Slow Me Down

I come to this season wanting to soak up its atmosphere. I come to be moved and surprised in simple, yet subtle, ways.

But I have to be patient and wait for the Spirit to reveal, in its own time, what it will reveal. I cannot force insights to come. I cannot entice wisdom to descend. I have to trust and be receptive of gifts that I don’t anticipate and which I may not think I need. I have to be open to the unknown. This is a time of active waiting, and I confess that I do not wait well.

Slow me down that I may listen. Slow me down that I may hear. Slow me down that I may be present to this moment and to the people here.                                     

A Place Apart: Nature

Late in the fall one year, I hiked up steep switchbacks for two hours from the valley floor to Glacier Point in Yosemite. The wilderness was surprisingly quiet and still at 8,000 feet.

A forest of sugar pines was behind me. In front was Half Dome and a view that stretched over the gray granite peaks and domes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains

No one else was here. The summer crowds had gone home months before. A few tiny people walked around on the valley floor far below. Except for a few squirrels and one Steller’s jay, no other creatures were letting their presence be known.

The breeze hummed lightly as it twirled the needles on the pines. There was a hush as the wind flowed over the nearby mountains on its way east. Now and then when the breeze shifted, I caught the sounds of Nevada and Vernal Falls.