Embracing Limitations in the Vineyards, Redwoods, and Sonoma Coast

When our daughter, our first born child, was around five years old, I said to her, "Ashtyn, you can be whatever you want to be." A product of my own culture, I wanted to be a good girl-dad, enlarge her thinking to dream big, and reach for the life she wanted. She corrected me quickly: "No, Daddy. I am only supposed to be what God wants me to be." I tried to explain what I meant, but she persisted. She was adamant. She said that her life was to be lived according to God’s way for her. I was a bit taken aback at her wisdom, but I let it speak to me about my own existence and have gone back to that moment repeatedly over the years when anxious, discontent, or fearful that I was missing out on some life unlived. God created me, he has a way for me to live. God’s ways are higher than our ways. Amen.

Believing that God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer and that his wisdom far exceeds our own ability to direct, organize, and refashion and recreate our lives according to our own innate desires is key to the Christian faith. It is essential to the confession, “Jesus is Lord.” He is God and we are not and the way he made us, the body and place he puts us in, the talents, abilities, resources (and lack thereof), are all integral to God’s work in our lives. We are only fully alive when we live into the life that God has for us. This isn't some kind of determinism where everything is set for us ahead of time and we have no choice or responsibility other than to morosely accept our state, however wretched it is. Salvation, redemption, hope, and transformation are always in the offering to us. Rather, it's more of a growing into the awareness that God has set us into families and places and nations as our Creator and Designer and has given us bodies and minds and hearts full or real substance. We live in the context of what God has done and is doing in our lives beyond us and in our lived experience. Truly, our lives are not our own and we are not the masters of our universe, able to create and recreate ourselves at will. Our future is not wide open just because we want it to be. 

We aren't a blank slate to be remade again and again, but rather, we have been designed by a Creator who is wise and who will glorify himself through us, no matter our condition, if we trust him. Believing that and living into it runs counter to the spirit of the age and requires conversion from self to God. It requires a miracle. 

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In 2019, our family moved from a lifetime in the southeast to pastor a small church in Sonoma County in Northern California, approximately 40 miles north of San Francisco. The move to Wine Country was exciting, but also hard in that our family had to leave behind the life we had lived for years. For me, it required a massive pruning of so much of my work and relationships. Starting over was hard, but I was buoyed by the possibilities of what seemed like an unlimited future, something that had always held appeal to me. What could we do here? What could we accomplish in this place? I was excited and had lots of vision for the church and what was to come. But, I couldn’t see that Covid was looming and about eight months after our family was fully here, we were facing lock downs and massive limitations on even leaving the house. 

We endured it the best we could, but so many dreams were dashed. We recovered slowly, but people moved away and things changed. The world became more disconnected. I began to find solace in visitng and exploring the three main features of Sonoma County in the vineyards, the Redwoods, and the Sonoma Coast. What I learned there in the quiet walks by looking down, looking up, and gazing out, became transformative. 

Looking Down. The Sonoma vineyards are beautiful, produce world class wine, and give rise to our tourism board’s motto, Sonoma, Where Life Opens Up. The siren song of unlimited possibility beckons tourists to come to a diverse and beautiful landscape where every bottle of wine tells a story of terroir: the land, wind, fog, sun, cold, heat, and soil that works together to form the grape. But, it wasn’t until watching the vineyards through a couple of years of drought, and then fires, that I realized that the vines do their greatest work when they are pruned and when the roots go deep into the ground in search for water. It’s the cutting back and stress on the vine in its search for sustenance and in its concentration of energy that really makes the grape valuable and flavorful. Walking through vineyards, watching, going through season after season, trying and failing and trying again to grow my own vine – all of this taught me lessons that began to be applied to my own soul.

Looking Up. Old growth forests of Coastal Redwoods majestically dot Sonoma County. By walking through them in prayer and listening, I’ve learned what it means to turn your eyes upward to the heavens when everything around you is working to drag you down. The Redwoods can be over 300 feet tall, but they depend upon each other. Their roots are shallow, but they spread out and interlock with other trees, supporting one another. They live in community. The height they grow is directly related to how well they support one another, the climate, their positioning in cool coastal valleys, and the diversity of the forest. They are massive and strong and point to heaven, but they are utterly dependent on an ecosystem that supports them, and that they also give weight and meaning to. Utterly strong, yet fragile, their limitations define them. Yet, when you see them, you can’t help but turn your gaze to the heavens. 

