God in the Gap (Rob Gieselmann, March 11, 2007)

My favorite run is still through the Headlands. The trail Gini and Gordon Griffin told me about when I first arrived. On a clear day, you can look off to the right and see the Farallon Islands. To the left, full tankers and cargo ships riding low, toward the bridge, and the Pacific -- and the San Francisco skyline buttressed by hills, rising high in relief against the ever-blue sky.

I access this trail by the shorter Morning Sun trail, off of the commuter lot at Spencer. Morning Sun escalates up Wolfback Ridge by steps and steep pathway.

This past Wednesday, as I crested Wolfback Ridge, and started down the Alta Trail, towards the SCA Trail, I imagined vainly to myself, “Boy, you’re getting good at this.” My lungs expanded and contracted, and billowed air escaped my nostrils as puffs, but not like before. Not like when I first moved here, when I couldn’t catch my breath running up Morning Sun. I would have to stop at the top and wait, before continuing, huffing and puffing without rhythm.

And so, I was running down the trail at the top, the Alta Trail, contemplating my superman strength, quite proud, quite secure, when I noticed someone jogging in front of me -- a woman. I was running faster than she was, and closed-in on her. Suddenly, she stopped. The trail split, and she didn’t know which split to take.

When I caught up to her, I noticed that her biceps are – well, to be frank, bigger than mine. Had she wanted to, she could have taken me then and there. She didn’t, of-course. All she wanted was directions. “Which is the Rodeo Trail?”

I didn’t know, but I helped her look. I asked her where she was headed, what she was trying to accomplish. “I’m running the Sausalito Marathon.” She said it like running 26.2 miles is no big deal.

Stupidly I asked, “Now?”

“Well,” she answered. “Really just 24 today.” By this time, we’d found her trail, and off she went. As I said, she ran slower than I, but only because she’d already run fifteen miles; I was still on my first.

Thinking of my own pride at being able to climb Wolfback Ridge without collapsing, and then of this woman’s Olympic feat, I recalled Paul’s simple admonition not to take yourself too seriously: “Take care while you stand, lest you fall.” Or, as the proverb goes, “pride cometh before a fall.”

And so I trotted off, laughing at myself as I ran across rock and hill, laughing because, figured I, God is laughing, too.

And as I ran across the holy land of the Headlands, I looked to my right, and I looked to my left, but for all my looking, I did not see a bush on fire, I did not see the smoke of God rising from earth to heaven, I did not hear the voice of the Holy calling my name.

God called Moses twice, “Moses, Moses!” Twice is the call of God, not once, twice, so you’ll know you’re not making it up.

And I wonder, and maybe you do as well, if God isn’t burning in a bush in the Headlands, well, then, where? The Headlands are holy. All wilderness is holy. If it weren’t for blisters, I would run without shoes, for the holiness of it all.

But I wonder, even in these Headlands, where no bush is burning, but God surely lives, why can’t I hear the voice?

That’s the question, isn’t it? Why don’t we hear God speak? Or more, where is God? If not in the wilderness, then where?

Where is God as you wander through your own wilderness? Aimlessly, when you have no anchor, no sense of direction? When you think you’ve found your footing, only to discover that – like I with the jogger – your self-confidence is ill-founded? Or, as the disciples said once to Jesus, “Don’t you care that we’re going to perish?”

That’s the question people want answered: “Don’t you care, God?”

Where is God when Katrina hurricanes storms through your life? Where is God as a bush burning incandescently?

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Jay Allison hosts the radio series, This I Believe, on National Public Radio. Allison invites Americans to read an essay they’ve written on air expressing concisely their most fundamental philosophy. Last year, Catherine Royce read hers.

“I believe I always have a choice,” Ms. Royce writes. “I have spent my life typing on a keyboard, but now I can no longer use my hands. Every day I sit at my computer speaking words into a microphone instead of typing. In 2003, I was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. Over time, this disease will weaken and finally destroy every significant muscle in my body. Ultimately, I will be unable to move, to speak and, finally, to breathe. Already, I am largely dependent upon others. So every day I review my choices. . . .

“Everything about me has changed . . . but still I have a choice.”

Then, speaking of the prospect of euthanasia or suicide, Ms. Royce continues, that she could indeed cheat the disease of its victory. I have a choice. She chooses not to die – rather, she chooses to let the disease open her more deeply to family and friends. She needs them more than before, in more intimate ways. Feeding her, for example, or trasncribing.

But that, too, is her choice.

“Previously,” she writes, “I would have assumed that living with ALS meant a life of hardship and isolation. Instead, because I believe that I always have a choice, I opened myself to other possibilities. And now the very thing that at first seemed so abhorrent has graced my life with unaccustomed sweetness. It was always there. Only now I have chosen to see it.”

Unintentionally, I suppose, Ms. Royce has stated in short the Christian faith.

That the God of burning bushes and heaven on earth is also the God of grace. God never promises that tough times won’t come. To the contrary, God promises that you will encounter wilderness. The key questions are, “What will you choose in the wilderness? What will you believe? What will you see? What will you hear?” As you run through the Headlands.

Essentially, Ms. Royce points out that even at the darkest hour, grace like light pours through the foundational crack, and fills the soul.

And so it is, that even during a dark winter Lent, we remain, and always remain, always remain, Easter people.

And in some strange cosmic paradox, your suffering, though not inflicted by God – yet clearly observed by God – that suffering like a Lenten discipline will become, by your choice, holy ground, a place where bushes burn and grace emerges.

God is not afraid of the dark like you are. God is not afraid for you, that you might doubt, that you might struggle. Or even turn away for a time.

The torn place (writes Barbara Brown Taylor) is the holy ground.

I am betting if you listen closely enough, you will hear God calling your name, twice, not once, calling your name to a bush burning brightly, for one simple reason, for healing and grace.

For you, but perhaps more importantly, like with Moses for others. To give away from yourself, to free others.

So go ahead; take your shoes off. This is holy ground.

There is a group of people in Marin County who right now are feeling the fragility of life.

And I want us to help.

A number of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, live in the Canal District in San Rafael.

Starting this past week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the United States Government,
announced to the San Rafael Police Department that they were about to serve warrants.

They knocked on doors throughout the district, and when the doors were opened, they pushed their way into the homes, questioned people, and then took others into custody, many for whom they had no warrants, and in at least one case, a U.S. citizen.

Needless to say, fear is the dominant emotion. 77 children were kept home from school, and in some households, the people are afraid of leaving home to buy groceries.

This disturbs me for any number of reasons, but mostly as a matter of human dignity, how we treat others.

We are better than this. And it is that simple.

The Marin Interfaith Council has invited Christians to join in protest on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from 5 to 8:30 am.

The Canal Alliance is seeking two things from the law enforcement personnel: to stop identifying themselves as police so people will open the doors – and to stop using old addresses where the illegal they are seeking clearly doesn’t live anymore.

I plan to join the protest on Wednesday morning.

And I invite you to, also – or to pray, or to call your congressional representative.

This is not politics; Rather, I want you to become the burning bush of God, in Christ, for these people, so they will know they aren’t alone.

Often, God is found in the most overlooked of places – in the person next to you, your neighbor.

Amen.

Copyright 2007