Irresistible as Grace
Over the last fifty years, the mountains
of southern Appalachia have been a sanctuary for me. While I am more apt to
explore them now with a camera, for a decade or more, I scoured maps and
wandered back roads in search of high-country trout streams. Whether fishing or
photographing, I find myself mesmerized by sunlight filtering down through a
dense canopy of hardwoods and evergreens. Huddling close over cold, clear water
and tumbles of smooth gray stones, the trees seem to be hiding secret treasures
from those who would leave too much of self behind.
Some
twenty years ago, I set out one morning in search of water, trout, and
solitude. From Little Switzerland, NC, I drove north on the Blue Ridge Parkway
to Grandfather Mountain where I exited the Parkway. My car crunched and rattled
along several miles of forest service roads to the upper reaches of a remote
creek I saw on a map. I parked my car and got out. For a few minutes, I simply
listened, and breathed.
Feeling welcomed by the forest, I began
to rig my fly rod – a braided leader, tippet as thin as a strand of spider web,
a tiny Adams parachute fly. I wrestled my feet into my wading shoes. Still wet
from a previous excursion, they squished and wheezed like my nose does when I
have a cold. I put on my vest which sagged and clattered with fishing gear, peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches, and a water bottle.
The trail I followed led me steeply
downward but near the creek. It crossed a small feeder stream – in fact no
wider than my stride, and in truth no deeper that my understanding of the
Mystery of which I have been called to speak. Across the stream, the forest began
to close in on me. Exactly where and when I could not say, but the trail had
delivered me to the forest. I was no longer on a traveled path. I was simply
alive in the midst of towering hickories, oaks, and tulip poplars. Above me, spruce
and fir trees spread their dark boughs above the forest floor like priests
pronouncing blessing and benediction upon the Earth.
I stopped and listened, but either the
stream or the trail had turned. My ears rang with a silence as irresistible as
grace. So, I pressed on, squeezing through rhododendron thickets I would
otherwise have considered impervious, crawling over fallen trees that were
spongy and damp with decay, following not the stream’s voice, but the promise
it had whispered in my ear.
How
like that stream is God who goads us onward. How like God it is to lead us into
the silences of Heaven where faith and hope are born. How like the twelve we
often are when we slash and tear our way through creation, hell-bent on seeing
and hearing only that which is familiar, and mindless of how grace comes newly born
in fresh experiences.
The
well-marked paths on which our journeys begin deliver us to transfigured and
transfiguring trails of deeper relationship and purpose. And there we learn new
ways, new possibilities. In the midst of all the change and all the silence,
take heart. The one who stirs us forward can be trusted.
*A version of this article appeared in the September 27, 1999 issue of "The Presbyterian Outlook."
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