A Time to Burn

I woke up Saturday morning to a smoky haze. It’s been a mostly smoke-free summer here in southern Alberta, so this was a most unwelcome way to greet the day, not least because my wife and I were going to be heading off to the mountains to do some hiking. Suffice to say, the smoke dampened my enthusiasm for our little trek. One of the main draws of the mountains is the views, obviously. It seemed like our main view on Saturday would be smoke.

The closer we got to our destination, the worse it looked. The winds picked up, the temperatures dropped, and the smoke remained thick. And then when we got to the park, our drive to the trailhead took us through an area that had been hit hard by 2017 wildfires. As we set out on our hike, the scene looked almost apocalyptic. Smoke, burnt trees, and a whipping wind. But the further into the forest we walked, the calmer it felt. The smoke remained, but we were able to enjoy what was right in front of our eyes—a deer, endless lavender fireweed, and a whole new forest of trees emerging alongside the charred remains of what once was. 

I took the picture above partway through our hike. It’s a beautiful image in its own kind of way. I suppose it could easily conjure all kinds of beautiful life-out-of-death resurrection imagery, the tapestry of creation telling a tale of rebirth, new possibilities, beauty from ashes, etc. I could easily imagine preaching a sermon (or writing a blog post) along those lines. My thoughts, however, didn’t go in any of those directions. Instead of thinking, “what beautiful possibilities this image portends, I thought, “these little trees will one day be big trees and they, too, will burn, setting the stage for the emergence of more new trees which will grow up and burn, and so on and so on. A bit bleak, I know. Must have been the smoke. 

Out at the jail the previous Monday, one of the inmates had asked to speak with me. Wanted to know why I talked about Jesus so much and not the Old Testament. “What part are you interested in?” I queried. He paused before saying, “Ecclesiastes. You know, nothing new under the sun, meaningless, all that stuff. Sometimes life feels like that.” We talked about Ecclesiastes in chapel later that day and I had been pondering it all week. I suppose I was thus primed to see the image above in an Ecclesiastes sort of way.

The sun rises, and the sun goes down
and hurries to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full…

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.

I mentioned some of my Ecclesiastes musings to my wife along the trail on Saturday after she had pointed out how soft the needles on the young pine trees were. “A time for everything,” I said. “A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time for the growth of beautiful little pine trees and a time for their burning…” She was not as inclined as I was to reflect thus. 

This morning at breakfast, a friend mentioned a useful term that he had recently encountered: a “hermeneutic of love.” The word “hermeneutic” just refers to a theory or method of interpretation. In context, we were just talking about whether or not someone approaches things primed for being critical or appreciative. If we approach the news of the day or a conversation with our kids or a difficult co-worker with a “hermeneutic of love” we have simply decided that we love will guide how we interpret how we read or talk or listen or whatever. Love will guide what we expect to see and how we will respond. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes said that he applied himself to all kinds of things to seek out meaning in this life. Wealth, power, sex, work, you name it. Nothing satisfied. All of it was meaningless. On its own, none of these things could bear the weight of providing an existential reason for being. As I read this week, I noticed that one thing he did not apply himself to was love. We do not read, “then I said to myself, I will devote myself to love, of God and of neighbour” It didn’t seem to be among the things he thought might bring meaning to his life.

A hermeneutic of love is, I think, the key to living well in this world that can so often seem wearisome and meaningless, where what has happened will happen again and it all seems the same. The forest we walked through on Saturday will burn and regrow and burn and regrow for far longer than I am around to ponder it. This is true. But I will never have the same moments to love what was beautiful about what God had made and the experience of hiking it with the woman I love one smoky August Saturday. 

I think the writer of Ecclesiastes was wrong—there are new things under the sun, if only the myriad ways in which love can be reflected and refracted through each of our stories and the people and places in which they unfold. Love, we believe, is what will ultimately account for newness. The love of God for the world he has made and for the human beings he has chosen to bear his image. It is only because of love that we have hope for something new under the sun. 

On Saturday, we got to the lake that marked the terminus of our hike. It was still smoky and the view wasn’t much to speak of. But you got a sense that on a clear day it would be pretty spectacular. On the way down, the smoke cleared a bit. At one point, you could see a cloud and a bit of blue sky.