Experience Outdoors

Today had been a little more packed than most, seemed like I was running around from thing to thing and not having any time to be intentional with people or slow down to think about anything that I was doing. I was feeling a little frustrated by it. I got out of class at 5:15 and when I walked out of McMuran I was hit by the slowly setting sun and warm september air. I had a packed evening but had a couple of hours to kill so I hopped on my bike and rode to lions gate. At first I didn’t even want to think about the craziness of my day, I was just so excited to be getting off of campus and going to be alone. There is something so rejuvenating about hopping on a bike and riding down that long winding road that opens eventually up to the entire view of the river.

I love going to sit there and watch the birds fly around, catching fish at sunset and watching how they take their turns one by one diving into the water. It felt good to take my shoes off and put my feet in the cool grass. It felt good to just be an observer. No one was there expecting me to be anything, say anything, do anything, I could just be present. I sat there watching the sun go down and people come and go. I stretched, laid down, played with the grass and just did anything I wanted to in that moment. When I got up to bike away I finally thought about my day and how glad I was to have just gone straight to the river. It would have been easy just to bike home and continue to be frustrated about it but instead I went to the river and decided to be present there. Just enjoying what was around me, having quiet uninterrupted time to pray, and a renewed feeling about the day I just had. Feeling thankful that we have somewhere so close to our campus that we can go to escape and be in nature.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student Choice #1

This semester, I have found myself most Sunday afternoons feeling stuck. I don't want to use my mind and I don't want to move off my couch. Nothing seems to sink in past surface level and I would simply scroll through Facebook, not taking in any information but merely skimming. I heard someone once describe this feeling as the "fog of war." Battling with negativity, artificiality, and cynicism for too long leads to this lethargic state of in between, not giving up but not contributing, lukewarm in the truest sense of the word. I wonder if part of the solution to this "fog of war" is to simply be around something that is real. Something that is created. To feel the wind, even if it is bitter cold. To listen to a piece of music that is so beautiful or tragic that it brings tears to your eyes. To touch a tree or a blade of grass. To watch an ant crawl across the sidewalk. To see the sunset or to feel the rain fall. When I am surrounded by screens and walls and ...
Read more

Landscapes of the Sacred #2

In Landscapes of the Sacred, Ch. 10 discusses the tension between place and placelessness is Christian Spirituality. It discusses the two approaches to sacred place: kataphatic and apophatic.  Kataphatic rejoices in discerning the presence of God in the “thisness” of various places [place] while a pophatic: skeptical of an image’s ability to contain the mystery of the Holy [placelessness]. In one specific section, The Christian Imagination and a Theology of Place, Lane discusses how God is here, but not only here. He writes, “A theology of transcendance will never be comfortable with place.” He goes on to describe 5 “motifs by which the religious imagination is able to ‘create’ places or landscapes that become embodied means of experiencing the divine presence.” The first comes from John Calvin, he “spoke of the natural world as a theater full of wonders in which God’s glory becomes apparent..” The second is n ature as a ‘second book’ alongside scripture as a way to read the presen...
Read more

It All Begins With Praise - Phenomenology of Prayer

When talking about the elements of prayer, the author of The Phenomenology of Prayer claims that praise is where we need to start. Prayer is the "deepest decentering of the the self." Prayer should begin with adoration, acknowledging the power of the higher being. From the faith background in which I was raised, the idea of removing yourself from the center of the universe (humiliating yourself) and putting God at the center is how to live a spirit-filled life. Wholeheartedly yielding yourself to the Spirit is no easy feat, Galatians 5 explains that the desires of the flesh (personal projects) are against the desires of the Spirit (wholly other's projects). This ongoing struggle is the life of one who has faith in Jesus. The more time spent praising God in prayer, the more preoccupied one will become with God and submitting to his will, empowered by the Spirit, will then become our project.
Read more