Fences

Farm fences are one of the best hidden treasures in Okinawa. These scrappy borders can be found almost everywhere, emerging from and collapsing into the landscape, patched and propped together into some semblance of utility. There's something dogged and determined about them--signs of indomitable practicality in this tumultuous climate and economic vacuum. Today we drove to Naha in search of a patch of swampland. Patrick found his creatures, and I wandered across the street and found this wonderful collection of shrouds. A good day for hunting. 

Intricate Scramble

"Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator's exuberance that grew such a tangle, and the grotesques and horrors bloom from the same free growth, that intricate scramble and twine up and down the conditions of time....This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz, given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over."

"We walk around, we see a shred of the infinite possible combination of an infinite variety of forms."
                                                                           
                                                                                          --Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

Construction

I think we're getting new neighbors eventually. It's pretty fascinating to watch an earthquake- and typhoon-proof building take shape from the ground up (not so fascinating was the stage when they were pounding those pipes into the ground, one house-shaking inch at a time). 

I like these tidy holes.

Spacious

As I was trying to figure out a title for this blog (oh the pressure...), I came across Psalm 66:12. "We went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance." Or, as the RSV puts it, "thou hast brought us forth to a spacious place." I've been feeling stuck in recent months, aware of the blessings around me but unable to take them in with gratefulness and contentment. I find myself suspicious of the things I know will give me life and freedom and joy...in case they don't work. In case it's a set up for another hard thing. But my expectation of difficulty is getting old and worn out, and I long for something new.

I have gone through fire and water for sure, as everyone is sure to in this broken world, but somewhere along the line I decided to stay there and make those elements mine. Fire and roaring waves are exciting; they give me identity and importance and purpose; they're flashy and easy to define. But these consuming elements are not meant to be held and coddled and tested in this way (does this fire still hurt? Can these waves still pummel? Lets see if the next one knocks me out. Look at me navigating this fire and water! I can do it!).

Suffering happens, but it does not define. "You have brought us out to place of abundance." The promise of abundance is always waiting, always ahead, always surrounding, even in the middle of a blaze or flood. A spacious place: wide open, as yet unknown, to be explored and discovered and learned. Room to move and stretch and run, room to take risks, a place where there is always more than I will ever need. And it's a place from which to see life all around me, instead of focusing on my own burns and lack of oxygen. There are others here--some running free, some in the middle of the fire and the water themselves, and some who, like me, are sitting still and pretending this lush, green place is not so spacious after all.

Open my eyes to the fullness.