RE: A Positive Thought for the Day
04/20/2021
"Be still and know that I am God" Psalms 46:10
Whatever your faith, or even if you don't have one, there is wisdom in this scripture. Most of our stress is placed upon us by things extraneous to ourselves, other people in our lives, work, the news, our children or grandchildren, even our spouses. It comes in the form of conflict, worries, fears for our loved ones, anger, or even the confusion of love. And, it leaves our minds in a jumble, our pulse elevated, and makes rest sometimes impossible.
Our lives will become an endless parade of stress whether stuck in a conveyance on concrete or asphalt our surrounded by a cubicle, or in a make shift office on a building site, or speaking over wires or skype. Every day starts with an alarm to get us up and ends with something intended to help us fall asleep whether white noise, that nighttime toddy, or something proscribed.
But, I would bet each of us have a place and a space in time that we remember where we felt at peace, safe, alive, and amazed by nature. These places can be watching sunrises or sunsets, laying on our backs in the cool grass watching the clouds or stars, hiking a mountain trail, surveying a planted field, watching the forest come alive as the first rays of the sun filter through the canopy and life begins to emerge each morning, or gently drifting on a peaceful ocean with nothing but the horizon in sight.
In our modern world we do not visit these places often enough and because we don't we lose sight of who we are, what we believe, what gives us our sense of peace, and whose we are. These are the places we find peace, where we are calm, our minds are clear, and we remember. We remember the good things about family, friends, favorite pets, loves, and who we once believed ourselves to be. These are our core thoughts, our identity, our beliefs, and they all come with a connection to nature. To be human is to exist in nature. For some reason the farther from nature we move the less human we become.
I am a Christian so for me a return to my nature spots of remembrance and peace mean a return to the total humility of feeling at home and in my place. My spot of choice is 27 miles off the East Coast of Georgia in the Gulf Stream with no radio and the engine cut off and horizon everywhere. I can't tell you why but that's the place where I feel the least significant and yet the closet to God. The least significant because the ocean dwarfs us, the horizon is limitless, and there is only me to take care myself. I feel the closest to God there because I believe everything was created by God and at that location there is nothing there but the creator and me and the sea. Perhaps metaphorically it is because I am above the chaos of the waves but within their reach and there is nothing but infinity around me. It is there that I think more clearly than anywhere else.
As a child my place was 16 feet above a pond on a high clay bank leaning up next to a large old Pine tree as the sun was against my face, just warm, without a thought in my head, and feeling at one with my surroundings.
In times of high stress I could go back to those places mentally and find calm. When I go back to them physically it is like a holy pilgrimage.
My point is that most of us have such places and they should be revisited both in our thoughts and actually. If you can't think of one search for one. They help you remember who you are, what you believe, and can help you to remember why you are here, but most importantly they melt the stress away, dissolve away the concrete and asphalt and steel that alienate us all and make us feel we are in each other's way, and return us to a place where we feel secure and sure about at least a few things that matter. And that is worth more than gold. And that trip into nature is much more exhilarating than going to some jungle "Naked and Afraid!"
(This post was last modified: 04-20-2021 10:31 AM by JRsec.)
|