The Blue Ridge Parkway

 The first stop on my short sabbatical this summer was Atlanta, where we could spend some quality time with our grandchildren (oh yeah, and the kids) over a couple of weekends.  But during the week, we drove up to Asheville, North Carolina.  Part of me wanted to do something new, but there's another part that always wants to go back to that part of the world, the roads, the hills, the mountains.  We have visited a few times since our son moved to Atlanta for work.  We enjoy the street musicians in Asheville, the food, the Famous Bookstore, and we always drive a little part of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I think at first I wanted to go there because of the history of how it was built.  One year we drove to Mount Mitchell.  Another time we found Mount Pisgah.  This year we looked at the tourist information and decided to find Linville Falls.

We knew we could get there simply by taking the Parkway, but the problem was -- we didn't know how long it would take.  At least, that SEEMED like a problem at the time.  So I did what I have learned to do over the past several years -- I turned on GPS.  All I wanted to do was get an arrival time.  

But GPS had something else in mind.  It gave me directions that took me OFF the Parkway and back on the regular roads.  We decided "oh well" and we went with it.  We were running late anyway.  But we knew that when we got to the area, we would want to find the Falls and the Parkway again, which was slightly challenging, as GPS didn't work some of the time.

I told a clerk at a convenience store my problem, and she said, "GPS doesn't like the Blue Ridge Parkway."  I thought about that.  In other words, GPS will not tell you that you should take the Parkway from Asheville to Linville Falls.  It will give you another route (there were some interesting things on this route as well, thankfully).  

When we finally found the Falls, we hiked around a bit, and decided that we didn't have time to take the Parkway all the way home.  If you have to BE somewhere, it is definitely not the fastest road.   There are many places to stop and get out and look around.  And if you don't do that -- if you don't stop and look -- what's the point?  So for most of the way we took the highway.  But for a little while I wanted to be on the Blue Ridge.  

I just wanted to BE there.  And I thought, as we were driving, and stopping and looking -- maybe that's why GPS doesn't like it.  You don't take the Parkway to GO somewhere.  You take it to BE somewhere.  The road itself is a place.  

There is something holy about that, about considering a road which is not just a means to an end, but an end in itself.  There is something holy about wandering the Blue Ridge Parkway (they call the whole 469 miles "meandering').  So much of life is getting somewhere else -- and not paying attention to where we are right now.  I'm learning about mindfulness, and the Parkway seems like a place to be mindful.

After all, God is where we are right now, as well as up ahead of us, and behind us, and below and above us.  Maybe it's all right to turn off the GPS and just be, pay attention, listen and wonder.  Maybe it's all right to stop at the scenic outlooks, not to be in a hurry all the time.  

I meant to write this earlier but I was too busy, and now my heart is heavy with the devastation that I'm seeing from hurricane Helene, lives and places wrecked, catastrophes everywhere.  But God is where we are right now, here as well.  In grief and work and love.  May we pay attention.

Saturday Night With Scout

Tonight is the eve of the 5th Sunday in Lent.  I just got done setting my clock ahead for the dreaded spring forward.  I am not looking forward to the morning darkness, no matter how many times I remind myself about the longer evenings.

It is a lovely evening.  It is dark now.  Tomorrow night at this time it will still be light, I think.  I want someone to remind me to sit on my patio and pay attention to it.  Perhaps someone will.

Earlier this evening, I fed my dog Scout, and then almost immediately afterwards, opened the patio door to get that nice breeze in.

Almost immediately she looked up from her food bowl and went out to the patio.  She must have sat there for fifteen minutes, her food half-eaten.

This is a dog who is usually single-minded when it comes to food.  I wish I could read scripture with the sort of attention she gives to her food, which is ALWAYS the same.  She attacks it with vigor, and doesn't stop until everything is gone.  It is inspiring.

But not tonight.  Tonight something else that caught her attention.  I can't imagine what it was.  My senses are not as finely tuned as hers.  But in those minutes that she sat there, meditating (as I imagined it), I did begin to hear the birds, songs I had not paid attention to.  They are different birdsongs here in Texas than the ones I was accustomed to in Minnesota.  Perhaps it was the birds.  Or perhaps it was smells -- Texas is covered in pollen now.  I can see it, the yellow layers on my car, sliding off in the heavy rains this week.  Maybe Scout can smell things that I am not able to.

There are smells in tomorrow's gospel reading.  I am not paying attention to them.  There is the smell of death and the smell of the costly nard, poured over Jesus' feet.  Scripture says that the smell filled every corner of the house.  I wonder what it was like.

I wonder what it was like, sitting at table with Jesus, just being together.  It is not long before he will be crucified.  They have this moment together, to savor, to be together, to pay attention, to be aware of his presence with them.

Sometimes you have to stop what you are doing, what you thought was so important, and just be present, be in the presence, know that, whether you can sense it or not, God is in the room.

Or dog.

With or Without Thinking About It

Again, at the end of the day, I find myself in my car, sitting at the intersection where there is a sign, an unmistakable sign:  "Road Closed."  It has been this way for a month.  There are other routes home.  Every day I remind myself to take one of them.  I have only succeeded a handful of times.  Most days, without even thinking about it, I turn left out of the church parking lot and drive home the way I always have, for almost 17 years, until I hit the "Road Closed" sign.

The first couple of days the "Road Closed" sign appeared, I could drive around it.  The sign was up, they did not really mean it.  You could still drive on the road if you wanted to.

It is different now.  I can see the big equipment, the piles of broken-up road.  The road is definitely closed.  I do not know how long it will stay closed.

It is not that big a convenience to drive around it, but it is also true that there are other routes I could take home.  I could take them.  It would be easier, if I could remember, if I could think about it for just long enough to turn another direction out of the parking lot.  But, most days, I don't.  And then I find myself at the intersection with the "road closed" sign.  Why didn't I think about it earlier?  Why can't I change one small, simple habit?

This is one thing I think about while stopped at the "road closed" sign.  Then I turn, and drive down a few blocks, and return home by another way.  Another thing I think about is whether it really does much good to think about it, whether my actual problem is that I drive home without thinking about it.

There are other things I think about, too:  entrenched habits in ministry, in relationships, in life.  If only I could think about them a little bit more, I could change them.  Some of them, at least, could use changing.  I am tempted to believe that it is my thinking that is the problem, that thinking a little harder, or in a different way, that a new insight is the key to my salvation.  But I am not sure that thinking about them, or writing about them in my journal, or even getting an epiphany while I am sitting in my car will help.

Maybe what it really takes is a road closed sign.  Just the road closed sign, where I am forced to take the side roads, go home by an even slightly different route.  Maybe it's the action, not thinking about it. Maybe you don't think.  You just practice turning, turning around, because the road is closed and you have to go in a different direction.