Something Larger than Myself

Standing by the General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon National Park it is easy to feel small -- something that rarely happens to me. I tend to be the tallest thing around, unless my sons are also in the room. The fact that this Giant Sequoia has stood silently since the time of Christ, towering above its companion Lodgepole Pines and Western Red Cedars impresses smallness on everything in its shadow. I love that feeling. I sat, immersed in it, sketching the lower portion and its fire-scar because I was taken by its swirling red and amber texture. But there is no way to sketch the hugeness, the feeling of weight, the dominance, and the soaring height. There is no sketchbook tall enough, no journal with enough pages to explore the contrasts between us.

If there are few living things that can make me feel puny, there are plenty of circumstances that seem to have that power. My work is populated with things larger than myself, and every day the scouts send back reports of giants in the land. It's on days like that when I need go stand in the shadow of real giants. I need the reminder that some things which loom large are large only in my imagination. Being at the foot of something real blows these ghosts away. But there's something else that happens as well, as I crane my neck to take in the top and then let my eye extend past it. I worship the One who made the Sequoia, the One for whom that tallest, heaviest of living things is no more than a matchstick.

That's when smallness becomes a gift.

In praise of all that reaches high

Of all that towers tall

Which in their redness pierces sky

And dwarfs the false gods all

I praise the mind that dreamed of giants

And planted them for me

And pray that I remain compliant

Then join their company