A Wider Horizon

A Wider Horizon Confronts and Comforts Me

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Sometime after making his breakthrough appearance in Star Wars, Harrison Ford starred in the lesser known movie “Mosquito Coast.”  He is a dogmatic scientific man who leads his family following one whim after another; his mind and vision growing more constricted with each life crisis until his narrowness can be seen suffocating him and his entire family.  Finally he lies mortally wounded, cursing how week is his body, while urging his family to move upstream, always fighting the current.  The family is tired and has given up, they allow their raft to float with the stream as Harrison Ford urges them onward against the stream, deluded into imagining they still are acting upon his every word.  He dies and in the next scene the family has floated into the bay of an ocean.  The eldest son speaking as the movie’s narrator describes how the horizon expresses the endless possibilities of life.  Life is not a battle against an evil nature that must be conquered but rather something good to be explored and enjoyed.  Mosquito Coast was one of those dark kinds of movies with an important message that never sells well.  It captured well the sort of modern world in which we live where science and Christianity have often been separated from each other.  Harrison Ford plays the scientist at war with any concept of God, while the eldest son falls in love with the daughter of an Evangelist with all the contemptuous features of a cliché filled glib Evangelicalism that offers very little in real life or community.

            I think this year has been for me, a year of finding myself on a raft of life that was mercifully allowed to float into the bay where I could get a fresh glimpse of the horizon.  The horizon is a world, a life, a whole creation beyond the constrictions of our narrow ideas and thoughts.  We may try to nourish our minds so as to be informed by theology, Scriptures, science, work and family, political activism, or the discussing of racial and gender issues.  Yet the reality is that one fresh look upon the scope of the horizon allows us to know that the world understood by our minds, ideas, and thoughts is one so narrow and constricted.  We can never see enough, never, never; never can we imagine the fullness of life as it is shown to us in the wide horizon that has no ending and no beginning.

            We, who see truth, are frustrated by all the peoples who do not see truth.  We think they should see it as we do.  We are so prone to argue for our own point of view.  We start doing like I have just done in this paragraph.  I argued for my perspective.  I discussed how I saw the world and got frustrated when others don’t see it all like I do.  But I hid my self-centered perspective of the world behind words like we and by seducing the reader into my camp by including him in the description of “us.”  But the wider horizon confronts me.  I begin to see possibilities.  The possibilities reduce my strong unquestioned convictions into transitionally held personal beliefs readied to be reassessed by further discussion and consideration.  The horizon confronts me with a strange sense of comfort to realize I don’t have to have it all scoped out to see that it is meant for my joy and enrichment.

            For me this has been a year where I have been introduced to a wider world than I knew existed.  My raft has floated into a bay and the horizon and its possibilities have suddenly again appeared endless.  I am only two years away from sixty and suddenly my horizon is broad and life’s possibilities seem endless.  Can an old dog learn new tricks?

            I credit it to some people I have come to know for the first time or again through social media.  Eventually I hope to make my trek to see and meet some of these persons, though some I won’t likely meet until we cross the sea that separates this life from the one to which with hope we trudge even if with sometimes tired heavy aching feet.

            I won’t name all.  But I will begin by naming John Armstrong, whose friendship was renewed after many years through Facebook.  John is different than when I knew him years ago.  I know some would think he has lost his edge, but I am sure he has simply discovered the grandeur of the horizon and how it speaks to us of so very many possibilities.  He has opened up my world with perspectives and blogs both by himself and others that have helped me to see a wider horizon.

            There are others.  There is a lady named Kate, who suffered growing up with some of the same sorts of Evangelical subculture excesses that I suffered with not when I grew up, but as an adult growing older but not always wiser.  It was a blog by her that brought me into the world of a progressive form of Christianity that both scared me and nourished me in some ways I had never known.  I think I now better understand old von Staupitz who mentored Luther, loved him, but was frightened by what Luther did to unsettle the world to which Luther had been born.  I love the energy and desire for life that I see in so many millennials.  I am sometimes frightened by how far they take asking questions and yearning to overthrow the old order they want to replace.  But I am sure that just as I might be a Von Staupitz looking on, that the Reformers will be followed after their stands by counter-reformers making their stands.  But that isn’t really Kate.  She is part of it, but she isn’t reduced to being a part of that or merely a part of anything.  She is a person, a person that can be characterized by many things but never reduced to any or even to all of those many things.  She is an aspiring writer, a lover of cats, someone who doesn’t always seem to know exactly what she thinks, wanting discussion but tired of endless debate.  She has a wonderful sense of humor and I am so grateful that through Twitter and blogs she has become part of my life.  She wants to write a novel, a science fiction novel.  I hope to read her finished work someday.  I wonder if she will have a scene somewhere of someone being confronted and comforted by experiencing seeing a broader horizon.

            I will leave others unnamed but sometimes easily enough discerned.  There is an Australian whose background included Christian worship on a Saturday.  She asks such wonderful questions.  She introduced me to a writer named Flanagan, whom I began to read and must get back to reading.  He can write.  He makes you feel what he writes.  She asks wonderful questions and seems to be so very independent and yet I think being independent to her is not something to be grasped or desired, it is just the way she is.  When everyone seems committed to one way or the other she is content to be committed to neither.  I suppose that is the very reason she is engaged in so many helpful conversations with others across the spectrum of thought.

            There is a blogger who I think is wonderful and yet probably at times we have rubbed each other the wrong way.  At least I am pretty sure that I have at times rubbed her the wrong way.  Yet I know few people whose thoughts I need to be reading more than her thoughts.  Sometimes I think she is reckless and not just passionate with her thoughts, but I am the better for being confronted and yes also sometimes comforted by her thoughts.

            There is a new friend on Facebook.  I value her perspective.  Theologically she is more conservative than my Twitter friends, but socially and politically she is more progressive than where I have been.  But of course, if I am honest; there were cave men more progressive than where I have been.

            So if you look out into a harbor and see a guy;  a guy that is a bit dazed and crazed, on a raft looking at the horizon then that just might be me.  I will be considering the possibilities ahead of me, not always knowing which way to turn.  I will probably pass on my responsibility.  I will defer the decision making to younger friends with more energy for the fight of faith than I have.  I am staring at the approaching sunset of life.  But I will try to encourage others when I think their paths are good.  I will try not to obstruct them when I know not if their path is good or bad.  I simply enjoy encouraging someone making their slog through life.  If I am getting offended by someone's seeming narrowness I will only ask: “Have you seen the horizon today?  Today it seems especially broad and endless, don’t you agree?”  I will not describe the horizon.  It is better seen than described.  Maybe if they see it we can share unspoken words regarding the scene before us.  It will be comforting and challenging, and filled with endless possibilities.