Suspended…

On a warm evening last week, a neighbor a few doors down was practicing on his drums. Whomever it was clearly had some skill- here it was jazzy, here it was crisp and martial, on it went from one style to another. Towards the end, the drums had fallen silent for a few minutes. I assumed my impromptu concert had come to an end. Just as I had given it up for gone, he began again. This time, as he played, each measure stretched out longer than the one before it. I was surprised at how simple percussion could portray sadness, and then longing. By the time he reached the very end, the tension was palpable. It was then that he did a beautiful long swirl on the cymbal, a shushed sound that felt like a flower falling from a tree or a woman twirling in her skirts. Like whispered beauty. On my ear it felt a poem.

I thought of his percussion poem as I walked the trail this weekend. The weather had snapped un-naturally cold in the middle of spring. The forest all around me looked other-worldly. Suspended animation. Green budding trees stood next to still golden, nearly ghost-like fall foliage. It felt Narnian. It felt as if Mr. Beaver was whispering covertly Aslan is on the move in my ears. The tension between the seasons was so palpable that if felt fragile, breakable. Will winter win and the buds freeze, no flowers? Or will Spring have her say and emerge beautifully triumphant? The beats stretched out, and out, and out…

Suffering so often feels like an unending winter. Barren and stripped. Desolate. Like living on a wind-swept cliff’s edge. No margin. Every choice hemmed in. Step wrong and you might fall off the end of the world. I know this in my bones, I feel the pressure of it weighing down hard. The hard crash against the drum with each new sorrow and confusion. And yet, and yet.

I know Aslan’s name. My friend wrote to me the other day”…I know the Lord to be as Lewis wrote of Aslan… ‘good but not tame’…and I believe that Christ came here in part to be with us in suffering…not ignoring, or trying to ‘explain it away’…Christ is our Light in darkness.” The way is dark, but not without hope.

I, like everyone else, want to push forward to the punch line, the sweet hallelujah, the gentle swish on the cymbal. The bursting forth of flowers, everywhere, jubilant spring. It’s hard to write about a place that has no easy answers. I want to be anywhere but here. But it is in this suspended place that I am called to be, and I must dwell here, lean into the long tension between the beats.