Today, I took my students (youth group, not college) on an overnight retreat. We went to a relatively secluded camp in the woods and on a lake; I’ve been there quite often over my nearly thirty years (in fact, I was just there last weekend with my college students).
A word about the retreat – some of my older students planned it in order to foster group unity. We’ve grown quite a lot over the past couple of years, and as a result, we’ve started trying to serve other small ministries by inviting them to our events. So my students wanted something ‘just for them’.
Yesterday, I started getting sick (with that cold/flu thing going around), and today by lunchtime, several persons had commented that I ‘look like a zombie/like death’ (really, they’re technically the same thing. But the zombie comment got me slightly more excited). My students were gracious enough to allow me to sleep through the afternoon, so that by the evening, I was feeling noticeably better.
After dinner, we lit a bonfire and sat around it making S’Mores (this summer I discovered I don’t care for S’Mores. It’s not the flavor; they’re just a lot more trouble than they’re worth. In my opinion. I found I’ve always eaten them because ‘that’s what you do when you make a fire’. Well I don’t anymore.) Micah, our worship leader, asked us to get off by ourselves and reflect on who God is and what God means to us.
I took several steps back from the fire circle (and yes, it was burning, but I managed not to fall down, down, down.) and leaned on my walking stick. The stick was about 6 1/2 feet tall so when I held it, I looked just like Gandalf.
Just like this, but with a less awesome beard. For now.
I found it while we were gathering roasting sticks (for the marshmallows I didn’t eat but also bear no ill will), and while my thoughts immediately strayed to the White Wizard (see above), my students apparently thought I looked more like Moses.
I see their point. I do look pretty much exactly like this. But with darker hair.
So the stick became my ‘Moses stick’, and I paraded through the woods, students in tow, declaring to the denizens of the forests (so far as we could tell, mostly the spiders through whose webs we’d walked), “Let my people go!”
Anyway, I was standing, leaning on this stick and looking into the fire as I began to pray. And I realized how much I truly enjoy being out in creation. It sustains me. It enlivens me. I can connect with God so clearly out there. Maybe it’s just because I’m a city boy, or maybe it’s because when I was a little kid, some of my happiest times were when I got away from all the crap going on in my life and ran up and down a creek bed with my brother and cousins and didn’t think about stuff.
Whatever the reason, there I was, leaning on the Moses stick, letting my sick body rest and just breathing in the world around me.
And for those few moments, I was away from all the troubles in the world. All the craziness of the elections and the economy and the difficult people I have to deal with and the stresses of my job and everything. All of it was swept away, and I was alone with God.
And I could see. I could feel why God called it all ‘Good’.
