The newsletter of The Bishop's Ranch, Coming Home, is a bi-annual newsletter about life at the Ranch, a retreat and conference center for all ages. To be added to the newsletter mailing list send your name(s) and address to info@bishopsranch.org
From the Executive Director of the Ranch The Vacant Lot
In the neighborhood where we lived when I was little was a piece of ground that stood out because there was no house built upon it. It was defined for what was missing, but that very fact was a powerful attraction for me and my sisters and brother. After school or chores we would explore among the somewhat bedraggled chaparral plants, grainy granite boulders weathered into interesting shapes, and tall-eared rabbits who flashed cottony tails at us before disappearing. Despite the abuse they’d suffered from bulldozers or errant cars the various chaparral plants flowered faithfully, smelling tart and resinous when crushed. Succulents, adorned with hooked spines, we called ‘jumping cactus’ because of the alacrity with which they could attach themselves to shoes, clothing, or tender skin. Bright colored snakes, the poisonous ones, politely warned us by shaking the translucent tips of their tails and flicking agile tongues in great loops. Spiders made their own tunnels in the earth, as long as my index finger, topping the tunnel with a trap door built from mud and hinged with silver webbing the arachnid could yank closed, trapping prey. Interesting items appeared in the vacant lot, like a discarded car hood that could become a sled, or a still useful metal bucket with a cracked bottom.
The vacant lot was also the gateway to what we called the canyon: a wild area that seemed vast, stretching beyond our powers to walk in a day. The canyon was a world like the vacant lot but additionally ornamented with shady oaks, curious coyotes and explosive flocks of doves. There the world was never the same, displaying varied patterns daily, patterns we could not quite sort out and completely different than the shiningly new houses with high-fenced yards, lawns bordering sidewalks and asphalted suburban streets our elders had carved from the long-developed balance of the ancient environment. No one seemed to own the vacant lot or the canyon, and we felt they were ours to wander in, look, listen, wonder and imagine.
At the Ranch today I hear people decompressing in conversation about full and regimented lives, how they must move themselves and their children rapidly from one responsibility to the next. I also struggle with this. As we have increasingly ordered our lives and our time like the streets of a planned community chosen and comfortingly known, I’m reminded of the value in places like the Ranch, set outside the everyday where the emphasis is different. Part of us must be oriented toward production, must move on ordered tracks toward results all agree are beneficial. But among our streets, our thoughts of sidewalks and bordering lawns, we may miss the offerings of the creator of the world, who made the ancient world around us to function on its own. If we allow it, it has messages for us.
Eventually our vacant lot was turned into a wide road, and much of the canyon became more streets and houses. Around that time we moved away and I wondered where the neighborhood children would find their vacant lot, their canyon. Where is your vacant lot? Where is the place your children can experience an authentic world larger than us, not pre-stamped by us? Somewhere is your gateway to the canyon, to a vast place where you can stop and wonder about other, more ancient patterns, where the creative spirit can be sensed, heard, perhaps seen and recognized.
