Kites

The new, spring kites have long tails, grazing the top of the parsonage and sailing right over its peak, dodging the lilac bush now in bloom and skimming the budding maple. I’m approaching thirty years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever flown a kite. The unplowed fields and fragrant breeze have beckoned us to newness.

With one hand on the spool and the other on the taut string, I squint toward the ascending dinosaur magically scaling toward the sun. I can’t help but wonder.
I had never realized the pure and simple pleasure of tension on a string— the pull between my bone-and-blood body and the unseen mystery of the wind. The gripping tug between heaven and earth finally tangible.

The entire process is sheer pleasure to me:
holding the kite up to the wind,
sensing the subtle pull from a gust, an invitation to climb,
letting go,
and then gripping the spool while releasing more and more white string up into the currents above.

Invitation, tension, release, wonder.
Its been a movement I’ve wrestled for several years. And now, barefoot in the green grass, a flurry of kite-like moments pass before me as if carried by the wind: baby coos and moving trucks and tears all swirling among torn pages and incense. All of that elation and strain, whimsy and struggle came rushing back from the southern cornfields like a big gust.

The kite soars even higher. The breeze whispers, Real life is right here in the tension.
Incarnation of body and spirit.
Grace and action.
Freedom and submission.
Healing and waiting.

O. races toward the churchyard with her kite adorned with a flittering rainbow tail, a swirling display of Divine promises after the rain, in the wind of a new season.

I consider the paradox again.
Real life is right here in the tension.

When we are young, we live in tension without much pain or thought. Kids long for tomorrow and live freely in today. They enjoy new freedom and independence as well as bedtime stories and kisses. I watch how my tots learn to balance their wild imaginations with social expectation— often from the front pew, gifting out church family with plenty of laughs. There is a lot of joy in this kind of living, indeed.

And yet somewhere along the way, we perceive these tensions as too uncomfortable. Maybe even naive. We want to arrive. We are tired of journeying, of balancing, of living with one foot in the front yard and the other two stories above the garden. We rationalize ourselves out of the great mystery of being.

The wind picks up and takes the kites for a spin and dive, and I am reminded that the tension can be painful, too. The Spirit-led life can feel unpredictable, open-ended, and right at the brink. Its risky, to be sure.
We could crash— and so we grasp tighter.
We could lose control— and so we give in and let go altogether.
This is the struggle with being human, of living in the tension embedded in our very being.
It is at our very core: both dust and holy breath.

I consider the Kingdom, the already-and-not-yet presence of God. I remember those years of wrestling in paradox, wanting so desperately to arrive and be safe and stationary.

But real, resurrected life is right here in this very tension .
Its movement, friction, transformation.
There is no arrival other than entering into peace. There is no safety other than His Presence. There is no stationary existence other than being continually caught up in a great gust of grace.

Because if I grip and control and hold white-knuckled, there is no miracle.
And if I simply let go and give in to the torrent of today, real life is lost.
We rise on the wings of the Spirit as we live grounded in truth and presentness all the while caught up in trust-filled love.

And there is great pleasure in this paradox, in the kite-flying and Kingdom-living reality.
There is pleasure in the movement— like ships pressed full of wind in billowy sails.
There is pleasure in the friction— like (dare I say) lovers, blurring body and soul.
There is pleasure in the transformation— like tulip bulb buried only to burst out bright.

Yes, as the kites swirl and spin overhead, I let the string glide through my fist.
Real life is right here in the tension.