Looking Out. As you head west through the vineyards and redwoods of Sonoma, you get to the coast. When you come upon it, you are struck by the vastness of possibility. The Sonoma Coast sits astride the San Andreas Fault and as the waves crash upon the cliffs and mountains that rise from eons of continental plates colliding, you begin to feel that anything is possible here in this liminal threshold at the “ends of the earth.” The Sonoma Coast tricked me into focusing on the vast horizon for a long time. But, it was only after many day trips where I sat and listened that I began to realize that the true story was found in its consistency, the relentless crash of the waves pounding on the shore, the rising and falling of the tides, the sun that appears over the eastern hills and then sets in the western horizon. Again and again. The big rocks are there. The gray whale migrates. The harbor seals and the starfish and waves pounding over and over have told me the story of God’s relentless love and sustaining provision. I went to the Sonoma Coast looking to be recharged by looking out, but what I found was God bringing me his grace through the pounding of waves upon the shore. Over and over and over again. 

But, also, there in the soil of the vineyards, the majestic nature of the trees, the jagged lines of the coast, you see that God has made - He has created - He is Creator - and you, decidedly, are not. The liminal space from land to see is clear. You know when you're passing from one to the next. The trees are distinct. The lines between organisms are fixed. The separation between the expanse of sky and the firmness of terra, of earth and dirt, are clear. Each realm working in its own way, its own function. And all doing their job within the lines that God had drawn for them. 

What about me?

It was through stopping, walking slowly, and listening that I have begun to learn to embrace my limitations and let God give me what I need. In exploring this further, I’ve been able to join together with a few others in Sonoma County to form a collective that leads spiritual retreats into the Vineyards, Redwoods, Coast, and Oaks of our region to stop and listen to what God is saying to us through his Creation. We are calling it Signaterra and are hosting personal spiritual and leadership retreats to explore what God is doing in Creation and through our lives so we can go deeper in embracing our God-given limitations and boundaries so that through the concentration of the work of suffering and resurrection, God will produce the best fruit through our lives. Just this weekend, we took a group from our church out on one of these weekends to explore together what God is saying to us through what He has made and it was a blessed time to consider what it means to find our identity in Christ and for God to be Creator and for us to recognize that we are the made, the created. 

(Church group at the Sonoma Coast)

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Barnabas Osprey, in an essay entitled, "Coming to Terms with our Finite Existence", writes about finitude through the lens of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur claimed that the "primary task of philosophy is to help us come to terms with our finitude."  I’d say its an important aspect of our religion as well. Osprey explains how trying to escape our limitations can lead to all sorts of problems:  

Who doesn’t sometimes get angry, sad, or plain frustrated by their limitations? Wouldn’t we all rather have all knowledge, understanding, and power? But our limits are not something to regret, says Ricœur. The real problem is not that we are finite. The problem is that we wish we weren’t finite. In other words, that we want to be God.

 

This desire to be God is what led to the Fall, as outlined in Genesis 3. Osprey, working through Ricoeur's thinking says, 

Genesis 3 teaches that everything went wrong for Adam and Eve when they started to want to be like God. The status of not-being-God is not itself evil or sinful, but it does make evil possible if we refuse to accept our finite status ... We cannot change the fact that we are finite. Things will always happen to us that we didn’t want or choose. We live in a turbulent world in which we are not the master. No matter how intelligent, wealthy, or powerful we are, there are always factors beyond our control that can spoil our best-laid plans. The only choice we have is how we respond to our finitude. 

 

As I grow older, I recognize my finite nature more clearly. Becoming distinctly aware of your mortality doesn't just involve thinking about death. It also involves embracing limitations. I'm in my late 40s now and my children are growing up and leaving home. I have gray hair at my temples and I now wear glasses. The optometrist said that was normal for someone "my age." I've been blind in one eye since birth, so I have always had limitations on my sight and coordination, but now I need help with the one good eye. There are other signs of my finiteness beyond my flagging physical abilities. The future is becoming more narrow. I can see the ruts and grooves of my life more clearly in the emerging lines on my face and my view of the future doesn't seem as wide open as it did when I was 20 years old. My course has been charted and set and I am well along my way in this journey of life as my possibilities narrow. It is hard, but okay to admit that. It can be liberating, actually. I don't have to live or scramble up onto a constant upward trajectory to accomplish or do more. I can be at peace with who I am and trust God for what's next. I can learn, listen, and respond more easily to the nudge of God’s Spirit because I am becoming less inclined to try and make my own way.

This realization doesn't mean that things can't change or that I am powerless to make needed course corrections. Embracing limitations can help us focus and actually be more effective. In a drive to get healthy and embrace limitations regarding my body, I addressed what I was eating and lost 70 pounds last year. I pulled back from engaging social media and just sending my thoughts into the ether in random observations and started a doctoral program to grow and create something more long-lasting. I'm continuing to pastor a church and am focusing more intensely on how people grow deep in grace and a bit less on how to grow a church numerically. And, as my children age and leave home, I’m having to learn new ways of loving them and my wife so we can have a strong and sustainable future as a family spread out and expanding across time and space. All of this requires constant learning, adaptation, and daily repentance from self-focus to others-focus. Change and growth are needed every day. But, part of that change involves learning what it means to be finite, limited, and unable to be all and do all that I'd like. I cannot be anything I want to be, as my young daughter once told me. I do not just "think and therefore I am" as Descartes said. My life is actually informed by time, energy, geography, seasons, relationships, boundaries, and limited resources. Living in to who I really am and who God made me to be apart from expectations and comparisons with others is becoming more key as my life narrows. Context matters and I am more heavily influenced by my environment than I'd like to admit. But, when I do accept that reality of limitation, other possibilities of the spirit open up that were previously kept hidden from me. Spiritual eyes see what physical eyes cannot.

