"Is everything okay?" I asked. "Yep," he muttered back, "no problem."
After a very busy ministry on the road, the Apostles returned to Jesus and told Him everything they had done and taught. Jesus recognized their weariness and said to them, "Come away with Me to a deserted place by yourselves and rest awhile." And they went away in a boat to a deserted place by themselves.
Carol and I had the opportunity over these past two weeks to take Jesus' sound advice to go away and rest for awhile. While away, I learned once again that one of the great joys of summer vacation time is the opportunity for summer vacation reading. Last Sunday a week ago, while visiting in a quiet place with a favorite niece in North Carolina, I needed some rainy afternoon reading material. As I browsed through their bookshelf, my eyes stopped on an old classic, Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Aha, I thought, maybe I will get more from this now than I did in my college English Lit class--and, indeed, I did.
The back-cover summary reminded me that Thoreau wrote this marvelous piece while living for two years in a one-room log cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. His opening words in the second chapter describe the reason for his two-year experiment in living away and alone:
"I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life, and see what life had to teach me. So that, when I came to die I might not discover that I had not lived...I wanted to live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life."
Thoreau did just that. He lived so deeply that he got right to the marrow of his life. And thus Walden has rightly become a classic record of one man's journey into himself.
Two very helpful themes emerged for me as I read Walden that rainy afternoon--themes about living which are as spiritual as they are deeply human. One has to do with our own personal struggle to live in solitude and with simplicity. The other has to do with trust. As he got in touch with his solitude and simple life by the pond, Thoreau reflected on how primitive humans once sojourned through life:
"They dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and were threading through valleys, or crossing plains, or climbing mountain tops. When they ate they were refreshed with food and they slept and contemplated their journey again."
In his deserted place, Thoreau sensed that humanity was becoming very complex and distracted and too busy. We were losing touch not only with our inner selves, but with God Himself.
"We no longer (stop) and camp for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity as just another form of (work). We have built for this world a family mansion--and for the next a family tomb."
Like gooey jelly, those words stuck with me. A couple of days after reading this indictment (which I took personally), I was sitting on a porch swing one very hot and humid morning with my three-year-old nephew, Morgan. My mind was racing on with some great problem of the world and my foot kept that swing going at high speed, when I noticed that Morgan was quietly and intently gazing at his hand. I stopped my rather frantic pace and watched this marvelous curly-headed youngster follow the progress of an inchworm working its way across his hand and up-and-down his arm.
For the better part of ten minutes that three-year-old taught me one of the great lessons of Walden--that every now and then we do need to stop and camp for the night and in our solitude remember the simple things which enrich our lives. I had confronted an essential fact of life and learned once again, as Thoreau put it: "...to maintain one's self on this earth is not to be a hardship, but a pastime, if we will but live simply and wisely."
It was at that point in my vacation time away that I was able to stop and camp for awhile in that deserted place; to play with Morgan's fascinating inchworm; to pray with Jesus, and to sort out a few odds and ends about life.
The next day I learned my second lesson about "Walden simplicity" when we set out on a half-day fishing excursion with Carol's brother and a fishing captain and guide named George, who looked for all the world like that rugged fishing captain in the movie Jaws. George was a well-known local character who lives on the Eastern Shore of North Carolina and has guided many novices like me through the intricacies of deep-sea fishing.
The first three hours of our adventure were rather uneventful. Indeed, we had caught only two fish. Then, as we began our journey home, we ran into a powerful thunderstorm which blocked our pathway to a safe haven. It wasn't long before the five of us were huddled under the small bridge as we watched lightning flash, heard deep thunder and dodged driving rainstorms until we could no longer dodge them. The ship-to-shore radio blared out ominous reports and I wondered if we were, indeed, in trouble.
At one point I looked nervously over at George, who stood quietly at the wheel. He wore a dirty old tee shirt, had a scraggly beard and a chock of uncombed red, curly hair. With his hand firmly on the wheel and his eyes on the storm, he just smiled and hummed a little tune. "Is everything okay?" I asked, trying to conceal my nervousness. "Yep," he muttered back, "no problem."
And, sure enough, it was "no problem." We skirted around that violent thunderstorm and into a rich fishing hole which netted us over seventy tasty fish, enough to feed us all and have some left over. As we tied up to our safe haven and prepared to return home, we learned that the storm was indeed violent. It had claimed one fishing boat as its victim in a deadly waterspout.
As I thought about this later, it occurred to me that this man of deep solitude, who lived a very simple life, knew exactly what he was doing. And it was his basic knowledge of the sea which had brought us through the storm and back to safety. George had become for us a good shepherd in whom we had to place all our trust. We had no other option.
And that, of course, is the basic message that Jesus taught His disciples on the shores of Lake Galilee: When we place our trust in Jesus, allowing His hands to steer the ship of our life, we can weather dangerous storms of life; we will be fed abundantly and always have a safe harbor to return home.
"Come with me to a deserted place where we may find solitude and rest a while."
With thanks to Henry David Thoreau, young Morgan and Captain George, I understand better this Godly invitation of Jesus to each and every one of us. Amen.
© 1998 - 2008Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Palm Desert CA" All
rights reserved.