to all the places that make us

the world is not made of dead things.

someone once told me that.

that all this solid matter, the couches we sit on, the plates we eat off of, the beds we lay our bodies upon, they are not lifeless. they can’t be.

and that’s been on my mind for the past few weeks while all of it, the stuff, has found its way into these black plastic bins. packed up. towers of memory lining our hallways and piled high in bedrooms.

bit by bit, you un-home yourself.

this place of yours, two bed, two bath, a patio that, if you crane your neck the right way, has a view of the mountains, is now un-made; returning to some formless void. inhospitable. not suited for human life.

everything becomes disposable. meals on paper plates. drinks in plastic cups. all the favourite dishes buried in those towers.

every few days it’s my job to take these bins, our whole life, five at a time to our storage locker on the other side of town. first the kids’ car seats have to come out, and then the seats have to go down, and then it’s a bin of books, a bin of paintings, a bin of medicine and toiletries and cleaning supplies. five bins, five bits of family, driven across town and slotted into place behind bright yellow sliding door number 452.

my life beside someone else's beside someone else’s beside someone else’s.

and then you do it again. and again. slide your life into some warehouse. a repository for a hundred other packed up, in-between lives.

our home, if you can even call it that, is barren and it is yearning.

it’s like me and the walls and the floors all want the same things: paintings and framed photos and a coffee table. it’s like this space wants to go back to being something more than empty.

that each room, unmade, has forgotten what it exists for.

and then there’s the last day. the day we have to be out out out because, tomorrow, the new owner is moving in in in.

what we do, aislinn and i, is take the kids by the hand, and we say a prayer, and then we walk them through this space we once called home.

we tell them to say thank you to the fireplace for keeping us warm and cozy.

thank you to the kitchen for filling our bellies.

thank you to the bathtub for cleaning us.

thank you to our bedrooms for holding us while we slept.

thanks for being there when we were sick and when we were healthy, thanks for being there through the tears of loss and despair and the laughter of joy and togetherness.

and the words do not echo, like you’d expect, in some vacuous space. they land softly, like a kiss on the cheek.

and, then, because this little family of mine doesn’t have a new place to call home, we drive up to a rented space in the mountains.

and what’s on your mind, is that spaces are not neutral and they are not dead. they are not empty containers you decorate with your aesthetic. they are saturated with memory and with prayer and with suffering and with labour and with communion.

and because it’s getting about that time, the kids fall asleep in their car seats, and the sun is setting orange in the valley, and aislinn and i are remembering.

remembering our home. hoping it remembers us.

and, yeah, the world is not made of dead things.

the whole world longs to be ordered.

1. sacred spaces and inhabitable worlds

you know that feeling you get where you see something once and then you see it everywhere ?

it first happened to me with shallots about fifteen years ago. i’m visiting home on the weekend and watching a cooking show with my mom, and the main chef is using them in everything. in his seared scallops appetizer; in his pan roasted herbed chicken main, in his dark chocolate with raspberry puree dessert.

“what’s a shallot?”

my mom looks at me, wondering if this masters degree is really doing me any good, and she says, “it’s like a little onion, sweetie.”

and a few days later, back in toronto, going to the local grocery shop, right beside the normal onions are the shallots. they’d been there the whole time. and the day after, out for dinner with friends, my pork ramen has shallots in it, too. and then they’re haunting me.

and that moment, of seeing something for the first time and then seeing it everywhere, well, it happens for feelings, too.

when we drive down the mountains and into the city, when we stop in at a cafe, how it feels is flat.

yeah, it’s functional, and there’s people in there, but it doesn’t feel inhabited.

the walls are white and the art hanging is abstract, inoffensive, geometry. we get our cortados and lattes and baby-ccinos and sit down in faux leather chairs that resist our bodies.

they tell you : don’t get too comfortable.

they tell you : don’t stay too long.

you sip away and the music hums elevator jazz, filling any empty space — the awkward, human moments of lulls in conversation.

and me and the wife and the kids, well, we’re just like everyone else in here, just a-passin’ through. as designed. thanks for the cash, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, sorta thing.

it’s the same at the bookstore across the street, the same at the restaurant for dinner, the same everywhere you go. a whole world of that same inhospitable, yearning of my empty apartment.

no one in there really belongs because there’s nothing to belong to. the space has no meaning, no purpose, no voice.

