The stars belong in the deep night sky
and the moon belongs there too,
and the winds belong in each place they blow by
and I belong here with you. 

—M.H. Clark, You Belong Here

Driving north on the Alaskan highway in November, closer to the Arctic Circle than I have ever been or will be, I am given the sense that we are passing through a silent conversation—one that has been happening long before we were born and will continue long after we are gone. The wind speaks to the trees and the trees acknowledge they have heard with a slight bow of the head and a shudder of snow from frozen limbs. I see my own breath hang suspended in the grey surround of our frigid rental car like a question mark. Dear forest, will you grant us safe passage? There is something enchanted about this place, this undulating stretch of forested hills that allow few to inhabit its ice-laden enclave. To live here is to face the possibility of death, almost daily, whether by running out of fuel or falling through too-thin ice that appeared solid or encountering a wild animal who is hungry, just before its long hibernation.

We are driving towards a warmth that sounds ludicrous in negative five degree weather: geothermal hot springs, promised at the end of this lonely highway 61 miles outside of Fairbanks. What if it’s a lie? I wonder aloud, finding the idea of a dead-end destination that perhaps was there once during some bygone era like the gold rush, but is now only a faded dot on a map, not only possible but probable in this land of the midnight sun where the sun now sets at 3:28 p.m. each day. We have come to this light-forsaken place looking for the Northern Lights. It has long been a dream of mine to see them. I have always had the sense that if I could just behold them, just get a good look at them, then something about their essence would seep into me, answering a deep longing within that would respond by rising to meet them in the air, mirroring my own mysterious swirls of color and light. In the way deep calls to deep, the Northern Lights call to me. Somehow, I want them to name me—for all their breakers and waves to wash over me—for the awe they evoke to give me a sense of being re-born into a deeper, fuller, richer expression of life. But this is our last day in Alaska, and as we drive north towards the possibility of hot springs, I am aware that tonight is our final chance to see them.

*

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes that if we find within ourselves a desire for which there is no true fulfillment in this world, then we must conclude that we belong to another world—one outside of this one. And yet the French poet Paul Éluard asserts, “There is another world, but it is in this one.” Who are we to believe? Perhaps we are to listen to both the theologian and the poet. Can it be true that we are made for a dimension utterly beyond the one in which we currently exist, yet also true that this very dimension is discoverable in the here-and-now? Even, for example, as your nose hairs freeze to whatever moisture remains in your nostrils while pumping gas at a remote roadside station in the Alaskan wild? Yes. It is true, and this other-world-within-our-world is called The Kingdom of God. Before you dismiss this with an eyeroll because the Kingdom of God is the not-so-surprise punchline to nearly every blog I write, hear me: what if it were possible to live in two worlds at once? And what if one of those worlds—the weirder, more mysterious one—came near enough to kiss awake and transform the familiar world you most regularly inhabit? This is more than the stuff of fairy tales. As Kingdom people, we inhabit both the present and the future—the world as it is and the world to come (the world as it was always meant to be). There is another world, but it is in this one. This other world, whose Creator makes streams cascade through the desert and geothermal hot springs flow from the barren womb of winter and ice, is our true inheritance. Every day, the Kingdom that is here and is yet to come asks us to die to the way things appear and come alive to the way things are. Will we perceive it?

*

Driving south from the hot springs that do, in fact, exist and are wonderfully warm, smelling faintly of sulfur, we settle in for the hour-long journey back to Fairbanks. I am on Northern Lights watch, craning my neck for any sight of them but only finding the Big Dipper hovering over the expanse of frost-tipped trees faintly aglow with moonlight as our car whispers through black miles of forest. The skies are silent tonight. Then, in the distance, four lights begin to gleam. Larger than stars, they grow luminous and large as we approach. When I discover the source of their light I say “Stop. STOP!” with fear and firmness though Drew has the good sense not to stop because we would have died swerving across two lanes of ice. During the encounter, my heart begins to beat faster as I realize the four glowing plate-sized lights are the eyes of two moose who have taken up one lane of the road, because this land is their land after all. One is resting on the iced-over pavement with its furry legs curled beneath it like a giant kitten on the hearth, while the other stands guard over the road, towering above our car as we drive slowly past him. A lightning bolt of shock passes through my heart and lands in my gut as I realize the immensity of these creatures I have only seen in children’s’ books and on pacific northwest gift store tea towels and flannel pajamas. Awe, then gratitude following in swift succession. I am in the presence of two who are much larger than me—powerful in size and capability—yet somehow gentle, their gleaming darkness peacefully at one with the night. They turn their heads and let us pass, intruders though we are; then, the eternal moment is gone. But the awe that remains has not quite worked its way out of me; I still shudder a bit, then smile, when I think of the two forest guardians we met in the fullness of time. Their memory evokes in me something akin to reverence. We never do see the northern lights, and I find myself crying as we drive towards the airport the next morning. But something in me believes that I did see them—just not in the way I anticipated. Four other-worldly glowing lights, plus the moon. There are more than the Aurora that shine in the far North. 

*

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

(1 Corinthians 13)

What a grace to have known such all-consuming wonder—the kind of wonder you can get lost in, but feel found. Perhaps these puzzling reflections of glory—moose by moonlight and hot pools in snow fields—are love notes from another world, only discoverable in this one.

What else is there to say, but Thank You?

Going Deeper: Listen to Light by Emma Nissen.

We can run
And we can fight
But earth has no place forgotten of God
Our hearts and the mountains they carry the light
For others a fountain of glory and might
Our hands and the valleys they hold us at night
Until dawn breaks and we take in heaven's first light