There are perhaps 20 days in any given year when the masses descend on our river and stir it up to a rolling, boiling agitation. Then Sunday evening begins to spread and slowly they fade away back to their garages, slips, and homes and the river begins a long stretch back to ease. Such is its repose this morning, languid, quiet, sleepy. And we get the other 345 days, she, and us alone with all the wild things. God is good. God is great. Let us thank Him.
To know and to be known is the greatest gift a family can allow. To be a family means we allow each other in and we, being let in, know the fragile treasure of the gift, and act accordingly. This is a gift parents give their children and in turn their children give it to their spouse and their children. The reason for this is the freedom to be oneself. You must be yourself to be known. But our hearts always condemn us, “You will not be cared for if they know who you are.” This is the parents’ great job, to relieve each other and their children of this burden. This was not the reason we took our children camping but it was a result we noticed quickly. Culture and school place a tremendous burden on children to conform to an image that is acceptable. Children become somewhat hardened by this. However, after a few days of camping and hiking as a family, they quickly soften and return to their true nature, goofy! The joy of this is we are all goofy, every human is basically goofy. We stumble, falter, trip, make mistakes, and blunder in ways only humans can. When an infant falls they get up and smile like they did something silly. If they are scolded, overly attended to, or ignored they become trapped in their miss-step. However, if they are smiled at or even loving laughed at they quickly learn everyone falls now and again, mom and dad do, siblings do and they do. It is kindness.
In my 65 years, I have known only one way this can happen; it is modeled to us by God. One of my favorite truths which so comforts me, “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.” Great advice, for humans, parents, children and future humans who will be allowed into our great “circle unbroken”.
July 8th, 2023, 5:15 a.m.
I sit in a small closet. Wherever I am on the road I always prepare a place to meet with The Most Glorious Ancient of Days. The night before I ready it for the next morning with The Ancient Text, other readings, (currently, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience), a good coffee cup which I travel with, and my computer for writing. I am currently there. We leave at 7:00 this morning, flight to Minneapolis, then on to Nashville getting in at 5 this afternoon. It is bittersweet. I sit in here and daydream of us all living here on a spreading ranch.
All good things must come to an end, the bucket of living water drained. It is now July 9th, 2023, 7:51 and I sit again with God trying to be as good a son as I can. I have stepped out of the stream again. All my children have gone their separate ways, to lovers and children, to dreams and lives that do not include me and my lover, we, their maker. We all held hands in the breaking circle at the doors of Nashville’s airport and prayed our prayers of thanksgiving, we kissed each other on the cheek, hugged those lingering hugs of goodbye, looked those long looks to see the last looks, and turning… were engulfed back into our old world. And these three remain faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love…in our UNBROKEN CIRCLE!
It is true one can never step in the same stream twice, but our hearts hold the old stream in sacred trust. So, if by chance we come to the stream again we can cherish both the waters now and those that baptized our hearts before. Such is this trip. All humans are scoundrels! When you know this through the hope and peace of Christ’s salvation you can allow yourself to be yourself. With this comes two things, talking and laughing. We don’t take ourselves seriously nor allow the other to take themselves seriously. We will call you out in laughter. However, we take the other seriously. We love to the last breath, we protect, rally, and draw a line in the sand. The joy of knowing you are loved in this way allows a freedom of comfort that is so peacefully kind. Christ is our example of which we often fail to adequately imitate. However, the foundational joy of this is we all know the other is working to imitate Christ in their relationship with us. The freedom to be yourself, the scoundrel that you are, comes with one great reward, you can be your hilariously, human self. Come hades or high water, we are always standing with you, in the same stream you were baptized in, by birth, marriage, and “adoptions as heirs”, we are always in the same stream together, the family of redeemed scoundrels. And you know that’s fun(ny) because heaven, alone, awaits us.
July 5, 2023, Glacier National Park, Montana
28 years ago on July 10, 1995, our family of six left Rome Georgia headed for Acadia NP in Maine. We were going to attempt to camp for a month, slowly moving up the east coast to our destination. My lover and I had decided we were going to try to see the world one month at a time in a tent (the only way we could afford it). This was our trial run, agreeing to turn back in a week if it didn’t work out. We had a small Toyota Van, packed with just the essentials, but a will to go. On July 24th we made it. After that, for the next 17 years, we spent our summers camping across America and eventually Western Europe. During that time, we saw all the great landmarks from Plymouth Rock to Stonehenge and almost everything in between, all in a tent. On one of those trips, I made my 50th state, Montana, to Glacier National Park which remains my favorite NP. In some mysterious way, it seems like home to me. Jumping forward to today, some 10 years since we made our last month-long trip with only Sarah, the other three having grown and gone and I am awake this morning sitting in a cabin at Glacier National Park in Montana. My lover and four children sleep soundly while I read the Ancient Text, drink good coffee, and write this. The same old routine except our LL Bean, waterproof tent, has been replaced with an Airbnb. Unbeknownst to me, for a year my family has been planning this trip and yesterday morning at 6a.m. I walked into the Nashville airport with Betty, and there they all stood, backpacks and suitcases in tow, smiling from ear to ear, for one last trip for old times' sake. I had long told my lover I wish we could go back and do it all over again and they made it happen. From my daydream world to yours, happy trails from Glacier National Park, Montana. May our joys never cease, and all our trails lead to Heaven, to be with God forever.
Fair Haven gives me an unobstructed view of the natural world. From our studio home, we only see our front yard, The mighty Tennessee River, and receding from there, islands, mountains, and the sky. Not a jot more. Absolutely nothing man-made is in our view. This gives me a text for learning about God. To the west, our left, some 15 miles, lay the Crab Orchard mountains, the western front range of the Appalachians, and we live at the northern end of what is known as The Tennessee Valley. This morning the Crab Orchards are shrouded in fog slowly pouring down off the peaks and moving up our great river like some great waterfall of vapor working against the current. It is a sight few will ever see or understand its Divine nature.
