Category: Nature

  • The Hill of Slane

    The Hill of Slane

    I like quiet places. That’s why I said “yes” to a faith pilgrimage and crossed a threshold into the back countryside of Ireland. Celtic readings, reflection questions, and Scripture reminded us we were more than tourists; we were pilgrims.1

    Saint Patrick knew about crossing thresholds. Irish raiders had kidnapped the sixteen-year-old from Britain and sold him as a slave-shepherd. Seven years later he escaped, returned home, studied for his ordination, and returned to Ireland as their first missionary. On a place called Slane Hill, Patrick made a powerful and dangerous declaration that freed many to worship God.2

    Patrick’s courage on Slane Hill can inspire us to take treasures from the impossible parts of our stories, put words to them, and speak freedom into the lives of others.

    Our pilgrimage took us to Slane Hill. Sitting on the ruins of the Franciscan church and monastery (above photo) reminded me of the brevity of life and opened my heart to a world of opportunity. I felt joy on the Irish side of my threshold—great joy. But, as you know, joy and sorrow can be. close companions. They are for me, as I mark Steve’s departure from this life three years ago.

    Solitude in Irish beauty reminded me that the “ruins” of sorrow can be sacred if we honor them. We need not fear our tears. In time they can add vibrancy to our next burst of joy. Feel the winds of Ireland (in video) as you ponder your next threshold.

    1. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 2000, 22.
    2. https://www.discoverboynevalley.ie/boyne-valley-drive/heritage-sites/hill-slane-coming-christianity

    The Treasure: When our strength is in God and our hearts are set on pilgrimage, valleys of weeping can become springs of replenishment for us and others (Psalm 84:5).

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    In some ways I have stepped beyond a threshold. I’ve stepped beyond the fence, left Pilgrim at home. She has waved good-bye. I’m still a big part of her and she’s a part of me. But she’s not where I get my security; she’s not the main story. God has helped me move through a threshold, to step into a new season beyond deep sorrow and into new life and new joy. Sorrow will be a part of it.

    I am on the outskirts of Dublin at a place called, Slane Hill, where St. Patrick came to be missionary to the country where he was once a slave. I am really intrigued by his courage and by the power of God that happened as a result of his courage in the lives of many people. So thresholds are something we step over—step through a door—step into a new season of life. And the thing about thresholds is that sometimes you can never go back because you’ve changed; you’re different from the person you were once before. These are beautiful countryside places—quiet—to come away from the contamination of thoughts that can be so distracting. We’ll be talking more about thresholds in the future.

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  • Take the Next Step

    Take the Next Step

    “Pilgrim” my teardrop camper is settled among sand dunes across from a boardwalk on a crisp March day. I’m still surprised and relieved when I get her hooked up, drive her safely through the tunnel, back her up, and put her leveling stabilizers down. I enjoy Pilgrim’s cocoon kind of warmth away from the hustle and bustle—a place to ponder and rest.

    Pilgrim represents courage to go beyond fear and loss. I don’t feel all that courageous, but that’s because fear is what makes courage necessary.

    These first three years without Steve have demanded all of my attention. They have been exhausting, painful, lonely, scary, and—sacred. I say sacred because of the way family and friends have given extravagant comfort and care. Grief cracked me open in protest, prayer, and the slow learning of patience. And God is filling that cracked open space with courage in “a new dawn.” Has that ever happened to you?

    I can feel the gentle strength of God’s hand on my back, as He steps with me across “the threshold between sorrow and new life; between honoring grief and opening to possibilities.”1 I honor grief by remembering Steve. I open myself to new possibilities by living in the expectancy of God’s new plan. Please join me at the beach in a one-minute video below.

    1. Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening, (Notre Dame, IN; Soren Books, 2018), 11.

    The Treasure: Take courage to step over thresholds into new beginnings with God.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    I’ve been thinking about thresholds lately—about stepping over a line into something different—into the unknown, because we know we’re begin led to a different place in our lives. We never know what’s around the next corner when we step through a threshold. We just know that there’s been an ending to one season in our life…and a beginning of another one.

    It takes courage to step through a threshold. I just stepped through a threshold from pain into new beginnings. There can be a lot of fear in new beginnings. Whenever we say, “I don’t want to.” God says, “Don’t miss it.” Take the next step. I’m stepping into joy from deep sorrow, not because of the pain but because of how the pain changed me. I believe when we wrestle well through pain…we can embrace life and joy in ways that we never could have if the pain hadn’t occurred.

    Like someone once told me, “This trip is over…but you have many miles to go.”

