Late Afternoon on the Balcony

Dear reader, I’m writing this in the late afternoon, which has become one of my favorite parts of the day.

There is a particular moment here in Texas when the light begins to change. The sun, which has spent most of the day being rather determined about things, finally starts to soften. It finds its way between the branches instead of fighting through them, shadows lengthen across the timber of the balcony, and the heat becomes slightly more reasonable. Somewhere above us, the birds begin preparing for the evening. They are not especially peaceful about it. For creatures that feature so prominently in our ideas about tranquility, birds make an extraordinary amount of noise deciding who gets which branch for the night.

Maria and I sit out here often. Usually with something to drink, occasionally with something we intended to read, and quite frequently with no plan whatsoever. There are two chairs, trees surrounding us, and a railing that happens to be almost perfectly positioned for putting your feet on. Somewhere beyond the trees there is traffic and the normal noise of San Antonio going about its business, but after a while you stop hearing most of it. Your attention shifts. And then something else happens: you exhale. Not deliberately. Your body simply seems to realize before your mind does that, for a little while, there is nowhere else you need to be.

I’ve been thinking about that lately — about how rarely we allow ourselves to reach that point. So much of life is lived leaning forward. The next meeting, the next decision, the next opportunity, the next problem that needs solving, the next version of ourselves we’re quietly trying to become. Perhaps you know the feeling. You can be sitting perfectly still while your mind is already three hours, three days or three years ahead of you.

I’ve spent a lot of my life like that. Always thinking of the next thing. Planning comes naturally to me, and so does building. Give me a complicated situation and I’ll instinctively start trying to understand it, organize it and work out what needs to happen next. There is nothing particularly wrong with that, but I’m discovering there is a difference between living with intention and living perpetually in anticipation. If we’re not careful, we can spend so much of today preparing for tomorrow that we barely notice today happened.

Even rest has somehow become something we’re supposed to optimize. We track our sleep, measure our recovery, schedule downtime, plan vacations months ahead and occasionally return from them needing a vacation. We’re remarkably good at turning almost anything into another performance measure. The balcony doesn’t allow much of that. It doesn’t care what I accomplished that day, and the trees aren’t especially interested in my plans for tomorrow. They were here before whatever problem I’m thinking about appeared, and I suspect they’ll still be here long after I’ve forgotten why it seemed quite so important. There’s something reassuring about that.

Perhaps that’s why conversation feels different out here too. Maria and I talk a lot anyway — at the breakfast bar, in the car, over dinner, wandering around stores, or sitting in bed far later than either of us intended because one conversation has somehow become four. But there’s something about the balcony. The conversations slow down. One subject wanders into another. A story leads somewhere unexpected. Something that hadn’t seemed worth mentioning suddenly gets said. We talk about our day, work and challenges. We talk to celebrate work successes. Sometimes we talk through ideas we’ve been carrying around. Sometimes we talk about God, our future, work, or something one of us is wrestling with. And occasionally we simply pause.

I’m beginning to think some of the most important conversations in our lives don’t begin with the right question. They begin with enough space. Space for the first answer not to have to be the final one. Space for someone to say, “I don’t know.” Space for silence without rushing to fill it. Space to notice that the person beside you has gone quiet. Space for the conversation underneath the conversation to finally appear.

I’ve noticed this changing the way I talk with other people too. I feel less need these days to have an answer ready, less need to prescribe, less need to fix. Perhaps that’s age. Perhaps experience. Perhaps God has simply been gently teaching me to listen. Probably all three. For much of my professional life, being useful meant knowing something. Increasingly, I’m discovering that being useful can mean noticing something: the hesitation before someone answers, the thing they keep talking around, the question behind the question, or the person who doesn’t really need another piece of advice but desperately needs somewhere safe enough to hear themselves think.

There is a kind of hospitality in listening. I hadn’t thought about it that way until recently. We normally associate hospitality with opening our homes, preparing food, pulling out a chair and making somebody comfortable. But perhaps we can also make room for someone in a conversation. No agenda, no rush, no need to demonstrate our usefulness. Just room. Maybe that’s another reason this place has become the Front Porch.

By now, the light outside has changed again. We rarely turn the balcony lights on; we let our eyes acclimatize naturally as the evening settles around us. I’ve always loved that. What seemed dark a few minutes earlier gradually becomes visible again, just differently. I’ve wondered whether life works like that too. We understandably want clarity when things change. We want somebody to switch on the lights, explain what is happening, tell us where we’re going and show us the path. Sometimes that clarity comes, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes our eyes simply need time to adjust to the season we’re in. The landscape hasn’t disappeared; we’re just learning how to see it differently.

I know something of that. Perhaps you do too. There have been seasons in my life when I desperately wanted God to illuminate the whole path ahead. Looking back, He rarely did. There was usually enough light for what was immediately in front of me: a conversation, a decision, a person, a next faithful step. Then, eventually, my eyes adjusted. Perhaps that’s part of faith too — not always being given a brighter light, but slowly learning to trust what we can see.

The birds will settle soon. The squirrels will disappear somewhere into the trees, the last of the sunlight will fade, and another completely ordinary day will come to an end. I’ve spent a lot of years looking for significant moments. These days I’m increasingly suspicious that I was walking past quite a few of them. Maybe the sacred doesn’t always announce itself. Maybe sometimes it looks like softened light through the trees, bare feet against timber, someone you love in the chair beside you, a conversation that didn’t need an agenda, a moment of silence you didn’t feel compelled to fill, and enough stillness to realize that, for this particular moment, nothing is missing.

I don’t know what your equivalent of the balcony is. Perhaps you don’t have one yet. Maybe it’s a chair beside a window, a morning walk, a favorite coffee shop, a garden, or the driver’s seat of your car for a few quiet minutes before you go inside. Somewhere you can stop being useful for a little while and simply be present. If you have somewhere like that, go there occasionally without asking anything of the time. Don’t solve anything. Don’t make a plan. You don’t even have to arrive with something profound to pray about. Just sit for a while. Notice what’s around you. Notice who’s beside you. Notice what’s happening inside you. And perhaps notice God in something so ordinary you might previously have missed Him.

You don’t need to stay long. Just long enough to exhale. The rest of life will still be there when you get up, but perhaps you’ll return to it seeing things just a little differently.

Until next time,

— Kyan

P.S. — If you have your own version of the balcony — somewhere life seems to slow down enough for you to notice it — hit reply and tell me about it. I read these, and I’d genuinely love to know where your Front Porch is.