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Admittedly, this perspective flies in the face of the modern zeitgeist. Western Individualism has many good aspects to it. It recognizes that people are unique and have value and certain inalienable rights, and if it is connected to its source in the Hebrew theo-philosophical tradition, it finds that meaning in the Imago Dei; that mankind is made in the Image of God and bears the imprint of the divine upon his soul. But, this worth, value, and dignity isn’t inherent in the human psyche or imagination. We do not have self-creating ability on our own. Our value is derived from our Creator and not just inherent in the self. We are not God and we are not fully autonomous, no matter how far our fingers stretch toward a hoped for self-created future. We have limits and an end. This is unassailable truth no matter how much we deny it. Age teaches us this as time keeps marching on and eventually saps our strength, ideals, and aspirations if they are pointed in fallible directions. Try as one might to change the world, we find it hard to change even ourselves, much less the people closest to us. There are other forces at work and we are not as in control as we hope to be. Rather, we find that things are fairly out of control and our innate fear of loss, and ultimately death, can drive us to cling more tightly to what we know, to our little distractions and escapes, and toward what we think we can create and preserve on our own. And, that fear can often turn us against others in our quest to protect and promote our own established "way of life." Individualism and its attendant anxieties can ultimately isolate and atomize our lives to the point that we fear threats to our autonomy and sense of control over an uncertain future rather than live with a healthy sense of hope. This can lead us to grasp for tribal identities and leaders/saviors to protect us from what might be lost if our fear of losing control is realized. 

So what do we do? Osprey, in his further treatment of Ricoeur's philosophy, gives us some options in how we respond to our limitations. Either Refusal or Consent. Osprey continues:

·      Refusal means living in angry and bitter resentment against the things we can’t control. It means frustration, shaking our fist at the world and at God.

·      Consent means humbling ourselves to say ‘yes’ to whatever situation we find ourselves in, however difficult, however much it is not one we would have chosen. It means embracing our finitude and seeking contentment within the limits that have been given us. And for those who believe in a loving Infinite, consent also means trust. We trust that the origin and goal of all things is good, without any trace of evil. We trust that everything that exists is created by a loving Creator, and that therefore we were created, not for conflict and discord, but for peace and harmony with the creation and the Creator.

Embracing our limitations, our advancing age and mortality, our boundaries, and the fact that we are just a mist on the earth here today and gone tomorrow can actually be liberating. We can dig in deeper where we are, put roots in the ground, and explore what God has given us, the relationships we have, and the wonder of the life we've been given. This is the "consent" that Ricoeur talks about. But, when we are constantly looking outward to extend ourselves beyond where we are and who we are, we can live disjointed lives disconnected from our actual life. We will either try to create a new life altogether through our own efforts (and that will often be applauded by others on the same quest), or we can engage in escapism through seeking to dull the ache of daily living and distract ourselves from the lives we really have. These are all forms of refusal as Ricoeur called it. 

But, embracing our limitations as God-given means that we consent and find contentment in our Creator and the life that he's placed us in. Again, this doesn't mean that we settle for mediocrity or that we give up if things are going badly. We can make changes and strive for better things, but we do so as whole people made in God's image with a real substance to who we are, a real identity, a real past, a real context and setting and geography with real relationships and real limitations and boundaries that cause us to go deeper into the ground of trusting God for life, salvation, and sustenance. “Our Father, who art in heaven …. Give us this day our daily bread.” 

The Apostle Paul said, in Philippians 4:12-13, "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength." We can be content in any and every situation through Jesus, who gives us strength. We don't have to change our identity or our circumstances to find wholeness and joy. We must be reconciled to our Creator who has the master plan for our lives, and we must be willing to embrace who we actually are in all of our limitations, flaws, weaknesses, and struggles and realize that there is grace for us. God sees us as we are and knows that we are but grass (Psalm 103). He doesn't want us to fix ourselves or the world. He wants us to trust him to do the miracles needed in us. And that requires faith, not in ourselves and what we can do, but faith in God who makes all things new - and who redeems our lives and slowly, but surely, transforms us into the likeness of Christ. 

(Note: this is an expanded article from a previous post/draft from January entitled "Embracing Finitude." As it turns out, I have quit a lot to say regarding my finiteness and limitations, and the irony of that is not lost on me.)