it’s telos, it’s main end, is not a human one, nor one of community. it is probably some jumbled hope at efficient, utilitarian, profitability.

high turnover.

but, damn, all those hidden costs.

the destruction of space, and with that, the destruction of person.

at the end of the day, when we drive to our own in-between space, up up up into the mountains, as our subaru outback drinks about a quarter tank, aislinn says to me:

“I miss our coffee at home.”

and what she means is my espresso machine and grinder and me making it for her, and her settling into a space that wants her. curled in her spot, the kids playing in theirs, and nothing in there rushing anyone away.

you can stay as long as you need.

what she means is, the space feels happy and full, like it wants us there.

what she means is, some spaces invite you to become more you when you are in them.

and we call those spaces sacred, and they form us, just as much as we form them.

2. liminality, nostalgia, and cultivating life

the rental unit is on the sixth floor, and the advertisement for it boasted about sweeping views the mountainous valley. three bedrooms, two baths, and an in-unit sauna.

from the living room and from the patio all you can see is cabin lined roads and chairlifts and gondolas and, then, well, those stark green mountains.

it’s shoulder season, up here. and what that means is all of tourists are gone, and all of the businesses that exist to support the tourists are closed up. it means that most of the people up here are lifers and the rest of them are general contractors organizing teams to fix everything up before the summer rush.

every day we take the kids for walks and we go to the only open coffee shop here in the moutains. we run around an empty apartment building. we drive down to the school, once classes are done, and use the playground.

how it feels is liminal.

our beautiful unit, with 30 foot ceilings and cedar plank walls, well, it’s not ours. not our pans, not our mugs, not our life. and you figure that out, the life part, whenever you start looking for a new place of your own.

what matters most to us?

your space, if it can, should reflect those values. big dining rooms and cozy living rooms and smaller everything else because we love hosting.

up here, what you feel, is a place that doesn’t quite love what you do; a place with a different set of values. a place you will only ever exist in for a moment, because, that’s about all you can survive.

because we fill empty differently.

when we go for walks along the connector trails, weaving through evergreens, or when the kids splash around in puddles or run through the empty village, we have to tell them that everything closed until early july.

and what you do is think back and think ahead.

you think about when you drove up here for the day five months ago into the snowy village and everything was full and alive and filled with skiers and snowboarders and the gondolas were swaying yellow squares cascading up the hill.

and you almost wish for that time.

but it’s shoulder season. both my life and my location. so you try to think ahead — of what this place will be like long after you’re gone. when all the summer energy explodes in fireworks and festivals and food trucks and hikes.

we stop by the coffee shop, again, as it’s closing, and i grab a coffee, and the girl who runs it in the summer gives us her end-of-days; the left over baked goods. treats for the kids.

we go to our in-between home and we watch a movie, and when the kids are asleep, and aislinn, too, i head out to the patio and have a cigar and watch the sunset over the ridged peaks.

the whole world feels like me.

that’s what you think.

it feels in-between. it feels liminal.

inhale and breathe smoke and watch it join the puffy pink clouds and think about why so many people keep looking back. back to when they were kids, back to the early 2000s, back to the 90s, back to the 80s, back to when life was good.

back to when the whole stupid world wasn’t in a shoulder season.

the clouds stretch and cast shadows over the shoulders of the mountains, and what’s on my mind is how quick i am to do the same. always look back. always wish for that time when i felt anchored.

the wrong form of remembering.

lately, nostalgia has been a poison. it makes me hopeless. all i do is grieve the world i lost. the world my kids won’t inhabit.

probably because this kind of nostalgia believes the best has already happened.

but you know what ?

i think nostalgia, the actual feeling of it, is a shoulder season. it’s liminal. it’s in-between. it takes my vision and longing and yearning and sets it upon a world that no longer exists. and it makes it almost impossible for me to do what i am supposed to do.

remember and cultivate.

because you can believe the best world is still being made.

you can believe that you will build this world into a cathedral of home one room at a time. and you can leave all the doors open.

but you gotta start small, i think. set your table and cook a meal and invite people over.

that’s what’s on your mind as you sip away at decaf coffee and breathe out that last bit of smoke and as the reds and pinks of sunset roll into dark purples and vespertine blues of night.

yeah, the world is liminal, and yeah, it’s probably a trap to try to restore some by gone world. but what you can do is remake it. you can order the chaos.

and if i’m right, the whole cosmos is longing to become home, just like my empty apartment.

