Sense of Space

"The sense of space might have triggered lighter emotions, less depressing thoughts, a sense of well-being."  Dionne Brand, What We All Long For (261)

Brand's novel refers to a downtown Toronto housing project lacking in any landscaping or foliage to ease weary urban eyes, what the sight of some flowers could have done to increase the sense of space the tightly-packed residents had. I find myself on the farm I grew up in in southwestern Ontario, Canada as I write these words. Surrounded by corn, soybeans, mown wheat fields, and no lack of native flora and fauna. Crickets and grasshoppers twirr in the humid night air. Earlier we were privy to a fantastic thunder and light show, the better part of an hour of torrential rain and skies repeatedly lit up like the day. It is 1:54 a.m. My late night imperative to write can not be blamed on jet lag. Our 6 hours ahead caused my little family to go to bed early and our bright-eyed baby to awaken us all at 4:30 a.m. for the first four days, eager to crawl and test her standing legs. But we've been in North America for over a week now, thus adjusted and truly I should be asleep. 

Yet I am awake and must write, writing has been pent up in my bones amidst days filled with children's games and squabbles, swimming pools and BBQs, steaks and corn on the cob. Traveling from one sibling's home to another, evenings after my generation's offspring are finally in bed spent catching up on two years of lives lived. We've been crossing borders; national, parental, traditional, faithful. How can four children of the same parents, living in one house on the same plot of land til their 18th birthdays, have developed so differently? We all share the Christian faith, a conviction of God as our Father, Jesus as our Saviour and the Holy Spirit as our Comforter and Empowerer. Yet we manifest quite a wide range of the expressions of that faith. This could lead to tensions and disputes, concerns and arguments, hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I want to choose to see this diversity as a beautiful, life-giving thing. There is space in this upside-down Kingdom for difference, for the beauty and complexity that we see embodied in each person, image-bearer of our beautifully complex, multi-faceted God.

Space, a sense of space in the family of Jesus-followers is what we all need. Space to be who we long to be, the deep calls out to deep inside us, to follow the nudges and Spirit whispers. Freedom from boxed in, pre-conceived ideas of who we ought to be, who others got used to perceiving us as, perhaps from what was inherited or passed down; free from labels, taunts, childhood insecurities.

A post card sent to my great-grandmother in 1906.

I love my family and am deeply grateful for them, for who they are, what they have given me and still give me. We have all settled geographically apart from one another, flung from west coast to middle America to Europe. The longer we live apart, the more we adapt to and are influenced by our cultures, be they national, church, political, or socio-demographic cultures. We find our place. The common bond of family runs deeper than this land on which we were raised, which our ancestors worked for inch by inch, struggling and straining to hold down the family farm, to keep the bank at bay. This hard-fought land may one day be sold to others, our generation having found our niches elsewhere. The family name may vanish and be forgotten from this farming community of which I, the youngest and last to go, have not been a part for almost 15 years now. But loss of land will not weaken the bond, will not change what makes us family, for better, for worse. Through email and Skype, rather than the leather post cards my great-grandmother received, we'll keep checking in, keep loving each other. 

A leather post card my great-grandmother received 1906

We do not have to think, act, decide, spend money, believe, play or work the same to be family. We do not have to be uniform to belong to this great, colourful, eclectic family of God, but if we give each other a sense of space to be who we are our lungs with fill, our chests will rise and we'll be able to fling our arms back in the warm summer rain, inhale the lush moist night, find our footsteps, and dance.