Monday, June 19, 2006

I Love CO

In exactly 24 hours, I will leave my house to drive to the airport where I will pass through layers of security, board a plane and sigh.

I am going to Colorado. I might not come back.

For the better part of 12 years, my family has taken this trip. It began as a convenient way to get out of town (Lincoln, NE at the time) and visit my sister (who's orchestra was having its summer season in Vail, CO as part of the Bravo! Colorado Music Festival). Turns out, it's an annual family event, often involving branches that would never have spent time together otherwise. It's a load of fun for me, but causes a little relational stress for the family generally...however, it is ultimately an overall a good time. What's not to like? Mountains, stars, hot in the day, cool at night. Cobalt blue skies, glory everywhere. Mmm....

Sometimes I think I want everything all at once. I want to just give up and give in to what I know is in my heart - where the wild things are? Heh heh...I just mean that I have stuff in there that is waiting. Always aching a little, oozing out when I talk to my people, always leaking when I am trying to stay steady. One piece of that pain is in Colorado. I feel different there. And I don't think it's just my conditioned response as a result of being on vacation whenever I'm there - it's something bigger. It's about beauty, and the song that is in me to be let out. That place looks like the sound I feel in me. I don't know how else to say it. I want to play, write, sing what I see and hear there. It makes sense to me. I make sense there.

Rochester doesn't make me want to sing. I have written less here than anywhere. Yes, there are times when I am writing again, but less than I would say is normal for me. I can't explain it, except that the sound in me is made for somewhere else, is louder somewhere else.

I don't know. Is it possible to be made for somewhere? Or are we just meant to be who we are wherever we are? Why did God bother to move his people out and around like he did with Israel? They were a totally different bunch once they went over and through the wilderness and I have to think milk and honey made someone sing a new song. Maybe that's it - it's more that I am responding to the sound of Colorado (MAN that sounds sappy) than that proximity to it is affecting my sound. ?

Maybe I'd just better go pack...

2 comments:

Christina said...

Mar-
I always long for someplace different--wild, beautiful..away. I know part of it is the longing for heaven. It is made more intense living in a place that is just not what makes my heart sing. Why am I still in Nebraska? I hate corn. However, I cling to the reality that God knows my heart and and what he created me for. He know that nature and wildness makes my heart sing; that I adventure makes me write; that if it was my choice I'd be a wandering Isrealite in chacos...for those that the wildness is home the redundant flatlands of lincoln or the honking horns of rochester becomes Wilderness.

Kate said...

maran... long lost you are indeed :) (that's the link on Caron's blog...)!
how are you????
yes, yes, yes i understand the longing for Colorado, mountains, glory everywhere. how do i find glory in Peoria, IL? praying i will... i'd love to hear from you, old friend.