Tag: searching

adventure, Adventure Tourism, Camping, Creator, Faithful Living, God, Heaven, Home, Outdoor Adventures, River, Travel, Uncategorized

Home is a Comfy Old Robe

This Side of the River

It feels so good to be home after a month of adventuring. Stepping across the threshold is like slipping into a comfy old robe. Sleeping in our own bed. Salivating over the stack of waiting books that were too heavy to take along. Standing under a cascade of endless hot water. Driving a car! I think being far away from home for long stretches of time is good for us. We learn to appreciate what we have, and to be grateful for the hospitality of others. It teaches us to be better hosts, offering others sanctuary, nourishment, and rest.

To have a home is a great privilege, whether it is a dorm room, a tent in the wilderness, a small loft apartment in the city, a 3-bedroom ranch, or an old drafty farmhouse. What pleasure there is in making our own “nest” for rest and comfort and for hosting others, with a roof over our head, a place to sleep in relative safety, and an inviting place at the table!

Adventuring often means taking your entire home with you in packs- tent, camp kitchen, food, sleeping bag, first aid kit, knife, matches, lantern, clothing, water filter, camp stove, bucket, bear bag, hatchet, and trowel (for your outdoor “bathroom”). It is amusing to discover how much stuff you can live without when you travel like this, when the weight of everything is a factor for consideration.

It’s true: our stuff truly does weigh us down, and makes our homes cramped and confining. I think we try to fill a hole of deep longing with more stuff because of an undeniably lingering sense that we are never truly at home on the earth.

Jesus, to become a human, left an indescribably magnificent home in heaven. During his 3-year ministry he was an itinerant with no home and, short of the kindness of strangers, had nowhere to lay his head.

Imagine the Son of God having no home!

But he wasn’t homeless either, because he knew where he had come from and that he was going back. More than that, he told us before he left that he was leaving in order to prepare a home for us in heaven. Our unease on earth- really our dis-ease, is this whispering sense of longing, and of knowing that there is something better. It’s a God-given sensation, that we might pine for heaven and God himself while living right here.

These feelings are often most acute when we are away from home, sleeping under the stars, wondering what they look like from God’s vantage, carrying our necessities on our back, needing a map to get around, and relentlessly relying on the kindness of strangers. We miss our own bed, and the comfort of the rooms we know so well. It is a whiff of what heaven will be like-somewhere on the other side of the river of life, a place to be home, known, safe, and loved. That’s a trip I want to take, a threshold I will be glad to cross, and a robe I can’t wait to don!

~J.A.P. Walton

adventure, Adventure Tourism, Affirmation, Camping, canoeing, Faithful Living, God, Lessons from Mom, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Rainforest, Religion, Travel, Uncategorized, wilderness

Thanks Mom

This Side of the River

It is the last week of a month in France for us, and I find I have been thinking much about my mother, who first took me to France when I was eighteen.  She is no longer the robust, tireless woman of my youth, now frail in mind and body, though not in spirit. I have been missing her!

My mom taught me much of what I know about outdoor adventure. The first lesson in camping was how to squat to “go” in the woods: heels apart, elbows inside knees flanged wide, facing up a slight incline so the stream trickles downhill without pooling at your feet. My first attempt at the age of 5 exasperated her, as I haplessly filled my sneakers to the brim.

We camped a good deal back then, so I learned about tent setting and sweeping out, about food handling, about packing, site selection and more. We had a wonderful old tin breadbox that was the “kitchen” filled with cutlery, salt & pepper in Tupperware shakers, metal plates and coffee cups, tightly rolled dish towels, and, of course, matches. I still have it, and memories flood in whenever I open it.

