Land and Life and Longing: 1

 Living in Alaska gives cause for frequent flights to see family. We fly more in one average year than any five year period when we lived in the lower 48. I am grateful for the marvel of modern air travel. The musing below arose as I flew over some of the beloved hinterlands of my childhood.

I watch the land below, 6 miles below. I wonder at the miracle that puts me so high above the land with strangers in a long tin can, motors that push a steel tub with wings for thousands of miles through the sky. I look out the window and see roads and towns and wind-swept snow, terrain and trees in some midwestern state. There is yearning I can feel and know but I do not know why. The meaning of the land is its own thing – it does not need to be worked by people. The very is-ness of it makes it a thing and a thing is good, says God, and I think I would agree even if He had not said it. Of course I could not agree if I myself were not a thing and had resonance, as we say, with the other things since we are both made by the same Someone. And however we were made, whoever did it should have a capitalized name at the very least, and should be taken seriously.

Those who think we came to be through process could of course be right about what they call evolution, though I do not think so. But they can't be right about the beginning because how did this is-ness come to be? Can something come from nothing? What was there before the big bang, and how did it get there?

So I see the huge lake below me and imagine it may well be that big lake near Pierre, South Dakota, except I cannot make out the highways that are supposed to be near it. I remember visiting that lake with my dear wife and two beloved boys nearly 15 years ago now when the boys were 13 and nearly 9. Such sweet days, happy beyond wonder though we did not know it then. It seems I was always too busy, mind occupied, loving and working and caring and talking, but too much going on inside, unable to know and be in all the other-worldy is-ness that comes from the land, and things, and people.

By things, of course, I do not mean widgets – trinkets and toys and all. And yet, all things have meaning because they too have a creator and they get meaning from that, not least because it is the reason they exist. So I see the vast February snow plains below me and I think I know why it gives me longing. The mass of land is more than one can ever see when on it, much like that Tolstoy story where we are reminded all a man needs is enough land in which to be buried. But the aggregate, much like the aggregate of stars, reminds my soul of what is. This world is. It has a maker, and its meaning is real because He is real and personal and there. Whence else the yearning? Random feeling, a hiccup of consciousness? So now we are really in deep, for whence consciousness? Some science folk imagine they will explain it materially. Good luck with that. It is beyond the material, just as thinking is more than brain and mind more than matter.

I see the contour of the land and wonder why I want to write of it. I think I know. It speaks, a quiet voice. Much of it has never known human touch, vegetation and weather for days and centuries unending, a delight of wonder, self-preserving, re-creating, beauty of its own, life and death through seasons, wonder worthy of the best pen and simplest thought. Wonder enough to pain the soul.

Maybe we are not meant to see it in such aggregate, for no generation ever for millennia saw any thing this vast except – well, except for the sky which of course is vast beyond anything we can see here.

So why does the sight of plains and gullies for hundreds of miles bring such awe and a yearning beyond grasp? What of it? What must the heaven's mean? Nothing? Does their vastness and apparent emptiness and darkness speak nothing? What can it mean? I know not. I only believe that something created both me and it, and the fact our land can be trod by we bipeds gives it a special trueness.

I see the roads carve, straight and curved, houses now and then, a town here. Likely South Dakota, or southern North Dakota, farmlands of Iowa coming soon, too far north for my beloved Kansas. We have managed the earth and it in turn manages us. We were meant to receive it and care for it, know it and love it for the life it makes possible, worship the One who made it for what else could one do with such a Being. Made any worlds lately? Me neither. I'm glad for the one I've been given and if those brilliant brothers of mine gave us a machine that means I see vast pieces of land all at once, then I can't but learn from it, wonder if it is good, accept it all the same, be broken by the yearning, seek the good that must be in and behind it all, for this cannot come from evil. Awe is all I have, and pain for the longing.

And now I see the app that tells me where we are and I know we are over Nebraska by the Iowa border. I see sections of land bordered by roads stretching for miles on end. I see at least one homestead on each section, sometimes two. It is not obvious they are farms because most are not developed that I can tell. Easy to assume they were once homes for families who worked the land but I know that is not the case now as it was 80 years ago.

I remember the farm of my boyhood. Grandpa's farm, 80 acres with 2 ponds plus a watering hole. A long stone fence on the west edge, small alfalfa field on the NE corner. Old barn, a few cattle, chickens, beloved home and beloved people. He worked in town as a carpenter to make a living and did the chores when the boys needed to study, though of course they did their share. The other farm I knew was the Pucket farm near Ulysses, Kansas. Dale Pucket and his brother owned it together and in later years one son farmed it with Dale and now it is running down. In the day it had a nice home, good large barn, much livestock in cattle, pigs, sheep, a loving and diligent master with sons, a dutiful wife who cared for all with love and discipline.

My first job was there, helping to cut sheep and pigs. Cutting meant castration and it was quite a thing for a 12 – 13 year-old boy. I remember my very first day helping set fence posts. They were good to give me work and Danny, the eldest son, was trying to get me on track with God and with life. I am forever thankful. I would ride the bus after school and they would drop me off, then Mom would come get me or Danny take me home, about 8 miles I suppose.

to be continued – or not