A Cloud, A Fire, and A Reason to Clean Out Your Basement

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

For Holley and I, our neighborhood walks during this COVID-19 season are extremely life giving. 

They are also fascinating studies in human behavior.  

During this time, my wife started an Instagram account highlighting things that we found lying beside the road or beside a path in our nearby forest preserve. A child’s sock, a winter hat hanging from a tree, even a fake plastic carrot were lost and in a way found by the lens on her camera. 

There is also another phenomena going on in our neighborhood. It is a bit bigger than just the things lost along the way.  

As we walk around the neighborhood, we find more and more people are purging. On days when the trash trucks make their rounds, the curbs are loaded with items waiting to be whisked into the void. 

Bookcases. 

Weights. 

Old couches. 

Tables. 

Apparently without the distractions of work, sports, school, and other activities we now have attention for the hidden spaces of our homes. The places where we have put things that do not have a place. The items we no longer want, but we are afraid to release. 

Now, staring at those spaces and feeling the physical presence of junk we don’t need the cleaning out process calls to us. 

It is strange what happens when we are given a chance to simply notice things. The slowdown in schedule and occupation of time gives us a chance to see unseen things. Unnoticed things. 

The still small voice now grows louder and louder. Pay attention. Now I have your attention.

There is an odd text in the book of Numbers. Chapter 9 to be precise. The freed slaves, the Hebrew children, are making their way from slavery to safety and YHWH is guiding them with a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. 

Now in Numbers, they have a tabernacle where the presence of YHWH can dwell and where the people can connect with the Divine through the priests and through Moses. 

And there, at the tabernacle, rests the pillar of fire and the cloud. 

When the pillar and cloud wait, the people wait. When the cloud moves, they pick up stakes and hit the road. No matter how long it takes, or how short the duration, the pilgrims attend to the fire and the cloud and follow their lead.

The passage in Numbers 9:13ff seems redundant and unnecessary to the modern reader. In fact, it is repetitive to the point of being unreadable. But there’s a reason we react as we do to Numbers 9.

 Our modern souls are shaped for efficiency and function. We move and we move well, making the best use of our time. We rely on several reference points and digital reminders to keep the foci that shape our souls. 

But the Hebrew texts are texts that sought out memory and imagination in the reader. They still do.

Repetition carved a groove in the neural pathways, and the weaving of words and phrases over and over formed not only a line of thought but a ground of identity. 

However, as any good memory master will tell you it requires strong and focused attention to truly commit something to the depths of our recall. 

We must look around, take an inventory of what is in our lives, and then give life our focused attention. The times are strange and the challenges are innumerable, but now we have a chance to truly look around. 

There are the things piled in the corner – signs of projects we never planned on finishing that now occupy emotional and physical space. 

We find the broken relationships, perspectives, and histories that we hoped would simply disappear into the back of the closet. They haven’t. They won’t.

What must go must go now.

Our spirits can’t survive further hoarding and suffocation. Especially now that we know the things are there, watching and waiting. 

We are being formed to be nimble and more mobile souls. In truth, the strangeness of our times does not mean the cloud and fire aren’t present. 

Quite the opposite. The cloud and the fire are present, if we choose to attend to them. And when they move, we have an opportunity to follow them. 

Much of this quarantine season for me has been about things left undone. I told some friends that one of my goals for this year was to follow through – to finish some things. This year I hoped to complete the revamped proposal for book #3, to launch an online course or two, and a variety of other things that have yet to happen. 

I instead have created a good bit of clutter by wasting some time, losing the plot, and wandering in a personal wilderness. 

But even so, the cloud and fire are here.

The cloud and fire will move. Will I clear a path for them? Will I attend to them so when it is time to go I’m ready to go? 

For many of us, the journey of spiritual formation is one that requires stuff. We have small groups and study guides, icons and prayer beads, online video content and other assorted tools. These are all wonderful. 

Yet they can also become clutter. 

The vision of becoming like Jesus in the skin we’re in, of making space to attend to all that God is doing and will do, is an act of rebellion against accumulating. To hoard is to court fear that there will never be enough.

That there isn’t enough. 

To follow the cloud and fire, perhaps we need to carry some things to the curb and learn to live freely and lightly in the space left behind. To ask. To remember. To listen. 

And ultimately to move when the cloud and fire make their way forward. 

Perhaps there is a book on your shelf, you know the one. You see it when you walk through the house or apartment and the thought occurs to you: I should probably read that. 

The cloud and fire are moving. 

You keep thinking of a particular person, perhaps a long-lost contact or a friend from a different season. They come to mind at the strangest moments. You feel the need to reach out to them. 

The cloud and fire are moving. 

There are thoughts that crowd your thinking and attention today. Personal, spiritual, or relational thoughts that beg for some focused time. A journal entry, perhaps? 

Maybe, just maybe, the cloud and fire are moving and inviting you to come along? 

We didn’t walk today because of the absurd mid-May chill. No matter. I can see it in my mind. The curbs loaded with unwanted things that once held great value. Things that were sought after are now afterthoughts, given to the fortunes of a large green truck bound for parts unknown. 

All the while, inside, a cloud and a fire wait.

Will we watch? Will we listen? Will we find the freedom to move?