The weather was beautiful as I pulled out of the garage on Friday morning at about 9:00. I was later than I wanted to be, and I feared I was later than I should have been. A quick check of the weekend’s agenda reassured me that it was ok. I would not have time to poke around Kanuga before we sat down for some chats, but I would not be late to the table either. Had I been able to locate “Levon” more quickly, I would have left closer to time. It also would have served me well to have gone to bed before midnight. Especially when those damn kids started partying right behind our bedroom at 3 in the morning.
So maybe it was the sleep deprivation that drove me to start thinking about “Levon” and Sir Elton. It’s possible that I was pre-gaming my spiritual groove for what was coming up at this retreat I was off to. The image of Jesus sitting on his front porch blowing up balloons only to let them drift up into the sky is a funny one to carry into a discussion of one’s spiritual path unless, of course, that discussion is taking place during the time of the Ascension. That’s right, the Ascension. Jesus himself floating up into the sky.
I have to admit that I’ve had some trouble with this one. The Resurrection, as unlikely as it sounds, is much easier to wrap a belief around given the context of all the scripture that’s gone before. Not to mention the fact that biblical literalists and atheistic critics have been going at each other tooth and nail over the Resurrection for long enough that there are plenty of theories on the market if one wants to go shopping. Not so much with the Ascension. What resources do I have to make sense out of that?
Well, Sir Elton for one. “Levon,” in the articulate tradition of Woody Guthrie’s “My Flying Saucer” or Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” is a song about release, about moving on to a new place and a new way of being. Rick Lawler, the current Tim Cavanaugh, was leading Evening Prayer and talking about the Ascension when he mentioned, sort of off hand, watching a balloon drift up into the sky. I imagined Jesus, at the day of Ascension, sending up balloons. It’s a sad thing to lose a balloon, but it is also kind of beautiful. There is a freedom in not knowing, or not needing to know, where something is headed. There is a joy in knowing that this is not all there is, that the world is wide, and that we are free to live in it.