3. shape your life, shape the world

even in-between, you settle into routines.

you get used to the new house sounds: the midnight creaks, how the rain drum drum drums on the windows, the clicking exhale of the fridge, the heavy-footed waltz of your upstairs neighbours.

every morning at 6am the water is boiling in the kettle and the french press has two spoonfuls of grinds. every morning it’s prayers while the brown fluff paints the boiling water dark. they bloom and drown and then you can smell it:

your ticket awake.

every morning i read until the family rises into the day, sipping away, watching the sunrise.

and then it’s my whole routine:

make breakfast, take calls, workout, more calls, more deadlines. and then at the end of the day, go out with the kids while aislinn cleans and makes us dinner.

we say our prayers and we eat together.

we sing and tell stories until the kids collapse and then me and my better half enjoy a few exhausted moments together. to talk or watch something or let the cool and wild evening envelop us.

and then you do it again.

and again.

and again.

and you love it, even when it’s hard. because chesterton says you have to love a thing to make it lovely. and, you know, he’s right.

so when you wake up, the day after, sleep still tugging your eyes shut, you do your best to make coffee and say your prayers and fry eggs sunny-side up in love.

to make your whole world lovely.

and we humans, well, we make meaning through repetition.

you do things, again and again and again, in love, and those things become sacred. your whole life forms around this center of gravity — love.

well, Love, with a capital L.

your careers and your home and your chores and your relationships reveal everything deep inside of you. who you really are. what you’re truly devoted to.

and what the modern world has tried to do, whether on purpose or as some by product of an inverted hierarchy of values is strip away the goodness of space. the space that holds and encourages and remembers your routines of love.

land is property. homes are assets. bodies are machines. nature is raw material for ever increasing production.

all stripped of it’s life.

so, maybe, the modern world is made of dead things. or, at least, deadened things.

things that need resurrecting.

lucky us, we follow a King who knows His way out of the Grave.

and i think we have to do it all, like Him, in Love.

it’s almost six in the evening, and the boys and i are playing at the park, zipping on lines, rocketing down slides, and climbing up ropes. aislinn is making us dinner.

the kids are filling their buckets with sand and rocks and sticks and they’re using their watering cans to make things grow. whenever another family comes around, they both say hi and ask them to play.

and what you think of is that cathedral for the whole world. how right now, it’s the size of a mustard seed, or, the size of my boys’ hearts. and if they keep at it, well, it’ll grow grow grow, and make a space for so many to find rest.

when it’s time to make our way home, as we drive alongside hundred year old evergreens, as we sing Bob Dylan or CCR or Streetlight Manifesto, i’m thinking again about how slow going it is to build the kingdom.

how costly.

but what you’re trying to do is make a world that lasts; join in the Great Work. Participate in and offer a Life that is Infinitely Good.

and as we run through the parkade, as the boys press every damn button in the elevator, what’s on my mind is that the world is remade by enduring love, not flashy intensity. it takes a long time to reshape an imagination and make a heart grow ( unless, of course, you’re the grinch ).

what you see in the laughter and running freedom of your kids is some mix of the love and joy that aislinn and i inhabit. that they are learning to inhabit.

as we eat tacos together, made in love, as love literally feeds us, we all laugh.

that’s how you do it. slowly, together, inhabiting a transforming Love.

new beginnings

right now, maybe the whole world is in a shoulder season.

maybe you’re all liminal, just like me.

so let me tell you one last story:

two days ago we took possession of our new place.

and it’s empty. and when you walk into it, when you see the wood panelled walls and the stone fireplace, what you can feel is hopeful expectation. our hearts, and this empty home, are all excited for what we might become.

the backyard is wild and the garden is overgrown, the air is stale, and the walls are empty. the basement is unfinished and the walls need paint.

what our new place needs is a bit of habituating love. and what we need is a place that can receive it, and hold it, and offer back to us a space that multiplies.

the world is not made of dead things; but some things are deadened. our souls included.

and like all things, it just takes some enduring love to make them come alive.

Every Day Saints is a torchlight searching for quiet miracles, the beautifully human stories and ideas that exist all around us.