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At the end of May, I took a day of spiritual retreat. On that day I wrote this message for you, but needed to wait until I shared it in our discernment group first. Then things got so busy that I didn’t have time to find it again and post it! Here it finally is, and I hope that it’s a meaningful reflection.

The hike is labeled Lake Loop – around Elliott Lake, which is the small lake on the Maryville Retreat Center campus. It’s about a mile and a half long, and the map showed it along the water in many places, behind trees in a few stretches. I found my way to it by the lake and set off.

As I walked, the trail veered away from the lake for quite a ways. I kept looking left and expecting the lake to come into view. After all, when one is on a lake loop, one might expect to see the lake! On I walked, still looking left and still not finding the lake. “Where am I?” I wondered. “Could I have gotten on the wrong path?” On a day of trying to stay away from technology, out came my phone, and no, the lake was right over there, just out of my sight. I found myself feeling a bit impatient to see it!

Thankfully I chose that moment to interrupt my mental script. I try to be conscious of getting into the weeds, so I can change my path. Sometimes it works.

I asked myself, “Why are you so fixated on the lake? What about all of the other things to see that you are missing?” And there was a lot that was going on by without much of a glance. I was so focused on the lake that I missed all of the other things I could see, as well as what I could hear and smell. Instead of relying on my instincts and prolonging my questions to see what I could figure out, I even used my phone to tell me what would have become obvious in time.

The smells were rich – from fields to swampy land to deeper forest. And the birds – when I started listening carefully, I realized there were tons of birds around me. I’m just not good at spotting them and I can’t identify them by birdsong yet. Here’s a great use of my phone – the Merlin app. With its help, I heard 35 different birds as I walked the lake loop. Some were with me the whole way; some made rare and momentary appearances. The others were stronger in some areas than others.

When we try to discern what God wants, I think we often have expectations and pre-conceived notions, akin to my thought that the lake should be the focus of hiking the lake loop. That may or may not be what God wants for us. Part of our work in listening, in going between daily life and time with God, is recognizing those pre-conceived notions and doing our very best to put them aside! Recognizing them is challenging – we have to interrupt ourselves, be aware, and notice our own through process. When we can pause, see the challenge, and change, then we have a whole new world open us to us!

There were lake views at various points, which I enjoyed. Surprisingly once I got to them, they weren’t as big of a focus as I thought they would be. I was immersed in discerning so much more and enjoying it fully!

If this sounds good to you, you’re welcome to join me on Monday, August 11. I’ll be heading back out to Maryville, and you are welcome to come with me. Now you know about the lake loop, but you’ll probably find some other assumptions or expectations to consider as you set aside the day for you, God, and some friendly FPC folks. I’ll provide a basic structure, and from there, it’s good for us all to get a bit uncomfortable as we spend time with God and listen to God speak.