The Great Tennessee River is being laid by for the spring to come. She lies quiet and still, much of her girth stored for winter. I wandered her banks yesterday, wondering where she is being put up? Twenty feet of her shores are already laid bare and will daily decrease to winter pool. What is left of her will nourish my heart through the coming cold winter until spring, when she will once again fill herself and lazily spread to her summer banks. Happy Thanksgiving, Ole Girl, Mighty Tennessee, wonderful she river; hurry back.
That’s a good way to think about how the Sabbath comes to me. I am drained out and long for the renewal of worship and concentrated humanity, all seeking to worship. Worship is my greatest need. To openly lift my body, heart, and mind to acknowledge You are worthy of all my worship and praise.
It is a great cleansing of all that has weekly stained me and led me astray, of my pride and self-righteousness, and of my lack of love for my fellowman. Of greed, sloth, and apathy. Of a week of slowly making myself king.
But it is also a great renewing, refilling, recommitting my heart, mind, soul, and strength to You Three as King over all of me. To clean myself inside, so I can live rightly on the outside. To refocus my senses, sharpen them, tune them toward You Three and all that is of You. It softens me, allows me to see and hear aright again, make me kind, and fills me with longing to love and help. It allows me to throw my tightly fitting crown at Your feet and give life another determined attempt. The great do-over, a new week, and oh, the glory of what a new week might hold for me!!! Amen and Amen. Why Me Lord?
I am a student of beauty. Beauty is everywhere, which is rewarding if you are a student of it. My best teacher is nature. Beauty in nature is different from how humans create beauty. Beauty in nature is the entirety of the natural object. It's never in a non-beautiful state. The more it is reduced, the more beauty it reveals. I was trying to teach this to my lover yesterday as she was admiring a shard of a seashell on my sacred table. The shard is just as beautiful as the original whole shell. In fact, it might be more so since its very nature as a shard could imply it was lesser than. But this is not the case. It remains beautiful even though it has mostly been eroded away. In this truth lies an even greater truth. It is nature, the natural occurrence of it, which alone can reveal the beauty of that to which it is applied. I could take the shell and, using all my tools, try to reform it into something beautiful, but even on my best day, I would never be able to reform it into something equally as beautiful as the original shell.* But nature can. Lay the shell out in nature, allow the sea, waves, wind, and sand to apply themselves naturally to it, and they will reveal what only they can, an ongoing and ever-changing state of beauty. This leads us to an even greater truth. Who is designing all these occurrences of artistic genius?
*I could perhaps carve it into something else; maybe a relief of a seascape or a pleasing form, but it would not then be a shell but something else I had made from the shell. What nature does to it is reveal its beauty, its beauty being held in all states of its entirety as a seashell.
There is no difference between the sky and water, fog making it all one great backdrop of grey. I looked up and could see a dark object outlined, the thing, and its reflection, one image. I eventually saw that it was a small boat with a standing person, but in the grey, it was one single, dark reality, one image. I thought of reflections, the kindness of them. The other morning, I looked out and saw a flock of geese in V-formation when it suddenly dawned on me that I was seeing their reflection, as their dark flying bodies were hidden in the dark island across the way. It was a divine thing, knowing reality only by its reflection. I am 67 now, and so much of my life is now a reflection, a kind remembrance of the reality of goodness. Oh, the gift of reflection cannot be overpraised as I sit and often reflect on the good gone by.
My world is trying to wake up and join me. I can barely make out the trees in our yard, and tiny boat lights across the river tell me someone is readying for a duck hunt. I sit in front of the fire, the smell of incense fills our small home as I finish praying, and now set about the more difficult task of writing. I am listening to soft clarinet music while my dog and lover sleep soundly behind me. “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well. It is well with my soul.” My world is slightly more awake, and I have found I have written.
My lover and I were on a search. We were hiking up what could best be described as a ravine, a cavernous cut in the side of a mountain deep in the Appalachians. It was a cold morning made colder because the sun couldn't find a way into this deep hollow. We were searching for an old altar we had built to thank God for our retirement. This fall, the colors have been brilliant, and it felt like we were hiking in a cathedral surrounded by stained glass of divine color. At one point, we sat on a large boulder, weary from making a trail only we had trod. I looked at the glowing canopy above and told my lover, “These trees are holy Christ worshipers, doing exactly what he made them to do and doing it to the best of their abilities. They are putting on fall colors to the glory of their maker, God.” They were such an encouragement to us to live as God has ordained us to live. We rose carefully, a new habit born of age, and continued our slow hike up the ravine. We found the altar, repaired it, and set our renewed eyes toward home and Fair Haven.
We sometimes meet friends and new friends, times when renewing is mostly like continuing, the bond is strong enough to never lose the comfort of being in the other's presence. It is a fine reminder of the fellowship humans can enjoy, a fellowship built atop faith, hiking, art, nature, beauty, and travel. An old friend and a new one spent a long weekend with us at Fair Haven. We sat up late, hiked, ate, walked, enjoyed full moons, lightening storms, waterfalls, worshiping, and good coffee together; a fellowship of believers. We believe in Christ, God’s only Son, Savior, in traveling the world makes us more sincere, in love and friendships, in kindness, and in staying together. The last day, the friend reminded me that it is important to open oneself up, to be “vulnerable,” she called it. I never heard it called that, but it made my lover and me feel good as they made themselves comfortable in our home, making for a pleasant (vulnerable) visit as we re-blazed happy trails together.
Our dear friend April, on the right, and new friend Emily, on the left.
The joy of a loving lover, a home in the woods by a lake, a good fire, and a slow day can only fully be known in a heart where Jesus lives. To be awakened by a full moon glowing like a candle by an altar is assurance that you are in a holy of holies.