My mom taught me how to ride a horse. And canoe. And row. And sail. And hike. And travel. I have climbed to high mountain tarns in the Colorado Rockies with her (she herself summited the 14-er Longs Peak). Together we climbed Mount Snowden in Wales. We paddled rivers swift and lethargic, and sailed and sailed and sailed. I owe my love of nature and the outdoors to her. Mom took me to Europe for a month before I started college, finding ourselves in Paris in the middle of the hottest weather in recorded history. We traipsed the city from end to end: Eiffel Tower, Tuileries, Montmartre, Notre Dame. This was when I learned that the French don’t like COLD drinks, and that asking for ice-MORE ICE S’IL VOUS PLAIT-only brings looks of disdain from the server.  My mother taught me to seek out the adventure, to get out into a new place and explore by foot. We had escargot in Nice because it was important to try a culture’s exotic foods. Today I recognize the privilege of such an upbringing, with a mother who worked fulltime to pay for the adventuring.

The world is a kind of wilderness in its beauty and unpredictability.

Still, I am a more cautious traveler now. Just the other day, two women surrounded me with clipboards asking if I spoke English. This is a typical scam in France-for gangs to send out emissaries to distract a tourist with a petition for a charitable cause and lift her valuables while she is signing. I said “no.” When they pushed further into my personal space, I shouted, “NO!” They jumped back as if I had a communicable disease.

My vehemence surprised even me, giving me pause. I must thank you mom for everything you taught me, but most especially for taking me to church week after week where I would encounter the adventure of a life with God.  I am learning that the world is filled with people wandering in a different kind of wilderness, where God is remote and survival is everything.

So, I have spent this week contemplating the wide gulf between awe and pain. Between beauty and baseness. Between the fist that holds tight, and the open palm that gives away. Between pushing away with a shout and beckoning the lost by gently saying, “Jesus loves you.”

It’s an uphill climb, and I have miles to go, but my mother taught me well.

~J.A.P. Walton

Thanks for reading!

Peace, Religion, Uncategorized, War

BUT OF COURSE

This Side of the River

Last week, while visiting our daughter who lives in Paris, we took a three day side trip to Bonn, Germany. If we had done that in our college days, we’d have had to say ‘West’ Germany.  So much has changed in our lifetime!

Riding the train through northeast France and northwest Germany, we saw endless fields of early crops like alfalfa and potatoes, and many more still lying fallow waiting to be plowed and planted. It didn’t take much imagination to visualize the same fields dug in with the muddy trenches of the “Great” War, and to wonder what it would have been like for French Jews to be training eastwards toward Auschwitz.  This land, and these peoples have lived in peace for over 70 years now, having been demoralized and exhausted by the wars of the 20th century. Walls have fallen. Governments and ideologies have changed.  Churches, especially have emptied; northern Europe is godless.

We went to Bonn to meet the young man who was Mark’s brother Hugh’s bone marrow donor in 2005.  He is Bonn born, a software developer married to a woman from Siberia. Imagine a west German man married to a woman from the far reaches of Russia! That couldn’t have happened 35 short years ago! M and N are in their late 30’s, childless professionals most worried about caring for their aging parents. We shared a wonderful meal of sauerbraten and schnitzel while getting to know the history of M’s decision to be a bone marrow donor.

M’s neighbor and good friend was diagnosed with leukemia in their middle school years.  As M watched his friend’s struggle to get (and stay) well, he was determined to become a bone marrow donor as soon as he turned 18.  Hugh was diagnosed with leukemia in 1995, and a bone marrow search yielded zero matches.  M was added to the bone marrow donor registry three years later. Hugh underwent nine years of experimental treatments, which, finally failed. The marrow search was reopened, and there waiting was M.

We learned that marrow donation wasn’t much fun, requiring a month of self-injection with drugs to force the immune system to ratchet up its white blood cell count. That makes the donor feels flu-ish for the 4 weeks leading up to the 4-hour donation in a faraway city. M gladly went through all that for an American man he never met. We are so grateful, because

Hugh is alive and well today thanks to M’s selflessness.  When we told him so, he humbly smiled and said, “But of course.”

Of course he would do anything to help stop all that his friend went through. Of course he was glad to help an American. Of course he would do it again. Of course, his respect and love for life is rooted deeply in the carnage of his country’s wars.  How interesting that God would orchestrate new life in this way- that all of our recent ancestors fought each other so fiercely only to result in a generous life-giving gesture in the ensuing peace.  Although M is not a religious man, God used him mightily. But of course.

