Back Again

 

We left Huntsville, UT on a cool, rainy morning, well-fed with laughter and love: my cousin Cameron and his wife Ashley are magical people. Ashley is the daughter of the well-known sculptor, Bob Bennett, and is an artist in her own right. Her work, along with other Bennett work, hangs in a gallery in Carmel and she talks easily about lunch with Clint Eastwood, an old friend of her father's.

But Ashley is no star-struck lightweight. She carries deep personal tragedy along with her; after the event that nearly destroyed her, she fought for healing and wholeness, and now pours the depths within her, carved out by fire and water, out for others. Cameron is her perfect partner--a depth of understanding under a layer of silly fun.

Cameron and I laughed hysterically together, a moment jumping forward from our childhood. We talked about how we both rebelled, in our own ways, to the expectations of family, for both good and ill.

So full of love, we started our trek through impossibly high peaks rising again like giants out of the clouds: you drove along their feet and looked up at their heads. I was, inside, deeply grateful for the rain. For many months, I have been irrationally afraid of the drive through the sage sea, dry and endless, that is southwest Wyoming. But instead of burning sun, the water poured down on us like an overflow of grace; the road was a river and it almost ran us off the road with the force.

As we drove out of Farson (where they have big ice cream cones and not much else), and out of Eden (what? Steinbeck irony?), and into the expanse, we could see the Wind River Range, a spur of the Rockies, standing wreathed in cloud, blue-grey sentinels. The last time we traveled this road, on our way to Australia, it was laced with snow drifting across the cement.

The kids made up a homecoming song: a hybrid of Soundgarden's Rowing and some Christmas song. It is a tradition they keep up, and now their voices ring out strong and deep, adult voices instead of cute squeaks. They sang and looked for what they've been waiting for, for months of emotional struggle, of exile: Red Canyon, one of the beauty spots on this earth: a veritable rainbow of different colored rock and sky.

I prayed, as we drove through clouds on South Pass (7000 feet), that Red Canyon would be clear.

It was so fogged in that I couldn't see fifty feet ahead. I've never, in all our years here, seen fog like that in crystal Wyoming.

The kids, keyed up emotionally, went down fast. Ana wondered why on earth God didn't make it clear for them. I had no answer. Life, being the potter's clay, is the answer. Living with God, yielding ourselves to re-forming after mistakes, after disappointment, after success, is the answer.

But Lander waited.

"There's the Trautman ranch!!"

"Holy Rosary Church!!"

"Oh. McDonald's is still there. Oh well."

"Gannett Grill! Ace Hardware!"

And then, down Third Street to Mary Dean's. This place, how can I explain it? Not only is it beautiful, with flowers everywhere and 100-year-old cottonwoods rising out of green grass and a small creek running under little bridges, it holds so many moments of love: Tea with Mary Dean downstairs, hours in almost-heaven with the SOS girls, Mark Randall playing jazzy Christmas carols long ago, deep discussions over Dostoeyvski with the college ladies, talks with the freshmen college girls, the house full of children filming their first movie. There are also memories of pain, too: friends who once sat opposite in all their unique glory no longer there, no longer sharing friendship; times of tragedy when we sat staring, shocked, across the living room. It is the House of Memories.

Mary Dean took the Nomadic Kozinskis up to Cottonwood suite and I laid down in bed that night, thinking of a time, long ago, when once before God provided an earthly mansion n the midst of a certain kind of dependence and poverty, that of the nomad.

Long ago, I drove through the mountains of Virginia, lost in more ways than one. There was no room at my destination, a lonely place that I simply cannot describe. They told me, "Try down the road." Eleven pm. Lady in lobby.

"Well, we're full....except for the mansion. You can have that room for regular price."

It was a mansion, a true Virginia estate home. In my loneliness, I suddenly thought of the verse that Kenon's husband spoke of, the mansions God has in store for us; the ones He builds as opposed to the ones we struggle to gain.

Yes, God, lets Red Canyon be shrouded in fog, and more seriously, Gazans continue to die and leaders who hold people's lives in their hands try to make others in their own image--and destroy everything in the process. But, as I've heard from friends over and over, God also writes straight with crooked lines.

Over these last days, I've reunited with friends and am so grateful for every "We're so glad you're back." How much that means.

Father Dave asked the girls, "Okay. It was tough. What did you learn?"

Ana said, "What true Christianity means."

He replied, "Yes. And sometimes you have to go away to value what you have."

We are the clay; and God takes even our mistakes and makes them times of remolding. We can go ego-defense about our mis-adventure, or we can go claylike.

So, we're in God's mansion until we can get back into our house--and then we have to replace the boiler. Bummer.