i did not come here seeking redemption

I came to Colorado, specifically to the United States Air Force Academy, at long last, after nearly 17 years. When I graduated I purposefully left the chapel spires in my rear view mirror and never glanced back again. The reasons were too numerous to all recount here, but the gist of it is that inasmuch as an institution can, this one hurt me. To say that I took the road less traveled as a cadet would be an understatement. In fact I didn't take a road at all. I made my own crazy scattered way through that nightmarish maze nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I unapologetically did my own thing. Which was often not the right thing. And while we are being honest many of my injuries at that place were self inflicted.

I came back here not because of or in spite of any of the negative things I associated with what some people affectionately (or not so affectionately) refer to as the zoo. I came to celebrate the career of one of the people who made life at the academy bearable and whose love, compassion, and quiet wisdom were often the only flotation device I had in the rough seas I was errantly navigating. I came to celebrate the 29 years he had spent coaching and championing women's (And men's)swimming at the Academy. I also came as a member of a team whose better members had won two national championships in DII swimming & diving and led to the team's ascension to division one status.

 The festivities were lovely. The reunion was joyous. Seeing all the beautiful faces of the people I loved dearly and unconditionally and they had afforded me the same grace as we bore each other through the years of academics and military training and swimming and life's many trials we all face regardless of the venue; that was priceless.  There was laughter and tears, happy tears, as we reminisced over the past and caught up on what 16-20 years had brought into and out of our lives.

 After the retirement and before the hall of fame event, on The Saturday before Easter, the day Jesus' body lay in the tomb, I ventured back to the visitors center and the cadet chapel at the United States Air Force Academy. As I walked up and looked around I realized the place no longer had a hold on me. Wandering around the path leading down to the chapel observing the scrub oaks that appear to be dead and the dry dusty wilderness teeming with pines and hidden mountain creatures, in the high rare air of that over 7000 foot altitude, I realized that the fire of time had burned away all the pain that i had experienced at that place and left only the qualities that been refined and the unbroken relationships with amazing people I would have unlikely ever otherwise met. A feeling snuck up on me like a whisper that maybe life had put to death all the broken and painful things and what was truly me was day by day being remade from that dust.

 As I stood in the cadet chapel marveling at the beauty of the 1950's modern architecture as light poured into that darkish space through slivers of multicolored stained glass and danced off a cross designed after the fashion of a propellor and remembered the many times I sat in those Wing shaped pews, sometimes seeking, sometimes finding, sometimes just escaping, I believed. For a moment I truly believed again. This Easter what was resurrected in me was an ability to believe. Not of my own volition because I did not come here seeking redemption. But because There is a love that loves me enough to put that belief back in my heart.

 I am not meant to live on the mountaintop. I only get moments of knowing and feeling and the rest of the time I live in the doldrums of confusion about things mysterious and divine. I am beginning to understand that I am also not meant to hold on to those moments for longer than they last. But to live in them presently when they occur and breathe them in drink them in feel them wash over me and then let them go as they ebb and somehow be comfortable in the unknowing that flows in its place. even writing it down seems a little bit like an attempt to hold on to it. To grasp it and keep it. The story of creation and recreation is always being told and retold. It's in science and math and Literature and nature and technology.  It's an old story but it is always new. And for a miraculous moment I am able to recognize its magic. I'm breathing it in. I am partaking in the resurrection.

 This is the story of other women but... On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!