How can the wilderness be full?
I finally had a chance to hike today. I've only been out once since my accident in February and I really needed to feel the earth beneath my feet and the heat of the sun on my skin. I stayed in the city to hike. I usually go several miles out, but I have a ton of homework so I thought I should get home on time. As I was leaving, I saw a sign hanging there that said "Park Full". I thought to myself, "How can the wilderness be full?" I mean, there must be somewhere to sit/camp/be within the mountain preserve. It can't really be full, can it? And how full is full? Who decides when it is full? Did it cease to be full now that I left? Does one more person fit now? I find it interesting that the places I usually like to hike are never full. Sometimes you can make a ten mile loop and never see another person. In fact, at one of them I have never seen another person--ever. Coyotes yes, lion yes, people no. I wonder why the park is full and the trails twenty miles down the road are empty. Maybe because a full park doesn't have any "wild" in its wilderness. All the coyotes and mountain lions have moved to my lonely little trail outside the city. Don't worry, none of them have tried to eat me yet.I talked to Drew the other night. Sometimes, when I finally get to talk to my dear friends after so many months, I imagine that our conversations are kinda like what day three of eternity with God will be like. You see, day one is clearly used up with awe and wonder and praise, and I think day two will be the same, but by day three we will be running around and hugging one another and trying to talk all at once and having to make a conscious effort to listen because we are so excited to say all the things we haven't been able to say for such a long time. I get all loud and fast and annoying when I get to talk to him, just because it is soooo good to actually talk to him. And because he "gets me" in ways that most people don't. He gets me enough to forgive the loud, fast, annoying girl on the other end of the line and to call her again another day, knowing that at some point she will calm down and hear him and love him. And I do.
Drew pretends to be a raging liberal. He isn't. He is just a gospel guy, the same way I'm a gospel kinda girl. We simply believe what Jesus said as much as we believe in what he did. So we love people in a really inclusive and wonderful way--a way that makes traditionalist, fundamentalist, and hypercalvinist cringe. And we dive head first into justice and community and drink it in until it intoxicates us--an intoxication that the aforementioned "ists" fear. And that is not so much "liberal" as it is "free". So that is what my Andrew is. He is free. And I wish that freedom for all those that I love.
posted by CT @ 6:47 PM
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