On a day off

What do pastors do on a day off?  Laundry?  Often.  Errands?  Frequently. Lawn mowing? Sometimes.  Checking in with family?  Of course.  Hikes?  Not enough.

So Friday I headed up to a portion of the AT west, or "south" in the trail's larger scheme, of the Susquehanna River .  I climbed up a mountain and walked along a ridge, turned around and came down again---about 12 miles in all. My daypack was about 16 pounds which included a camera.  But when I took it out at the beginning to take the first shot above, the battery was dead.  So these pics are only from my android.

I began to see the need for me to use hiking poles.  My balance isn't what it use to be over the rocky, unstable trail.  I took 5 bottles of water and should have drunk them all since I am pretty sure I was dehydrated over the last stretch of trail.  I was dripping sweat by the time I got back to the car, and I had a whopping headache that evening.  BUT even though feet, legs and back were aching the last several miles, I was not hurting at all the next day.  No blisters either (older broken in shoes).  Next time, more water and hiking poles.

On this section of the trail, a lot of my time was spent looking down to watch where I was stepping.  The ascent (and therefore descent) had a lot of loose rock.  Along the ridge there were rock screes that crept into the trail, so the challenge was to look for solid flat places to put my feet.  The advantage was that the concentration demanded I leave the details of the work week and an undone sermon behind to pay attention to the present moment.  The disadvantage was that a few times I finally looked up to discover that I had veered off the trail!  

In looking down to pick my way around stones, I noticed many of the smaller creatures that share this space.  I avoided stepping on plenty of granddaddy long legs.   There were a couple of kinds of millipedes or centipedes (I don't know which).  One kind was hanging out together in a rock puddle.

A little brown toad about an inch in size hopped off the trail and was so camouflaged I would never have seen him except for the movement.  Too camouflaged, in fact, for me to try to get a photo.  I passed a young hemlock that hadn't been taken by the blight.  A spider wasp with a purplish black body and golden antennae flew, or more like floated, by slowly as if it were royalty in a parade.

After crossing my path, a green walking stick climbed a tree.

A patch of butterfly weed was covered in dew in the farmer's field, and fungi was prolific on the mountain.



Think of all I might have missed if the trail had been easy.  Keeping my eyes on the ground and noticing the details can be delightful....as long as you look up every once in a while to check where you are going.  Life in the congregation is like that too.

And sometimes its good just sit down and take in the long view.  That's what this pastor did on her day off.

Pipeline headed to the Susquehanna. 

Flabby

It doesn't take long for hiking muscles to get flabby.

I've walked the dogs most mornings, but have had only two longer hikes all season...and those were only lengths of six and eight miles.  That is definitely not something to brag about if one is a committed walker.  In fact, it smacks strongly of lack of commitment.

So tonight I'm packing, and tomorrow I'm heading for a day hike on the Appalachian Trail north of the Cumberland Valley.  Into the day back will go food, lots of water, first aid stuff, sun screen, insect repellant, journal, pen, binoculars (can't let my observation skills get shabby too), camera, cell phone, rain jacket (just in case) and a few other odds and ends.   I hope to get an early start and get back late in the afternoon.

Soon those flabby muscles will be blissfully aching.

Regrets

A few weeks ago the local public radio station dropped its music programing and went to 24-hour news and talk shows.  The shift did not make the headlines.  In fact, even I, who listen to the station regularly, was only mildly affected those first days.  I tried to take the change in stride and sadly acknowledge that not many people listen to classical music on the radio anymore.  On my morning and evening commute, I was still able to hear the familiar news commentators; that seemed a good thing.  I also had my compact discs in the car to listen to whenever needed.  But gradually, the personal impact of what had happened became even more evident.

For example, on a late morning in that first week, driving to the nursing home to visit someone who was likely dying, I reached for the button to turn the station on.   Only talk blared out at a time when I had usually expected something like Mozart.  What I really needed in the few moments before visiting my friend was beauty, art, music—something to accompany hope at a time when words are not much needed anymore.  But only opinionated chatter stuffed the airwaves.  Suffocating with words, I quickly reached forward and shut the noise off.

Another evening after a long and busy discussion, I drove home in the dusky light and longed for the space to clear my mind.   Automatically, I turned on the radio again, knowing that through the weaving melodies or percussive rhythms, I could slip away from the busy conversations that echoed in my head and begin instead to melt back into that relaxed prayerful place within---what a recent mentor has named as one’s “spiritual heart.”   But I had forgotten the big radio change; I was confronted instead with the starkness of the station’s new call-in program.  Once again I turned the radio off, opened the windows and this time listened to katydids in the passing trees.

Sure, I don’t have to have classical music to remind me of God’s presence.  But the music’s richness is often a warm, hard-to-refuse invitation for me into prayer of a wordless sort.  And yes, it is true that I do have a stack of carefully chosen compact discs that I could slide into the player and allow to accompany me along the way home.   Although I will now miss no longer having exposure to new releases I might be interested in ordering.  After pondering all this awhile, I have figured out what I will miss most of all.

I will miss simply being surprised by beauty.  There is certainly something about opening one’s ears to the music that is given at any one moment, whether something new or something familiar, but music that I didn’t select, music that I myself didn’t shove into the cd player,  but is instead offered to me as a gift by another—perhaps challenging, but often a wide and surprising invitation.  To hear someone else’s chosen beauty is like being on a  pilgrimage and accepting the gifts that are offered by strangers as if from God's very self.  It is true, I can attest, that often the Spirit would leap into those musical spaces chosen by another and make them holy for me.  Am I exaggerating?  On many a drive home, someone had chosen music that would bring joy or tears or rest or confession or whatever it was I needed to bring closure to a difficult day and set my face to gaze at God’s goodness.

So while I will miss the abandoned programming, God and I will find other ways of communicating. Which leads me to one more regret:  I regret how our culture trades art, beauty and goodness (admittedly, my definition of those three categories) for more off-the-cuff talk.  I do not know if this is unique to our particular age, if it has always been this way, or if it is simply a sign that I am growing older.