Vancouver Journal #2

on theology classes and temperate rainforests

I wasn't sure I'd make it to more than one of these, so three cheers for reflections-post-moving #2! Part 1 is here. If you’re here for poetry, I’ll have more next week. Thank you as always for following along, friends.

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I am writing this on my first rainy day in Vancouver. I’m oddly excited about the rain; it feels like a rite of passage.

I’m trying to distill the various observations and reflections elbowing each other in my mind:

• No one takes off their backpacks and stows them between their legs, even on the most crowded buses. For such a polite city, how does no one know this etiquette?? And yes, perhaps I care more because my face is typically at backpack level.

• Three weeks in, and I haven’t seen a rat. And you call this a city?

• Canadians are obsessed with American news. People from other countries always criticize Americans for thinking they are the center of the world, but then they kind of perpetuate it. I have heard Trump's name at least a dozen times and the Canadian Prime Minister's name (which I don’t remember) once.

• I finally found a few streets that remind me of Brooklyn. Still not quite so drenched in city-ness, that tight, bristling, layer-upon-layer feeling that is New York’s electriciy, but close.

• There is $5 soup and bread on Tuesdays at Regent, and it's the best thing ever.

• The library at Regent is like something out of a dream—and I'm going to work there! It is one of the largest theological libraries in North America (and, yes, because I know you were wondering, it has first editions of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings).

But okay, I could list things forever. Maybe this is a better summary of where I’m at: a journal entry I wrote yesterday, muttering thoughts to my notes app while walking through Pacific Spirit Park—a glorious 874-hectare park on the UBC campus with trails upon trails through temperate rainforest. I could say more but, well, here. I did.

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look at the roots! and the trunks! and the canopy!

Stepping into Pacific Spirit is everything that I imagined Vancouver would be. It’s an otherworldliness that’s like coming home. It’s beauty that’s different from anything else I've ever seen. It’s a portal from an international metropolis to fairyland.

I notice the air. It smells like it tastes like it feels—cool, pure, sweet. I want to breathe deeper and deeper.

I notice the silence. There are few songbirds here in Vancouver, an emptiness I noticed in my first few days here. I don't know the environmental reason for this, but I miss the soundtrack of birdsong. The quiet makes it feel especially otherworldly.

And I notice the light. The trees are so tall that they make me pay attention to sunlight in a way I don’t when it falls gratuitously around me unobstructed. Here, the far canopies and unwavering trunks strain the light so that distinct beams fall in pools of radiance. Light feels rare and marvelous and surprising. I can’t begin to imagine the heaven it streams from—it’s too far, too alien—but I can stand under this waterfall of grace, delighted like a child in the shadows that play around me.

Grace. There’s been a lot of that lately. There have been so many confirmations that this is the right place for me. In my first week of classes, I've met at least five other people who share my favorite, niche movie (A Hidden Life, anyone?). One of my classes has a two-page reading list, and at least half of the books are already on my personal to-read list. There are more connections between people here and former professors, King’s acquaintances, and friends from my New York church than I can keep straight.

I think to myself, this is all you hoped for and more.

In my contemporary art and theology class, we share what topics we are interested in researching. I, who know next to nothing about contemporary art (hence why I am taking this class), say, “embodiment and suffering.” My professor’s eyes light up. He informs me that these things are at the heart of contemporary art and the questions it is asking. Later, the woman next to me pulls me aside and says she’s glad I’m studying this. She starts sharing part of her story about the way she has discovered her body and spirit to be intermingled, and I hear God speaking through her to me: I want you here. Keep going.

In Hebrew class, I learn why we pronounce God’s name “Yahweh”: Scholars added the vowels for another word for God, Adonai, to the consonants YHWH (the name God gives to Moses at the burning bush, when Moses asks who he should say is sending him). Those vowels were a clue to say aloud “Adonai” when readers came across “YHWH” to preserve the sanctity of the divine name. The unique flexibility of the way the Hebrew language is constructed allows for this kind of code, and it thrills me.

I think to myself, this is what you prayed for.