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  • After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    The flurry of snow scenes in the last couple of blogs reveals my love of winter. I last blogged from a mountain trail in a white-out storm in Colorado.

    I returned to that trail one year later (see video) and paused in the silence. Its beauty reminded me of St. Augustine’s writing on how nature points to God. Check out this passage of his from the Confessions:

    I asked the earth, and it answered. “I am not He.” … I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “I am not God.” I asked the heavens and the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things and the throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God since you are not He. Tell me something about Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.”

    The Treasure:
    Creation is God’s craftsmanship on display for us to enjoy. It invites us to ponder His majesty and give Him our hearts.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    One year ago this month I was standing in this exact place on Morning Star Trail in snowshoes. If you remember it was a blizzard, and I said how things can look gray all around us—but that there’s beauty if we were to see beyond the gray of the storm. I just wanted to show you what it looks like on a beautiful, blue-sky day in the middle of the Aspen trees at 9,600 feet elevation with snowcapped mountains all around. So, a whole year has gone by, and maybe one year ago you were in the gray in a storm and hopefully you’ve come to some new beginnings this year. I know I have and I’m very grateful to have some of that trek up the path behind me and to be able to look out over beauty. We can’t be in the beauty all of the time, but when we are, it sure is nice to enjoy every moment of it.

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  • Hidden Beauty

    Hidden Beauty

    I wish I could go back and talk to the woman who said, “I feel guilty because I doubt God.” Would I give her ten top reasons to trust God when she can’t see to take her next step? Although there are many more than ten, that wouldn’t be my first response.

    I think I’d say, “I doubt too.”

    I’d tell her about the time a white-out storm blocked my view and how scared I was to put one step in front of the other. I’d tell her how, in time, the storm became the catalyst that helped me deal with my doubt.

    My ninety-six-year-old grandfather, Harry the Ancient, once told me, “The first hundred years are the hardest.” He lingered with me in that reality before giving me the second half of ancient wisdom, “But God is good and can be fully trusted with your life.”

    My grandfather’s words began to awaken me from spiritual amnesia to see the evidence of God and to begin shifting from doubt, into a posture of trust.

    Someday I will thank that woman for her honesty. Her words gave me a visual—God embracing her with His left arm and opening His right palm for her to deposit all of her doubt—and the guilt that went with it. What a beautiful picture.

    This reminds me of a snowshoe trail my friend and I hiked in a white-out storm on a mountain in Colorado (see video below). There was no color that day—only gray. But when I returned to that trail one year later the pristine view took my breath away. In the white-out days of life, there is always more going on than we can see as we shift from doubt to trust.

    The Treasure: “Honest doubt sends us on a quest for what is true and real, for that which we cannot only give intellectual assent, but can entrust our very lives to.”
    (from Your God is Too Safe, by Mark Buchanan)

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    Hey! I’m out here in the cold weather on Morning Star Snowshoe Trail in Colorado. You’ll notice behind me maybe some skiers coming down…and then there’s this snow shoe trail. The thing that occurs to me today is – sometimes life can look all gray. Actually, if we could see—if it were clear, there’s an amazing beauty all around us up here. But it’s so gray, all we can see is the snow, the trees near us, and just a little bit in front of us. And that’s the way it is in life. Sometimes we plod along with one foot in front of the other on snow shoes, and sometimes we can be like skiers that are coming down—whisking down knowing exactly where they’re going. So wherever we are in our lives—whether we’re plodding along one step at a time, or whether we’re whisking along knowing exactly where we’re going, it’s worth it to walk every step with God. See you next time.

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  • Bird With a Song

    Bird With a Song

    I ate my breakfast in the silence of my campsite beside “Pilgrim”, my teardrop camper. In the distance, a bird alternated between pecking on the passenger window of my car and viewing itself in the side mirror. Then it flew to the tree beside me and sang for the longest time (see video).

    In the quiet of sand dune solitude I relaxed, welcomed the bird’s presence, and felt its pleasure. I recalled a greeting card decades ago when I sought missing answers to the “unfixables” of life.

    A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer.
    It sings because it has a song.
    by Joan Walsh Anglund

    What song lyrics might we write, even within the context of “unfixables” and unanswered questions? Perhaps the bird’s song came out of what it saw in the mirror—its identity as one who is secure under the watchful eye of its Creator.

    When we look into the mirror of how God sees us, we can begin to know the true nature of our identity—deeply loved and completely forgiven. Then, even when we don’t have the answer to life’s perplexities, we’ll still have a song with empowering lyrics like trust, transformation, freedom, salvation, influence, meaning, redemption…

    The Treasure: Know the Source of joy and sing about what really matters.

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