A Lenten Devotion by Rick Seaholm
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90:2
I remember elements of that summer vividly. 1994: the final summer of my childhood. Well, to be perfectly honest, it may have been 1993. My father and I picked out a screen house for our backyard. Normally, my family would never spend time in the backyard, opting instead for the side yard, by the front door (which was really on the side of the house), which afforded us the opportunity to run inside if anything should approach, a dog perhaps, or chipmunk. We were a fearful bunch, my family. We were also a group who were overly concerned with putting other people out, or getting in their way. I still am this way. That surely was the reason that our brand-new screen house ended up about 100 yards from our front door, behind a woodpile, completely unseen from passersby, who may be offended by its garishness.
So I am surprised, in retrospect, that I ended up spending so much time in that screen house. I am sure that a great deal of symbolism could be gleaned from this tale, a boy becoming a man, distancing himself from his boyhood home, and so on. We didn’t purchase any additional furniture or trappings for our screen house, I spent that summer lying on an army cot that we found deep in our basement, and was apparently good enough after a bit of work with the garden hose.
I had just taken a course in high school called Cultural Western Civilization, one that ended up being an all-time favorite of mine. I was then and remain, a great admirer of the Italian Baroque painters, with their incredible ability for realism of image and treatment of light. Their use of perspective has always knocked me out. With that class’s textbook fresh in my mind, I lay on that army cot staring up through the angled screen side of my summer residence, with all the philosophical thoughts of 16 or 17-year-old and drew comparisons between paintings such as this, ceiling fresco by Andrea Pozzo (ca. 1690s) and the layers upon layers of tree branches high in the sky.
As I made my way through the writings of Michael Crichton that summer, at times I truly believed I was at peace, and I lay there restful, aware of the future possibilities that lay before me, yet not at all afraid. I don’t feel like that very often anymore. But I still think of those moments anytime I gaze up into the trees, and long for time when I once again may have such a relaxed mind.
God, free my mind. Amen.