how Iowa is a picture of Truth

I had a dream one of the first nights of being in Jacksonville, and it went something like this:

Meandering up a country road, the wide horizon of a Midwestern landscape stretched out before me. Pale yellow gravel crunched beneath my feet as I stepped onward. Smooth hills rolled up to meet me, enormous waves of earth too lethargic to ever crash like the surf on Neptune Beach. As I walked, the world around me came into crisper focus; tall black-eyed susans gained prevalence among the wild, unkempt grasses growing in the ditches and I watched the dust around my feet, agitated by movement, stir up in purposefully chaotic wisps, carried away in the breeze. Glancing beyond a faded road sign standing askew, I became aware of a hazy light reaching over the crest of the rising ground ahead. I pressed on up the incline to the prize of gaining the summit; a broad, fruitful valley opened up beneath me, the patchwork quilt of farmland laying out as in a hammock under the sun. Details previously overlooked became obvious; the farms yielded alfalfa, beans, and corn, and I discovered deer tracks and a thin, twisted stream cutting through the Earth— nuances found only by those who walk this path with purpose. The road wound down into the valley, and I spotted it in the distance, a narrow golden thread stretching over the opposite brim, reaching on and on toward what I know only to be a beautiful Mystery.

Comprehension of the gospel, I'm beginning to think, is not a destination that I reach, but rather a road upon which I have walked, am walking, and will continue to walk into eternity. My inability to fully grasp the majesty of God's sovereignty and grace, then, is not an inconvenience, but a joy and a gift daily given; the longer I walk, the sweeter His revelation.

I go to Paris every night.

Ah, isn't it marvelous?
What a lush lifestyle I lead...

But let me clarify; it's not the clean, tourist-friendly, manicured part of Paris that I visit each evening. No, it's something much more robust– the seedy underbelly of a north-western Parisian suburb called Sartrouville. The place I go has some real character to it, and not the kind you see in the movies. This place has a story etched in the cracks of aging drywall and graffitied on stone walls older than the country in which I was born. This story was left out of the history books; it was neither glorified nor white-washed nor ironed out and put into picture books to be read at bedtime, followed by tucking in and exchanging bisous.

———

The place I go is where, upon first introductions, people kiss one another on the cheek; my temperament flourishing in this new, platonic sentiment; the memory of handshakes morphing into something disaffected, unfriendly, cold.

Where everyone smokes cigarettes like the air they breathe; the once-appalling stench becoming strangely familiar— strangely comforting— like the unpleasant, musty spice of your grandpa's basement which carries you swiftly to a place of complete amenity.

Where everything is more petite; the cars, the rooms, the beds, the classes, the people. Where the gaps between meals are unbearably massive, but each time you sit down to dine is an elaborate, prominent event, lasting for hours and hours...

Where the world's best bakery sits happily on each and every city block, the neighborhood stretching out from the scent of fresh baguettes, fearful of establishing itself too far from the captivating smell upon which daily life thrives.

———

With a whiff of cigarette smoke, I'm suddenly descending the filthy, beautiful stairs of the métro, hearing a blind man pour his soul through a tarnished brass saxophone and clutching my purse like my life depended on it.

Each night I catch the scent of my face lotion— the lotion I bought the night before my flight to the country that captivated my heart— and all at once I'm standing in a cramped 4x6 bathroom, emotions soaring, clouded by extreme jet lag, trying to figure out these unusual faucets and worrying that I'm taking too long; 'it's rude to spend too much time occupying the bathroom' I hear Madame Dobernecker saying in the back of my racing mind; I think it's so odd that the toilet is in a different room than the sink; I can't find "I think I have a fever" in my phrase book; wait, what time is it in Ames right now? Oh, what a day it's been; I wonder what we'll have for breakfast...

———

It's a fleeting idiosyncrasy, the ability of a particular smell— more than any other sense— to so rapidly transport you to a different place, a precise moment in time.