Monday, July 6, 2020
Scripture for the Day
Springtime Rhapsody
The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the reading for this morning, especially the bit about leaping over mountains and bounding over hills, as I think about my, across-the-street, neighbor who should be coming down Mount Katahdin in Maine today. Hard to believe it was only a bit over four months ago that the neighbors were wishing Drew a bon voyage as he headed up to Springer Mountain in north Georgia to start his lifelong dream of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. He mentioned that he’d be keeping a blog and I said, “Yeah, I see if I can find it online.” I figured I’d look at it once or twice but how interested would I be in pictures from his walk in the woods?
Drew left on February 29th and at that point in my life I had plenty of things to keep busy with without checking on him. Then, in mid-March, Covid-19 struck and we all went on lockdown. I would have never dreamt that I’d become nearly addicted to what he’s writing and posting from the trail.
He can’t update it every day, he doesn’t always have a cell signal, so I’ve taken to checking in on his progress ever two or three days. Part of my fascination, I’m sure, is that without having any sports to watch this past spring I’ve been cheering on his phenomenal progress, but he is stopping occasionally to smell the flowers and photograph them. He noted in one post that as he headed through the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and beyond; he was chasing spring as it bloomed a few degrees of latitude north every morning. Never before have I found myself being such an armchair botanist. Add to that his postings of waterfalls, expansive vistas, beautiful sunrises and sunsets, plus a myriad of critters he’s seen on the path is a powerful reminder of the magnificence of creation.
Staying in the city and, especially, staying at home during a pandemic means running the risk of missing the miraculous rebirth of the world. I’m grateful my neighbor decided to push through, he deliberated mightily, and continued his journey and his online travelogue to remind his family and friends following from home that there is still unimaginable beauty in the world. John Muir observed, “God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
Let us pray:
O God, enlarge within us the sense of
fellowship with all living things,
our brothers the animals to whom thou
gavest the earth as their home in
common with us.
We remember with shame that in the past
we have exercised the high dominion
of man with ruthless cruelty
so that the voice of the earth,
which should have gone up to thee
in song, has been a groan of travail.
May we realize that they live not for
us alone but for themselves and for
thee, and that they love
the sweetness of live.
By Basil of Caesarea, 330-379
