Broadening Our Vision

By Rebecca Spencer McCurdy

 

In one of my earlier lives, I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska and worked for the Fairbanks International Airport, in the marketing department. One of my assignments, in connection with that job, was to fly to various villages in the Alaskan bush, visit the grocery store in those communities, and encourage the owners to buy groceries from Fairbanks, rather than Anchorage. Because there are no roads into most of these small communities, all groceries, and other supplies, have to be flown in… or occasionally carried in by dogsled. But you can’t carry many groceries on a dogsled. Thus, if grocers bought their wares from Fairbanks, it would mean more business for the bush pilots of Fairbanks and for the airport there as a whole.

 

I remember one trip I took was to a small village nestled in a broad curve of the Yukon River, north of the Arctic Circle. The small plane that brought me landed on a tiny gravel runway that ended right at the edge of the river. As we circled in for our landing, and then again, as I stood on the shores of the Yukon, my breath was taken away by the magnificent beauty of this mighty river and the lovely tree-covered hills rolling away on every side.

 

I had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get from the landing strip into the town proper. Still smitten by the natural beauty all around me, I strolled obliviously onto the one main street of this little village and suddenly found myself transported from a scene of great loveliness into a scene of desolation. Every structure on this muddy and pot-holed street was a precariously leaning heap of corrugated metal. Every sign, every store-front, every yard bore obvious signs of neglect and hopelessness. Every human being walking down the street as I arrived at 10 o’clock that morning ,was apparently inebriated and verbally abusive to me, the stranger in their midst.

 

I had seen depressed areas before. In fact, my husband and I lived and worked on “skid row” in Chicago when he was in seminary in the early 80’s. But there was something really startling about encountering this kind of brokenness in a setting of such great natural wonder. It felt as if the residents of this tiny town had lost their capacity to see where it was they were living.

 

Why didn’t they use some of those gorgeous trees to build better homes, instead of living in corrugated metal huts? Why didn’t they situate their homes to take advantage of the views of the river and the hills? Why didn’t they get high on the breathtaking beauty all around them instead of narrowing their vision down by drunkenness and despair with an early morning bottle of booze?

 

Well, we know why, don’t we? There are good genetic reasons that the late introduction of alcohol into the society of native Alaskans, and other North American first peoples, has resulted in the decimation of many communities.

 

What I’ve thought of so many times, is how we can all do this same thing in our lives. We can be surrounded by beauty and joy and yet allow our vision to be narrowed down by our addictions and obsessions and tragedies. We can live impoverished lives in the presence of great riches.

 

It’s a temptation for all of us, especially when tragedy strikes and we face the grueling experience of terminal illness in our own life, or the life of someone very dear to us. Nothing can make the last season of life easy… it will always be challenging and scary… but if we can broaden our vision and see all the beauty around us, especially the beauty of the one whose remaining life is measured in months rather than years, we can delight in that beauty, even as we grieve it’s passing.

 

For this to be true, we must be sure that the one facing his or her mortality has all the physical and emotional support they require. But where pain is managed and loneliness is assuaged, there is such beauty in the last season of life. Much more beauty than even the most beautiful scenic view… the beauty of the human spirit, facing with courage and love all the dimensions of life, even as the colors fade and

connection is all that remains.