Taking up space: The idea

I started taking daily walks when my son was just a few weeks old.

The combination of maternity leave (which took me away from both my livelihood and my primary source of interaction), winter (which kept us mostly trapped inside), and our doctor's wise advice to keep our newborn's yet-undeveloped immune system away from people and crowds (which kept us out of public places) had left me feeling isolated, lonely, and forgotten.

So even in the cold, I started talking walks. Often I would bundle up the baby in lots of layers and blankets and trudge out along snowy sidewalks with the stroller. Occasionally, I would leave the baby with my husband and head out alone. These walks reminded me that life was going on like normal, and that there existed other people in the world, and that I still had eyes to see and ears to hear and words to speak to those whom I passed on the street. These walks helped me feel grounded in real life, even as I was navigating the transition to my new life as a mother.

It was on one of these walks that I started thinking about the idea of taking up space.

Up until that point, we hadn't quite been living in the community for a year yet. It had been enough time to start creating patterns and habits, but not enough time to feel part of the pulse of the community. It was enough time to be able to function in the community, but not enough time for our presence in the town to feel anything but temporary. Add these feelings of transience to my already in-flux emotions around the transition to motherhood, and you end up with one lost, confused, lonely soul!

Along my walk, I started thinking about my own desire to take up space. Taking up space, in my estimation, meant being grounded in the community and in my identity - committing my head and heart to the idea of permanence and investment in my role as mother, in my vocation as pastor, and in my residency in this town.

Taking up space. It bears undertones of fullness and fulfillment, of having substance, of a weighty "enough-ness" without crossing over into the realm of "too much-ness." It incorporates a sense of space and proportion, along with an awareness of physicality. It has to do with awareness of self and of others, and it has something to do with purposefulness. And, in a deeper sense, I think that the idea of taking up space is a very theological and spiritual idea.

I hope to spend some time over the next weeks or months or years exploring more facets about this idea of taking up space. How do we take up meaningful space in this world? How does our knowledge of God involve our understandings of space, time, and place? How might our spiritual practices encourage us to act as embodied, integrated persons?

I know that for me, on that one winter walk, the idea that I could choose to take up space in the world helped remind me of my own sense of self and purpose. And I know my faith calls me to believe that we are called not to transcend this world or remove ourselves from it, but rather to leave footprints of God's kingdom everywhere that we go.

So I am excited to start this journey of thinking and writing, to explore a theology of taking up space. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter, and look forward to exercising some of my theological and compositional muscles. Who knows where this project will lead!