Fifty Shades of Brown
Beige. Cinnamon. Dun. Fawn.
No matter the shade, it all comes down to one color. Brown.
Brown in every direction, as far as the eye can see.
My son pulls the car into a side road and we climb out into Valle De Muerte, the Valley of Death, so named because nothing grows in this section of the Atacama Desert in Chile. No cacti. No lichens. No thistles. No thorn bushes.
Nothing. Nada.
The Valley of Death is aptly named.
The wind picks up the non-watered dirt, spinning it in a staccato dance, the granules pelting us from all sides. Under a storm of sand and sunlight we adventure through several side passages until the baking rock forces us to retreat to the car for air conditioning and our water bottles.
We drive several miles past brown and more brown to Valle De La Luna, the Valley of the Moon.
"Be sure to get there by sunset," we are told.
The small rough stones on the path diminish in size as we climb upward, until we were treading through soft sand. We reach the summit and gaze down at The Great Sand Dune, a huge expanse of chocolate mousse formed by the accumulation of sand trapped by natural barriers of mountains and earth.
Voices in German and Spanish mingle with our English as we join people from around the world in this place of brown, where the Mars Rover was once tested. We sit with eyes and cameras focused westward, held in a multi-cultural pause as we all wait. And watch.
Even Micah and Madelyn are quiet, content to sift the pulverized mountains through their fingers.
Brown turns to caramel turns to cream. Facets of salt and quartz glint in the remaining light.
An orange stain spreads along the western edge of the world. The Cordillera de la Sal (Salt Mountain Range) fuses in the golden light. Color creeps across the sky; the expanse stains lavender. The clouds, not to be outdone, tint blue and peach in a final hurrah of the day.
The sky, the mountains and the desert merge into a mystery of twilight and I understand why people travel here from all over the world.
The brown only serves as a canvas for the light.
The different shades of brown have come to my corner of the world. An elderly friend fell and broke his hip. A father of six totaled the family car. Family members suffered with the flu. Two young mothers, with breast cancer, entered eternity.
The wind picked up the granules and pelted stingers from all sides, and in the Valle de Muerte all that could be seen was lifeless brown and I found myself, waiting with others, looking toward the horizon.
"God, why have you forgotten us?"
The light, for me, came in a Lenten devotional, with words by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Why have you forgotten me?” (Ps. 42: 9). This question comes from the lips of all Christians when everything stands against them, when all earthly hope has been shattered, when in the course of great world events they feel totally lost, when all of life’s goals seem unattainable, and everything appears pointless. . . .
Where, then, is your God? I confess God before the world and before all enemies of God when in deepest need I believe in God’s goodness, when in guilt I believe in forgiveness, when in death I believe in life, when in defeat I believe in victory, when in desolation I believe in God’s gracious presence. Those who have found God in the cross of Jesus Christ know how wonderfully God hides himself in this world and how he is closest precisely when we believe him to be most distant.*
When all is brown and muddy, raise your head.
The brown is simply a canvas for the light.
*Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (2012-09-28). God Is on the Cross: Reflections on Lent and Easter (p. 62). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.