I was "outside" for two weeks in September and the pace--three short workshops in three different locations and one longer retreat--seemed a little frenetic with all of the air travel and staying in so many different places. On the last long plane ride home to Anchorage I realized with no small sense of surprise that I was longing to be inside. I was actually looking forward to being inside Alaska and inside my home. I'm teaching an intensive course in the Principles of Spiritual Formation here in Anchorage, but my home is a serene, quiet spot--an inside place. Its southern exposure looks out frm a bluff onto golden birch trees. Then almost as I sit and gaze the trees shed their leaves and the view extends to the Chugach Mountains on the eastern horizon. I shed my outside self as well realizing that whatever I demand of myself, no matter what i choose to do or not do, life is simpler and the feeling of space muchmore expansive on the inside. I'm just now beginning to embrace this inside/outside rhythm as a rhythm of grace for my own life, rather than living in my fear of emptiness. And what was this fear emptiness but really the terror or insignificance. Perhaps the fear that one could travel so far inside, especially inside Alaska, to be lost to the outside world, the world of tasks and titles, responsibilities and requests for me to speak in my outside voice.
But what if the emptiness is not emptiness at all but grace-filled space where God is receiving me in love? What if the opportunity for such a blessed look is as near as my own living room window? What if this slowed down, inside view is meant to show me the way to live not just in my Alaskan home, but inside my life's home, inside myself. As my friend from the outside Rita, would say, "Who knew?"