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Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:4-5)
Very little makes me happier than mud on my boots as I
walk a trail far from the sounds of any road or highway. I prefer out of the
way places … or days when rough forest trails are still wet from rain or melted
snow.
I know I will be alone for most of the miles, and my mind
will freely wander among mysteries I don’t understand and prayers I barely know
how to speak. But I speak, nonetheless, stumbling over my thoughts, talking into
the Great Silence, who sometimes speaks back in the secret room of my soul to
which God alone has access.
Today, the sun momentarily breaks through a moody
December sky as I rise out of the woods into a tall grass prairie. My boots
sucking into the mud of a sodden trail, barely a foot wide, I walk through a dense
tunnel of dry, dead grasses, taller than my head, rustling in a breeze too warm
for this time of year.
And I stop … and look at the sky, realizing … I’m happy,
no, something more, a quiet joy, feeling held … inside an immense embrace … by
a Love who loves for me to know I’m loved, whose arms are the grasses enveloping
me on every side.
This is why I come out here, to feel myself inside this
Love who unleashes a fountain of joy from that secret, inner room that is God’s
own.
It doesn’t happen every time. But today a great ‘yes’ erupts
from the depth of my being, ‘yes’ to life, ‘yes’ to the world, ‘yes’ to the Loving
Mystery who bids me to don my boots and come out here to rediscover who I am
and where I live.
For I live in the embrace of a great and unimaginable
Love who enfolds all time and existence … and most certainly the sodden trails
of Spiers Woods on a gloomy December day.
‘Rejoice in the Lord,’ Paul writes. He doesn’t need to
tell me twice. Not here. Not now. But I repeat his words, wondering if the most
important word in his exhortation is the smallest … ‘in.’
Out here, I know where I am. I’m not just in the woods
but in the Lord, which is to say inside the Love the Lord is, inside the
creation that flows from the infinitely abundant store of God’s heart, inside
the story of God’s endless machinations to awaken the souls of human beings to
the Love who loves them, inside the divine drama that enfolds from the unlikely
birth of a peasant child in a Bethlehem stable.
I can’t think of any place I’d rather be, but then … we
are all in this place, like it or not, whether we believe it or not. The story
goes on, and every human soul (and everything else) is either a willing or
unwilling participant in the story of God’s infinite love for this troubled world.
The willing know how privileged they are to be included,
and joy spills from their souls with shouts and songs and prayers, like the
shepherds who were the first privileged to kneel in the dust at the feet of the
Christ child.
Looking back on my hike, I wish I’d kneeled out there …
all alone … in the mud. It was a good place to say, ‘thank you … for including
me.’
I think I’ll go back soon.
David L. Miller
