This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Sunday after the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

This is the season of Incarnation. And, aside from Anna's pregnancy and Sofie's birth, this bedrock dogma of the Christian faith has not been felt quite so keenly as during this holiday travel.

First of all, let it be said, Sofie is a major-general trooper. The last two or three days have been a bit rough as the accumulated travel and new surroundings have taken a bit of a toll. But the great blessing is that though her days have been messed up, she's maintained her normal nighttime sleep patterns. She is an amazing four-and-a-half-month-old daughter. God blessed us last year with news of her little advent. And he has blessed us again this year as we celebrate with kisses, hugs and laughter, what we could only anticipate last year.

It's been great to be back in our native lands. Driving through the rolling plains of northcentral Oklahoma and southcentral Kansas is not, like some travel snobs like to put it, boring. I can't tell you how my soul breathes in these wide-open spaces. I'm not crowded and hemmed in by ugly cement and steel boxes that block out the sunrise and sunset. The twenty-four-by-seven city lights don't veil the night sky here, so the stars are ever available for awe and contemplation. I saw Orion for the first time since I can remember.

And I'm quickly assimilating my native "accent" (such as it is). I have one of those voices that unconsciously picks up on the intonations and inflections of my surroundings. My "i's" are now "ah's" and my "ohr's" are "errr's". I both love it and hate it. But it won't take me long to "lose" it again when I return to Chicago and start teaching.

All of this just simply reminds me that patrimony is not a bad thing. One's homeland is more than just a marker of birth and years of living. I am, in ways I'll probably never fully understand, as much this Kansas soil as I am anything. Though I grew up a "city kid" (Augusta, Kansas, population 7000), my late paternal grandfather (Clifton Fitzroy Healy) was a farmer all his life. My holidays and summers were marked by wandering his acreage, setting fenceposts, and watching dad brand cattle and, from the vantage point of the front seat of a pickup, drill winter wheat while the November wind blew and whistled underneath a grey sky.

Though I prefer monastery retreats, this journey through the heartland has been something of a retreat for me. The oil fields near Tulsa, then the sprawling ranchland further north, the small farming communites along K-15 in southcentral Kansas, this is an openness not just of geography but of character. There are bastards and rascals galore here, of course, but for the most part people are honest, hospitable, accepting.

If creation reveals the strong character traits of God, then my native state says that God loves you and welcomes you wherever you are. There's hard discipline here. God loves us but doesn't bless our every whim. I noticed on the drive here that many wheat fields have been replaced by, of all things, cotton. You plant and harvest what you can sell, not necessarily what you've planted and harvested all your life. There's a lot of work to do: when others are enjoying Thanksgiving dinner, you may be out drilling into the cold brown earth what will keep the lights on and the house warm. But God is as open as a Kansas sky, and as full of blessing as a winter wheat harvest.

I thank God I'm from here. And that I'm here today. Say what you will about Kansas--and I've heard all the jokes and slights--this is place full of the revelation of God. I'm glad he's given me the eyes, after thirty-odd years, to see it.