing flutter of summer leaves providing ample temptation unto inner calm, I was unable to attain peace with my emotions. What was I feeling? In this particular moment, a dominant faction of my soul was the sense of loss—the poignant grief of missing someone. There was a hole in my heart, a gaping target for the pangs of this world to take their careful aim. One manifestation of this emptiness was a constant feeling of claustrophobia—of futilely wanting to share my life stories with the one human being who truly cared. The agony of this impossibility tainted my whole world, making every experience a kind of ghostly dream, without the customary anchors in reality. I had lost a foundation. I had gotten one of my legs kicked out—and was off-balance and out of touch. And yet, there was something in the sunset that was challenging this viewpoint—that was gently tugging at my sleeve and leading me towards a different perspective. For a long while, this mysterious attraction was obscure, and failed to resolve the conflict in my spirit. But suddenly, the gentle tug became a jolting yank—as when a small child finally loses patience with his distracted parent and asserts his will with all the childlike authority he can muster.

The materialist might describe this yank in terms of the chemical reactions occurring in my neck muscles as I casually turned my head, unthinkingly desiring to further observe the landscape around me. Yet, contrary to this reductionism, the movement was poetic and almost providential. It is astounding what new worlds and wonders can be opened and explored by the simple action of swiveling one’s “reality-window.” As my eyes caught upon the humble marvels of my environment—the unimposing yet giant trees, the flaming evening sky, the shockingly defined silhouettes, the quiet desert greenery—this previously subtle pull transformed into an overwhelming force that burst the buttons of my metaphorical sleeve. The small voice that had been whispering into my deaf ear had finally decided to reveal itself. The movie-like wave of undeniably clarity, as when a conflicted character finally reaches the solid ground within his own soul, crashed upon me with all the force of a tsunami. And yet, I was not drowning; it was a tide that somehow bore me up and lifted my lowly being to new heights. I was riding atop the surf, watching the glistening foam and salty brine flow beneath my feet like a glorious red-carpet—paving a strange path to an even stranger destination. In this moment, I realized that the one who had been tugging my arm was nothing like a child—but was instead one of whom I was a child.

In that moment, the scales finally fell to the ground, and my eyes were briefly opened to the “core of reality” 2 —the goal of all leisurely endeavor. I felt the immense weight of the divine Presence—but for once not as something that was resting on my shoulders. No, in this instant I was resting on His Shoulders—rejoicing in the density of His Reality and the stability of His arms. Looking back on the path I had walked, on the beauty I was witnessing, on the “last lights” of the west, I realized that they were all for me. The Holy Spirit was drawing me into His “warm breast”—embracing me with His “bright wings.” The loneliness of the past few days receded into a mere echo at the rear of my consciousness—pushed back by the ground-breaking (or should I say soul-breaking?) recognition that I was never alone. The wonder and splendor I was enjoying was not something I needed to share, not something that needed to be urgently justified by the affirmation of another. This was something I needed to simply stand and watch, opening my whole being to the unquestioning acceptance of a transcendent gift—Creation. I did not need to take a picture—I did not need to run and find someone who would be impressed by my proprietary experience of some trivial beauty. I had simply to stand still, to allow the loving arms of my God take me up into the most powerful companionship I will ever experience. This scene was my gift—and in that moment my entire existence revolved around one desire: being with the Giver.

Many people say the phrase, “my life flashed before my eyes”—almost always in connection with a near-death experience. The emotion of intense fear brings to light the stark reality of our mortal existence, and the inevitable failures and stumbling’s that accompany it. In this exuberant moment beneath the onlooking Cottonwoods, I experienced a similar phenomenon. My life flashed before my eyes. Nonetheless, it was an altogether different image—a different flash of illumination that would change my outlook on the world. This was not the dreaded remembrance caused by impending doom. It was not the product of fear or aversion. Instead, this “flash” was a penetrating reevaluation of my whole life—past, present, and future. I realized, with an almost distrustful joy, that my existence was not merely a point in an endlessly vast universe. “Think of the whole of existence, of which you are the tiniest part; think of the whole of time, in which you have been assigned a brief and fleeting moment; think of destiny—what fraction of that are you?”3 For a moment, these words passed me by, retreating unnoticed along with the darkness that was quickly fleeing from me. My life was one where the Greatest of All Beings cared for me with an infinite love. Every moment of my experience was a providential gift from God—and all was somehow meant for me. Needless to say, this was a transformative realization, and one that gave a deep-seated meaning to my entire worldview. We are real—we matter—we are good.

Moments like this sunset under the Cottonwoods surprise us. They are infused into our everyday lives in an unsuspecting and secretive way—always catching us unawares within the oblivion of our mechanical routines. But this is perhaps the very magic of them. It is not atop a mountain or inside an art gallery that we have the most powerful experiences of beauty. No—it is in the normal places, the dirt roads and muddy fields of this unexpectedly miraculous planet. It is when we are truly within “the world”—truly within the genuine experience of a human being—that we finally know, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

Photo: "Cottonwood Trees" by Vincent Parsons is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

1 “God’s Grandeur”, Gerard Manly Hopkins, 1877

2 Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Jozef Pieper

3 Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, trans. Martin Hammond