Looking into other people's windows

Jack Boughton: "When I was young I thought a settled life was what happened to you if you weren't careful"
Lila: "I always knew better than that. It was the one thing I wanted. I used to look in people's windows at night and wonder what it was like."
...
John: "Only thinking back on it did I realize that she was speaking as if from that settled life she said she had always wanted and as if it could not be lost to her, though in every practical, material sense she knows it will be. That pleased me, too. Remembering when they said what they did about looking in windows and wondering about other people's lives made me feel comparable with them. I could have said that's three of us, because, as the Lord knows, for many years I did exactly the same thing. But in that moment, the way she spoke, it seemed that all the wondering about life had been answered for her, once and for all, and if that is true, it is wonderful. The notion is a source of peace for me.

--Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Picador, 2004), 200, 202.

This scene, set in Mid-20th century rural America--a land still segregated, still rooted in religiosity and simplicity, and in an era where those "congregationalist Lutherans" were scene as hyper-conservatives compared to other Protestants, describes something lost from my own generation.
With the rise of private lives and suburban living, ever-evolving forms of window treatments meant to let light out but no eyes in, going for a walk and staring in someone's window seems somewhat unusual. The only time I ever remember looking in someone's window is when, as a child, I could see my backdoor neighbor, Dave Deragisch, pouring the milk for his kids as I sat at the dinner table.

It seems more reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting or something of a similar milieu: A dark autumnal evening is portrayed with a man walking by, looking windswept like a fallen amber leaf, a look of fall in his eyes, as he pauses outside a warm-looking two-story house to see the ambient glow of a family surrounding the dinner table a warm, hot meal about to fill the stomachs of warm, loving hearts. The picture itself creates a sense of soul-emptiness as one views the man outdoors, yearning for the community, the nourishment, the spirit, the love, the "settledness" the window depicts inside. And yet, this picture gives one a feeling of full contented wholistic peace--somehow we place ourselves (perhaps proleptically) both at the dinnertable and outside looking in.

As I read this passage from Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an aging rural Iowa pastor's reflections on family, fatherhood, and fraternity, I was deeply moved--my spirit oddly stirred, by the sense of peace and contentment expressed in John's recollection. Only a mere twenty-four years old, I must take pause at this juncture to ask of myself, and of others, why am I so obsessed with looking in the windows? Even though I have never truly experienced the process of window gazing, ir seems as if my own life--all our lives, really, center around our gazes into the windows of others---and in the process, we lose sight of the window that connects us to the world around us--the world that connects us to God.

Window gazing--indeed, is not inherently evil; indeed, many windows have provided me with spiritual connections, with deeper understandings of God and my relationship with the creator, and for deep, personal, visceral experiences of life's reality. For me, personally, part of my vocation revolves around looking into the windows of others--in part, as the cliche suggests, because the eyes are the window to one's soul. From any number of times I found myself meeting with distraught dorm students, to the moments when I opened my own window to the love and support of others, to the barely-open eyes of dying patients and the tear-filled eyes of families, I have entered places of spiritual connection and silence where I have seen the truth of the divine through the windows of human experience. Multi-colored human tinting provides a perspective on light, the first of all creation, in a way that can only be experienced by in human, earthly, existence. Thanks be to God for these windows---these unexpected vantages that not only surprise us when we encounter them, but also reveal an inexplicably and mysteriously beautiful sense of serenity and peace.

And while these window experiences have indeed brought me to a deeper understanding of God and of myself, I wonder just how much other time I have spent toiling for a glimpse, a view, even a tiny sneak-peek at the 'lives of others.' I choose toiling here not because it is such hard work, but because as I continually attempt to find a way to make my own life "better," "more settled," or more complete. O, how I waste my time looking into others' windows, and how I simultaneously from looking at the window of my very heart, my soul, my self--a creation treasured by God.

It doesn't matter what the "more" is---there are literally thousands of miles of the windowpanes of mortality before our eyes every day, calling and beckoning, no, even luring us to think, even for just a moment, that whatever is inside that window, protected from the pains of the world by the seemingly impenetrable panes of glass is worth looking at. What a temptation!
The world in which we lives tells us that, like John Boughton, we should yearn to be more settled, or maybe more active, or maybe more popular, more social, more rich, more savvy, more outgoing, more risky, more like your older sibling, more devout, more perfect--in body, mind, or spirit, or even more unlike the "you" you really are. These windows of "more" call us--economically so--to always consider the opportunity cost. "I need some time for myself--I need to reflect in silence through prayer and meditation and whatever--but I've got so much more to do, so many other places to be--oh how it would have been great to have been invited out with those people down the block--What fun it would have been --how great to be in Venice, or at the Lake, or finishing that big proposal at work so I can get that promotion--What window are you looking in?

What a confession---John's silent conclusion--that in all reality, the number of window gazers will always be equal to, if not greater than the number of people in the room--guilty as charged--I spend an inordinate amount of time---sometimes even whole days---gazing at windows that are not my own.

I am a child of God--in the words of Anna Madsen, I am already justified--I am free to look into the window of my own heart, of my own life, broken as some of my own windowpanes may be (no, really are!), and see--through flawless glass, repaired through the death and resurrection of Christ, the truth of my own existence. John sees it in Lila---the peace and contentment of faith--of trust--of the presence of the Holy Spirit. "She was speaking as if from that settled life she said she had always wanted and as if it could not be lost to her, though in every practical, material sense she knows it will be.

I am dying. We are all dying--we have been dying from the very day of our births. Somewhere around each of us is the window that reminds us of our mortality--maybe it is the window of the funeral home with family members surrounding a casket or an urn--, maybe the window of housing demolitions and sectarian violence in East Jerusalem, maybe the pain of daily existence in broken bodies, broken families, with broken spirits, with shattered dreams and shattered hope. But, the power of the gospel, be it to the pastor's wife in Iowa or to a pastor-in-training on the edge of the Schwarzwald, or to Steve, an Iowan with a bad heart whose home can't be that far from the fictitious Iowa town in which Robinson sets her book, is that our lives--our very own windows--not those into which we gaze with bulging eyes, growling stomachs, and yearning hearts, but our very own lives, created by God, renewed by Christ, and sustained by the Spirit, cannot be lost--our lives, while they will end as we know them, cannot be lost, will not be lost, shall not be lost by God. Even though we know our finitude, and even though we try to look into other windows to ignore it, we can find peace in knowing that our window is worth gazing into--our selves are worth exploring--our beings are of value--our peace is the glow of the Spirit in our hearts.

So, as I, and all of us live, searching for certainty, for settledness, community, the nourishment, the spirit, the love, whatever it may be, there is indeed a balm in Gilead--the balm of Christ's love for us--cracks, chips, and all--a balm in living with the peace of Christ--that while all of life cannot be answered in this age, no window through which we can look will give us any more answers that the Christ-filled window our own hearts, our own lives, our own faith, and our own hope for the new creation of the world when Christ returns.

Peace,
Thanks be to God