Get Lost

Psalm 100; Psalm 98

There is something about a walk in the woods.

When we first moved into our home, the front part of the subdivision was undeveloped. You passed through a patch of pine forest on either side of our street. A path wound through the southern patch, worn by children cutting from our neighborhood to one adjoining. Walking the dogs along this path was a brief respite from the world. Even though a busy thoroughfare was less than a hundred yards away, there was still a sense of enclosure within the trees. It took all of five minutes to walk this path, but it was a breath of freshness. 

Only a thin strip of trees remains. It is only about two yards wide, and there is no path. The entrance is still there, but the homeowner whose yard it points to has hung a chain festooned with NO TRESPASSING across it. I miss my walks through there.

I have always like walks in the woods. When I was boy, my parents joined a Saturday hiking club, meaning each weekend from September through May, we rose early Saturday morning, met at the local Y, and drove to the nearby mountains of western North Carolina to explore a fire road, a national forest, or state park for a day. 

I loved getting lost without being lost. 

There is a difference.

Being lost is terrifying. It is disorienting. The landscape refuses to become familiar; directions become ambiguous; and exits invisible. Getting lost is entirely other from that. Getting is lost is intentional—we choose to leave. We choose to go somewhere else. We choose to disconnect. We choose the unfamiliar.

A forest offers the invitation to get lost. The trees will soon wall off the outside world. Your focus becomes a lot narrower, sometimes only a few feet in front of you as you negotiate and navigate rocks or roots. Yet, at the same time, everything opens up, revealing a backdrop of sound, sight, and smell that only resides in the forest. Depending on the weather, the play of light within the leaves or limbs of the trees changes, even momentarily. A cloudy day is not drab or dull, but allows colors to leap forward that you might miss. Sun creates an ever-changing kaleidoscope of light and shadow, that shifts with each whisper of wind. Rain brings forth a chorus of quiet applause as the rain smacks through the leaves. Nothing else matters. Nothing else really is.

I bring this up because summer is a chance to reconnect with a forest. Most of us still slow down during summer, take time off to be with children liberated from school, or simply get away from work and responsibility. We need to get lost for a while. But why the forest? Read through the Psalms at your leisure and note how many of them sing and pray through the forest—the forest dances and leaps as God sends a storm through it; the forest stands firm and protective, like God’s grace; the “cedars of Lebanon” become sacred sources for God’s holy house; and on they run. The Psalmist found the forest to be a sacred space, a temple founded in creation itself, a reminder that the world and all within it is the kingdom of God. 

Humanity needs more reminders that the kingdom is always present. Such a reminder offers us hope when the world seems simply overrun with human willfulness. Such a reminder assures us of the possibility of peace in a world torn by strife. Such a reminder is also a call to responsibility. The earth is our home, but not just for the current generation of residents,  but for the countless generations still to come. The forest keeps us in contact with the need to preserve the earth for all who follow. 

I pray each of you will find time to reconnect with the earth, reconnect with God, and reconnect with our joy.

Go, get lost.