Last week, I hiked with a group of students through smoky air that smelled like barbecue and offered a couple meters of visibility (I exaggerate, but only a little) to the top of a mountain. We stared at the haze around us, rueful, laughing, proud of ourselves and happy for a chance to rest and snack. We new students asked some returning ones about their favorite classes, about what to expect. We envisioned the lives we were about to start: for the next few years, we get to throw ourselves into studies that we could all spend hours discussing, studies we’ve all sacrificed so much to pursue. One girl bursts out, “Guys, can you believe we get to do this??”

And I thought, these are the moments I prayed for.

Just the day before, I walked to a beach I hadn’t been to yet. It's southwest of downtown Vancouver, and I was walking with my back to the downtown direction before the shore curved and I followed it and turned to see the skyline glittering across the water. I felt my heart stop. I love nature, but I also love a skyline, and I have been hungry for one since leaving New York. I hadn’t seen Vancouver’s like that yet, and there were the mountains to my left and the ocean humming against the sand and a city shining across the water and I sat down and cried.

And I thought, these are the moments I dreamed of.

So there have been those moments.

As I keep walking through Pacific Spirit, I take stock of the moments that have also been harder than I expected. I knew it would be hard to watch my friends continue to live their lives together without me but sometimes getting updates from afar (or not getting updates) makes my actual physical heart hurt. Sometimes I feel nauseous when I imagine them having formative memories without me, which is only going to happen more and more. I check my phone more often than I used to, which was already more than I wanted to. I tell my mom I feel like I’ve become a needy, insecure mess. I don’t recognize this version of myself.

And, slowly, I start to recognize that this is called grief, that this anxiety is really a deep sadness that my role in the lives of those I love has shifted. I’m choosing to believe that this shift brings with its own benefits that I can’t quite see yet ahead in the fog, but I know very well the benefits I have lost. I know their texture and grain, their scent and shape. The lack of them cuts through me. So I tell myself it is good and right to grieve. I feel a weight lift the minute I’m able to name the grief for what it is.

Then there are my arms. For the first two weeks, they are much better than I could have imagined. I’m able to haul around groceries, Facebook marketplace finds, my luggage, a heavier bag than normal as I venture through the city. Then they flare up again, probably because of all the aforementioned things. I’m so frustrated that I get glimpses of what it feels like to be semi-normal before the walls of pain start narrowing around me again.

As I head into this Pacific Spirit adventure that I’ve looked forward to for weeks, I buy a bottle of water and immediately regret it. I’m thirsty, but I’ve only brought a small bag and I know I will be distracted by the pain of holding the bottle the whole time. I will be switching it from hand to hand; I’ll keep trying unsuccessfully to stick it in my pockets. I decide I would rather be thirsty than in pain, and I hate that I have to make that calculation, but I do. So I dump the water into a bathroom sink, deposit the bottle in the carefully labeled plastic recycling bin, and try not to think about how my mouth already feels dry.

And, as with so many of my griefs and frustrations, it’s okay. It’s not ideal, and I acknowledge that, but it doesn’t ruin my time either. I walk with my hands free, without airpods or companions or a strict time limit. I let myself notice the air and the silence and the light.

And I also notice the space.

Because these trees are tall and slender and have few lower branches, it is spacious in these woods. There is space between all the trunks, space around my feet on this broad pine carpet, space between the frothy ferns, space in the air above the dense moss. I have to crane my head as far back as it can go to see the far sprays of branches. But I don’t even need to look up; I can feel from the angled quality of light that there is a shelter above me.

There is both space around me and shelter above, and it comes to me that this is how, in my best moments, God’s love feels to me. Spacious and sheltering.

I walk out of the woods back to the rush of the highway, back to my concerns about my arms and groceries and lack of routines and social insecurities and longing for community and the need to be perfect right away, which is no good at a stage of life where everything is new—I walk back to all of it, and I pray to remember that I am living the life I prayed for. I pray to hold with me always the space and the shelter of the God who is the forest within and around me.

to staying awake—

Aberdeen