~J.A.P. Walton

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adventure, Backpacking, Camping, canoeing, Creation, Creator, Faithful Living, God, Henry David Thoreau, Lessons from the Wilderness, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Prayer, Uncategorized, wilderness, wisdom

A Song of Praise

This Side of the River

Why do people yearn to go to the wilderness? Is it as simple as wanting to get away for a break? Is it an escape? For some, these adventures take the form of a quest to seek out beauty and peace and quiet, to discover new worlds. For others, getting away- in a canoe, or a tent, backpacking or biking- is a form of worship. Thoreau once saw a man fishing, and described it as “a sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world.”[1] Even Jesus was known to draw away for time alone. But he was not really alone, because we are also told that he drew away to pray to his Father.

We should think about the reasons we draw away from our busy world. I have heard people laughingly say that they don’t go to church on Sunday morning because they prefer to enjoy God’s world out on the golf course. Nature is beautiful, and no doubt golf is fun. Time spent in nature is restorative. Instructive. But to worship the creation instead of the Creator, to create our own god out of nature, is a mistake because nature is not God.

Nature teems with life. We rise from our tent, look out across a fog-shrouded wilderness lake, hear the birds, and breathe deep sighs of contentment. We feel so alive! But where does all this life come from? Your life does not rise out of the deep waters, the sighing pines, the quick-footed hare or the soaring hawk. God made all this beauty. Heart-wrenching, breath-stopping, glorious beauty. Why? To point our hearts to Him. It turns out that all of creation is a road map to God, and the delight He took in making everything is the same delight we are to take in Him.

Job knew it was all too wonderful to understand. But he did appreciate that “earth will never be your savior…that God alone is able to give you life.”[2]

There’s more to living this life than we can see, just like there’s more to a river than what we see on its surface. We don’t go out in nature to worship what we see but what we can’t.”

The next time you pick up a paddle or a pack, and find yourself surrounded by the glories of the wilderness, take a moment to let the awe sink in that a Creator would make all this life, including your life, and that He takes great delight in you. A song of praise can’t help but well up out of your heart.

~J.A.P. Walton

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[1] Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Viking Press, 1985. p. 22.

[2] Paul David Tripp. New Morning Mercies. Crossway. Wheaton IL. 2014. Devotion for March 24.

death, Faithful Living, Hope, iceboating, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Uncategorized, Winter, Winter Water Sports

At the Mercy of…

This Side of the River

It is finally iceboating season in Michigan! Lake Michigan acts as a huge heat sink, and when its waters are warmer than the air, the significant evaporation results in lake effect snow showers for days on end. But, once the lake begins to cool off, the snow lets up so that the inland lakes can freeze slick and relatively snow-free. Our whole family gets impatient for the good ice to form!

My brother got his boat out last weekend. It takes some work, sharpening the runners (as you do your ice skates), checking the sail for holes (the mice can eat like horses), making sure the stays and halyard and sheet ropes are sound, and, of course, gauging the depth of the ice and the force of the wind.

As in all outdoor adventure, you put yourself at the mercy of prevailing elements when iceboating. That means you must withstand marrow-freezing cold, fickle winds, imperfections in the ice, and other ice boaters. Of course, you do your best to fend off the threats with the right equipment and sound judgment. A pot of chili on day-long simmer doesn’t hurt either.

I have been thinking a lot this year about “being at the mercy of…”. We typically think of mercy as something we extend to others-actions like charity, compassion, and nonjudgmental service. I wonder, though, if mercy isn’t so much bigger, and why we often fail to see ourselves in need of it; we are needy recipients, yet prefer to believe we are grandly altruistic in our smug self-sufficiency. God knows better. There is nothing we can do or buy to protect ourselves. In the end, we are incapable of saving ourselves because we can’t be enough-not good enough, or smart enough, or rich enough, nor can we work hard enough to avoid the ice cold truth that we will die.

Think about a God who would still love you despite all your imperfections and sins. One who would make a way for you to be fully prepared in life to accept and even welcome death, and to live forever with Him. That is mercy as deep and solid as good ice. All you have to do is believe it.

Happy sailing…into the arms of a savior!

~J.A.P. Walton

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