Deep calls to deep

Our son says he's "not into religious stuff," but when it comes to nature he has the heart of a mystic. Crossing over a woodland creek, the rest of us might pause for a moment to watch the water flow underneath the bridge and trickle down the pile of rocks on the other side, but he insists on standing there for a long time, completely absorbed.

A beetle making its slow, ponderous way across our path, or a frog glimpsed at the edge of a lake, becomes in that moment his whole world, and he wants to stay with it for a long time.

Long enough to make the rest of us start pacing a little, dropping the occasional sigh and hoping he'll soon be satisfied and tell us he's ready to move on, but that's never the case.

One of us always has to bite the bullet and remind him that we have a hike to finish. We have somewhere to go later that day. His reactions are always the same--This is so cool. Please, can't we stay a little longer?

The first time I recognized this quirk of his for what it actually is--the gift of contemplation--we were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at the site of the massive set of waterfalls which give the city its name. He was nine years old at the time and absolutely entranced. Despite the blazing hot weather that day, he did not complain or rush toward a shady area as he normally would; instead, he stood absolutely still at the highest point of the overlook walkways. Leaning his forearms on the guardrail, he gazed at the white cascades of water with a look of deep satisfaction on his face, like that of a traveler who has finally caught sight of his home.

It didn't take long before our girls (then aged six and four) had reached their limit of water-watching and photo-taking, but their brother made it clear to us all that he was not yet ready to go back to the car. "You can leave if you want," he said, "but I'm staying right here. This is so incredible."

My husband and I had never seen him like this before. We were well acquainted with his love of nature and his tendency, for better or for worse, to follow his own inner compass regardless of what others tell him he is "supposed" to do. But this look of rapt contemplation was something new, and both of us noticed it.

Maybe he was swept up in the deafening sound that filled the air around us like a giant mushroom cloud, swallowing our voices. Or feeling the furious energy of the water as it smashed relentlessly against the rocks, over and over. Whatever it was, our skeptical, recently declared atheist son was clearly being moved in his spirit, though at the time he would have vehemently objected to my putting it in those terms. Something about those falls spoke directly to his heart, just like in Psalm 42:7:

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers have swept over me."

At the time, I was a little impatient with waiting for him (truth be told, I was very impatient) because of the heat and because sometimes my brain is ruled by a tyrant called The Schedule. We were on the final leg of our road trip and I wanted to return home with enough time to unpack, go to the grocery store, and all those other Very Important Things.

But it was he who had chosen the better part. Feeling that call to stop and contemplate what was in front of him, he was determined to answer and would not let anything get in the way.

This is a true gift, and one I hope will continue to steer him towards gazing on those things that feed his spirit, be it waterfalls, mountains, or the busy little anthill in our driveway, for the rest of his life. Maybe the rest of our family will learn from his example, if we stop our pacing and watch-checking long enough to look, listen and allow the word incredible to slowly rise up to our lips.