Imagine a very long hallway with doors running down both sides, kind of like this:
Behind each door is some kind of pleasant diversion. If you could, you might spend your whole life traveling the hallway and discovering the hidden joys behind each door.
Of course, you have physical needs, so the hallway would need to be equipped with certain facilities. There would need to be food vendors, restrooms, and a place to sleep when you’re tired.
More importantly, you’re not alone. The hallway is filled with billions of people — everyone on earth is there. So there need to be rules to keep peace in the hallway while everyone is busy trying to get to their doors.
At this point, the hallway starts to resemble the world we live in. It’s a busy place, full of people who are trying to make ends meet so that they can spend some time visiting the doors.
In my mind, there are two parts to the world. There is the visible, functional part. It’s made up of houses, streets, schools, offices, and cars. That is the great hallway. Isaiah uses the phrase “mart of nations”. I think that fits very well. A “mart” is the place where people gather in order to take care of their personal business needs.
Then there is the invisible part, the part that lies behind the doors. It’s conversations with friends, good books, and beautiful sunrises. It is not so much about what you see with your eyes as what you see with your mind.
Some people are comfortable in the hallway, and some people are comfortable in the doors.
Dad and I were talking about your Green Hill yesterday. As the economy sours and California looks like its heading for bankruptcy, we thought ahead 10 years. To a safe place to raise a family, to pool resources, to be a safety net for each other. It looks a lot like a green hill with all the people we love there. I could be the nurse. Dad could be the lifeguard.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve been seeing inconveniences or hardships in my friends’ lives and find myself thinking, “You know, if we had a green hill, there’d be an easy solution to that…”
I want to watch a sunset on a green hill.
Or maybe watch hot air balloons fill and begin to rise just as the sun does behind us from atop a hill all wild with yellow grass like a little boy’s uncombed hair.
There’s a place I love in my dreams, very much inspired by, but not exactly, the roof of a certain elementary school in Cameron Park. It is always nighttime there, with magic moonlight slowing things down to a pace where you can think clearly, and filling up the spaces between the crisp breeze. I am always alone on a little corner ledge that only I can get to. It is the best kind of alone – where I can read or think or day(night?)dream or invent constellations or sketch and flesh out delicious ways to make the world a better place.
What if we all helped each other make ends meet, so we can have more collective time to spend visiting those doors lining your hallway? That, and joy, are my best ideas so far for making the world a better place.
Or what if we just made the time to visit those doors and hills and roofs, even though life, work, everything calls us away? Wouldn’t we be better parents, lovers, workers, contributors to society if we were spiritually, emotionally, sensually fulfilled?
> What if we all helped each other make ends meet,
> so we can have more collective time to spend
> visiting those doors lining your hallway?
That’s a great description of what the green hill is all about. It’s just a community built in a way that makes it easy to reach out to others, so they can visit their doors, or so that you can become a door to them.