Ecchoing Green

God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth . . .

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Location: New Hampshire, United States

Saturday, August 22, 2009

The River God

I have a dilemma.

I’m not overly “green” – I mean, we try to recycle our cans, bottles, and paper; we don’t drive SUVs (which has as much to do with cost as conscience!); we use compact fluorescent lightbulbs (again, cost more than principle), etc. No doubt we could do a lot more.

We could do much more in the spiritual arena as well, though we try. We’re faithful Sunday churchgoers, we pray with our children before dinner and before bed, read the Scriptures, and talk openly about our faith as a family.

I was raised in church – steeped in it like a tea bag in hot water, to the saturation point. Our social life revolved around faith. Three services a week, almost without fail. I’ve estimated that I missed church on Sunday morning fewer than ten times from birth until college.

I’ve wept at rural Baptist revival meetings; sung at full volume in my wife’s grandmother’s African-American church; known the presence of Christ in the quiet dignity of the Mass; inhaled the censer’s smoky perfume in the great Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. I love church because I meet the Lord there.

But back to that green thing. I’m no enviro-theist, and so it feels like blasphemy to say this – but sometimes I feel His presence even more strongly on a day like yesterday. Not in church, but in a river.

See, summer in New England is all too brief, and so yesterday I took a day off and drove with my wife and three young children an hour and a half north, to New Hampshire’s White Mountains. We’ve got a few favorite spots there, especially Lost River Gorge. It’s a place where glaciers carved deep grooves in the mountainsides and left boulders jumbled about. Decades ago a local entrepreneur installed a series of boardwalks and wooden ladders in the gorge and started charging admission for people to climb through the small caves between boulders.

I stood shin-deep in cool mountain water, watching my 7- and 5-year old boys splash and climb, build small cairns out of smooth rocks, explore and jump and laugh like children naturally do (what a grace). Our 18-month-old daughter, not willing to be outdone, mimicked them and scaled the rocks more nimbly than their old dad. We played until threatening clouds approached and the sound of thunder drove us back to the car. Good thing we left the minute we did – the rainstorm that followed was as intense as any I’d ever seen in Texas or Kansas, save the hail.

We drove back across Kancamagus Pass (elevation only 2,855 feet but it feels a lot higher) toward Lincoln and the highway that would take us back home. Even in the driving rain, with visibility only about 100 feet, I felt exhilarated. Better still, I felt totally satisfied, in love, at peace, and grateful. Just watching the boys play was like worship. Not like – it was worship at its best and most God-honored. Maker of it all – He was there, right there with us, in the water flowing over the rocks, in the mist covering the hills, in the smiles of my children, in our hearts. That is church, my friend.

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