Tumbled and Perfectly Landed
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Come just as you are, bringing whatever is on your heart today. Take a few moments and allow yourself to just be.
Consider how intense pressure and discomfort form the mountains ― forcing the rock toward beautiful heights of unknown possibility.
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― Rumi
“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen…Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
2 Corinthians 3:18
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Food for Thought
Recently, I took a trip to Joshua Tree National Park in California. We drove the park drive as it wound around and through the Colorado and Mojave deserts. I’m a mountain girl from the Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, so I am easily overwhelmed in the desert.
The desert reminds me of my mortality. The landscape is unforgiving and seems to slyly whisper: “You could die here, and no one would know,” which is terrible, yet true. The unofficial motto of Joshua tree is, “Don’t die today,” followed by a list of ways one could perish should you not pay attention. In preparation for our trip, I listened to a podcast with stories from park rangers who advised closed toe shoes and long sleeves and pants because “things sting, poke, and bite in Joshua Tree”.
Despite the terrifying dangers of the desert, I found it all to be incredibly fascinating. As it turns out, the Joshua tree itself is not actually a tree. It is a cactus that seems to age from the bottom up. The lower parts of the cactus take on a look of tree bark with dead palm leaves serving as a sort of leafy sweater. Green cactus leaves top the vegetation with bright and perfectly pointed ends. And, like trees, these cacti are stalwart and appear to stand sentry over the land around them.
Even more amazing were rock formations that rose from the ground like a game of geological Jenga. I was completely obsessed! These formations are ancient movements of rocks from magma deep underground that are lifted from beneath us. They crack and pull themselves up only to lie upon each other as puzzle pieces. Though they begin as one molten mass, they are transformed to appear as a broken pile of discarded pebbles – beautifully arranged.
This violent upheaval of rock from the inner earth is the closest analogy I can give for the forceful expulsion I have had from life last September to life now in May. The pieces are there. Rearranged in ways I never imagined, yet they work together in ways I never expected they would. Tumbled and perfectly landed.
Transformed.
“Transformative” is a mild word for what I feel like has happened to all of us in the last few years. Excavated, maybe? Many of our lives have been deconstructed and rebuilt with pieces and parts of the past. New for certain, but transformed is a kind way to put it.
Transformation often comes whether we want it to or not. Its actions move from one existence to another. From one way toward another. We tend (I tend!) to try to stay stuck in the old ways. It feels easier there. Predictable. What I have come to realize is that the newness is over there. It already exists in possibility. The key is how we participate in it. And it’s hard. Terrifically so. Much like the rock from below, we have to excavate ourselves. Look into and under the fears we hold…About others. About the “what ifs”. About ourselves. No one wants to do upheaving kind of work, but that is where the work is.
A friend I met this summer questioned the “tranquility” of nature. Nature is by definition untamed. Beautiful, yes. And dangerous. As we were reminded frequently in Joshua Tree: “Don’t die today.” Flash floods, sudden weather changes, wrong steps, heat, dehydration can occur…But the warning came with encouragement: Prepare. Bring water. Know the trails. Be aware of what is possible.
Possible…what about that as another word for hope? Something new from the old.
While you are here, enjoy what the world brings you. AND what you bring to the world.
Learn about Joshua Tree National Park. When you have time on a nice day, go for a hike and pay attention to the beautiful nature all around you.
As a method of reflection, consider your life currently, and pick an analogy to describe it. Do you feel like your life resembles a desert? Or maybe it’s more like a lavish, abundant banquet table. Or perhaps your life more closely resembles a game of 52-card pick-up.
For a printable version of today's reflection Click Here!
Blessing
God of wondrous nature,
Thank you for reminders all around that beauty can come from transformation and change. Guide us as we work through our ways of old toward the newness of possibility.
A little Table Talk for your table...
Share about some ways you’ve experienced transformation over the past few years, past year, or even just recently.
In what ways can you “prepare for possibility”?
Talk about a time you leaned into a transforming experience, despite moments of pain or discomfort along the way. What good can you now see that came from that experience?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Take a few minutes and, together with your kiddo, learn how mountains are formed!
Now try being creative. Make your own mountains out of the things around you!
Ask your child about a time they leaned into a transforming experience, despite moments of pain or discomfort along the way. What good can they now see that came from that experience?
Meet Our Welcoming Voice!
Khette Cox is an ordained minister who works as a chaplain in healthcare, and in her spare time is learning the piano, enjoys watching live music, and loves life with humor and a sense of the sacred. She lives in Old Hickory, TN where you will probably find her on her front porch waving at her neighbors.
To hear more from Khette throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!
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