Note: I broke my Substack last week and wasn’t able to publish. The Substack team came to my aid over the weekend and we are live again!
A friend of mine, with more enthusiasm that you’d expect, once told me it is legal to build a yurt as a residence in Lane County—where Florence and Eugene sit here in Oregon. Somewhere in that county ordinance lay his hopes and dreams for the future, but I was still less-than-convinced after my first yurt camping experience last year.
No bathroom. The running water is outside. I didn’t get the PNW-yurt-hype.
Didn’t matter. Declan loved it.
So we tried again this year—at a different state park. We went to Honeyman State Park in Florence, Oregon: sand dunes, a small fresh-water lake for kayaking and swimming, and a huge yurt site. Friends, we have stumbled upon a new family tradition. The kids rolled around on their scooters all day with dirt on their faces and sand stuck between their toes. I jumped in a cold lake in my long pants because my 4-year-old unexpectedly asked me to swim with him (and Murphy swam out to save me because our dog thought I was drowning). The campground lived up to this quote by its namesake and prominent civic leader Jessie Miller Honeyman. Her words etched on a monument there says:
“No work is more important than teaching the children that the God-given beauty of Oregon is their heritage.”
I hope we are passing that tradition along to our little Oregonians.
One of the scriptures from the lectionary this week is from the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah:
“I am a God who is near, I am also a God who is far away;
No one can hide
where I cannot see him,I fill all of heaven and earth,” says the Lord.
So evidently there is a nearness — some sort of filling all of heaven and earth where no one can hide from God — but also some kind of distance.
And all of this on God’s own terms.
C.S. Lewis, with his Christ-character Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, put the idea this way:
“He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”
The idea of God’s wildness isn’t something I hear Christians or critics of Christianity talk about very much. None of my ex-vangelical or lapsed Catholic friends have mentioned the wildness of God as a contributing factor on their journey. Maybe my yurt-camping is putting some bias into my reading of this text.
I held Declan and showed him the trees at our campsite. When we looked up, we could see the treetops moving and hear the wind blowing. I told him that the wind was like the work of God’s spirit—and it’s up to us to listen and follow. We have tradition as an orienting point, scripture as an orienting point, and reason as an orienting point—but also experience.
How do you experience the coming and going of God?
In moments of decision: when you know that if you keep saying yes to that opportunity you are somehow going to become a version of yourself you can’t look in the eye any longer.
In moments of temptation: when you have an opportunity to practice virtue, and you say Have a good evening instead of Do you want to come in? at the hotel at your work conference.
In moments of joy: when you realize that this entire thing is a gift and, in the words of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, “Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
In moments of transition: when life seems quiet, but God goes before us and straightens our path.
For my imagination, there is a bit of a low growl to all of it. And that, I do not understand.
I’ll leave you with a prayer I found and some photos from our camping trip:
God of justice, your word is light and truth.
Let your face shine on us to restore us,
that we may walk in your way,
seeking justice and doing good. Amen.