For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Isaiah 35:6-7

This past sabbatical summer, I loved sitting on my deck at the house in Western Maryland every morning. After prayer time and breakfast, I spent at least an hour reading on the deck before starting up my writing time. In addition to the many bird calls, my favorite sound was the babbling of the stream that runs down the hill in front of the house. The sound of the stream is soothing to my body and soul. I like to wake up in the morning and fall asleep in the evening to the sound. But sometime in the middle of July, the stream dried up due to our dry summer conditions. No more soothing sound. Every morning in my deck chair and every evening as I turned off the light, something seemed missing. It was the stream.

When we wake up one day and realize that we have lost our way in life, it is like the day the stream is silent. There is often little warning. Just one day, we finally wake up from our daily routines and responsibilities and say: Where did my life go? Where is my soul, the child of God within me? The road back to recover the child of God within is often foggy. Clear directions and instructions are hard to come by. There seems to be nothing that we can DO to make it all better once again. And it seems to be especially hard to rediscover one's life when one begins the journey parched and dry. How do I find the energy to do important life work when I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning?

On Sunday, I spoke about this journey that we all make to recover the child of God within. I spoke about Anne Morrow Lindbergh's journey to the ocean to find her soul again in her classic book Gift from the Sea. When she spoke about the double sunrise shell with its perfectly mirrored bivalves, she pointed to long term relationships in our lives. These relationships are often what keep us going when the road becomes foggy and we are lost. But like all of our life, these relationships are not etched in stone to remain frozen in perfection for all time. Rather, change comes to relationships as well. Change is a good things in our lives which we often resist with all our mortal strangth. Here is what Lindbergh says about relationships:

It is true, of course, the original relationship is very beautiful. Its self-enclosed perfection wears the freshness of a spring morning. Forgetting the summer to come, one often feels one would like to prolong the spring of early love, when two people stand as individuals, without a past or future, facing each other. One resents any change, even though one knows that transformation is natural and part of the process of life and its evolution. Like its parallel in physical passion, the early ecstatic stage of a relationship cannot continue always at the same pitch of intensity. It moves to another stage of growth which one should not dread, but welcomes as one welcomes summer after spring. But there is also the dead weight accumulation, a coating of false values, habits and burdens which blights life. It is this smothering coat that needs constantly to be stripped off, in life as well as relationships.
(Gift from the Sea, p. 58)

Stripping off that dead weight accumulation is a necessity of growing older. It is a necessity of life. Without regular examination and stripping off of false values, habits and burdens which once served us so well but no longer give life, our souls suffocate under the weight. We dry up. For the soul to flow once again, we must prune and subtract. Even more importantly, it is the acceptance of this pruning and subtraction that makes the stream of life flow once again. And everything is up for grabs in our pruning and subtracting--even the things that we think we hold most dear. It is true that in losing our life, we save it. Just as Jesus said.

In the very first days of September, as I was packing to leave the mountains to come back to Baltimore, I heard the stream once again. After several days of rain, one morning I woke to a long-awaited sound. Sabbatical was over and it was time to leave. How could I leave that sound? As I drove out the driveway over the stream, I noticed that the stream sang as before, but there was a new waterfall as it wound down the hillside. The stream made it to the same destination, but by an ever so slightly different path. The stream had changed. The stream had shed old routes for a new way. I smiled. Ah, nature underlines the way of life again and again. As I made my way back on I-68 and I-70 to Baltimore, I grew excited: what new ways lay ahead for me as I left an old babbling friend behind?

Text: Isaiah 35

Pondering: Where do you feel parched and dry? Do you know the child of God within? Where could some pruning take place? See Sunday's sermon for more grist for the spiritual mill--on the web in a day or two.

In Christ's Love,