Trail Thoughts Book Winners!

Congratulations BloggyGiveaway.com winners! I am delighted that so many of you participated and we were impressed by your responses which made selection of only ten winners very hard. For those who have won, we will be sending the books this week.

Trail Thoughts is organized as a year long daily devotional so it will be a friendly companion throughout the 2009 and hopefully beyond. And for those of you who love hiking, the passage for February 1st might be a great place to start. It is called "Winter Light."

For every one who participated, thank you. It is my hope that you will continue to follow my blog which is a continuation of what I started with Trail Thoughts last year. I hope to blog at least two to three times a week for this year and almost every day thereafter. And if you like what you find here, please tell your friends. Again thank you for participating.

We also have a daily email set up where you can get a Daily Trail Thought delivered right to your inbox! All you have to do is go to http://www.trailthoughts.com/ and click “Get it Now” under the screensaver offer. Once you enter your email address you will have an option to choose the Free Screensaver, Word of the Day, or both!

Here is the list of winners…Congratulations!
Jenn, Wendy, Lilly, RebekahC, Julie Rains, Penny, Jennifer Y, Kat, Shoshana, Anonymous, writesalot

If you are a winner, please email your full name and shipping address to Charlie@beaufortbooks.com and we’ll make sure your book is on the way!

A JOURNAL FOR THE JOURNEY

My book, Trail Thoughts, is composed of 365 original short essays written between 2003 and 2006. Writing the book was no easy task, at least not at first. In 2003, I produced an essay every day, and even though I became a better writer as the year wore on, the overall effort fell well short of the mark. In fact, when I reviewed the previous year’s work in early 2004, I was appalled to find that what once seemed like profundity now was sadly trite and trivial when viewed through the lens of receding time.

The only solution was to buckle down to the hard work of revisions and rewrites. Even then, the job was not finished. I hired an editor who helped me reach to higher levels of expression. I asked a friend to help with further changes, and all the while, I kept on working on the text itself, always believing that I could find a better word or a more compelling sentence.

Recently, I heard an author quote another writer who had said that you never really finish a book; you just have to abandon it. I am near the stage where I am more than happy to “abandon” Trail Thoughts, even though I consider it an intimate friend who has spent some wonderful times with me. But like a grown child, my book needs to leave me now to go out into the world to build new relationships of its own. In the meantime, I am contemplating a new project that I have tentatively called the Trail Thoughts Journal which will be designed explicitly for the hiking community.

Many hikers keep journals. At the end of a long day they jot down thoughts or reflections to summarize some of the adventures experienced during their daily walk in the woods. With my new book, I want to include a biblical verse for every journal page and perhaps an occasional reflection of my own. I am hoping that the verse will prompt more than a recitation of the day’s events. I am also hoping that the journal will be only a first step in creating truly memorable pieces of writing developed from the raw material written down while on the journey. Most importantly, I hope to design the new book to be light and easy to pack. Hikers are very conscious of carrying too much weight; this little book needs to be viewed as an essential to the trip; otherwise, it will not be serve its purpose of encouraging truly reflective and original writing that expresses the true nature of the journey itself.

A Wise Leader

As we approach January 20 and the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th President of the United States, we might ask what are we looking for in this new leader. The Old Testament tells us that we should hope for a good man who is blessed with right judgment and wisdom. King David, at the very end of his long reign, used poetic language to describe the blessings that flow through a righteous leader to the people of the nation:

“When one rules over men in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth.” (2 Samuel 23:3-4)

If the ruler lacks wisdom, however, discord and dissension will spread through the land. This is what happened when David’s grandson, Rehobaum ascended to the throne forty years later. When the representatives of the people of Israel petitioned the new king to lift the heavy load of excessive taxation, Rehobaum sought advice on what to do.

He sent the people away while he conferred with his advisors. First, he consulted with the elders who said, “If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.” (1 Kings 12:7) Then Rehoboam turned to his youthful companions who told him to assert his power over the people by saying, “My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.” (1 Kings 12:11)

The king rejected wise counsel and followed the misguided advice of the foolish and inexperienced companions and so peace in the land was fractured. The people rose up and civil war broke out.

May this nation be blessed with a leader filled with the wisdom of David. The wise ruler will always think of himself as the servant of the people. The foolish king always thinks that the people are there to serve him.

INTIMACY

The thing to remember about Eden is that it was an intimate place. There was no division between God, the Creator and, man, the creature he created. There was no division between the man and the woman; they lived intimately. And the first man and first woman were at one with their environment. It was the perfect place for them to worship God and enjoy his blessings. But paradise was lost, and when that happened, mankind lost the intimacy which God created us for and which we have yearned to recover ever since.

As a child, my own little corner of paradise was a lake in New Hampshire that I lived on every July for three years. When I think of that place, the memory in my heart takes me instantly back and there I am on my cot in a small cabin on the lake’s shore. Outside, moths and other insects, drawn by the light of my reading lamp, buzz against the screened windows. I can smell the scent of pine that permeates the soft summer evening air. And behind the nocturnal sounds of crickets and frogs, I hear the rhythmic lapping of the waves as they softly touch the rocks near where I am resting my head.

And I remember how early in the morning, my father would invite us to join him on a walk up Bean road to a small local farm. As we walked along the road, we could feel a mountain chill in the air and we could see the mist suspended like a blanket above the green fields. The farm itself rested between the road and the lower reaches of Red Hill, and so we gather up some strawberries or raspberries and thick heavy cream to take back for the family breakfast.

Of course, in this idealized place, I suffered the normal worldly intrusions of fights, skinned knees, hurt feelings and the rest, but this is not what I prefer to remember because my life at the lake touched a part of my heart that longed for something important that was lost long ago.

One of E.B White’s greatest short pieces is called Once More to the Lake. In it, he recalls a lake in Maine that became part of his own spiritual biography: “It is strange how much you remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless; remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. The partitions in the camp were thin and did not extend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remember begin very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral.”

ILLUMINATION

Several years ago, I climbed Mt Whitney in the High Sierras. This was not the usual walk up, but a four day early spring adventure that required heavy backpacking up to Boy Scout Lake which is a snow filled bowl surrounded on three sides by jutting peaks. From this platform, we ascended Whitney itself by heading up a long, steep shoot that is to the right of the headwall. Beyond the shoot is a small flat area that stands hundreds of feet below the summit. Here we clamped onto fixed ropes with ascenders and maneuvered our way up until we reached the actual summit. We were lucky with the weather and so stayed on top for a few hours, enjoying the panoramic views on all sides, including what might be Death Valley far off to the east.

We spent that night once again at Boy Scout Lake. In the morning we awoke before sunrise to begin the job of packing up to head down to the Portal and the road out to Lone Pine. As any mountaineer can tell you, the cold and dark world seems to awaken with the rising sun. And when the light hits the dormant grey rocks, they catch fire and become magical golden shapes that seem to dance with the new dawn.

South of our tent site stand the Needles, four sculpted spires that rise up out of the mountain massif. They appear to the eye to be four steeples of a natural cathedral standing guard against the brutal forces that are constantly besieging this huge wall.

For the most part, I was busy packing up for our departure, but at some point I looked up to see that the light had transformed the stone spires of the Needles into a luminous, serrated gold bulwark set against the deep blue of a desert morning sky.

Luckily, my camera was resting on my sleeping bag; I picked it up and without hesitation, shot four or five frames with black and white film. I wanted to catch the gold rocks, but I had run out of color film, so I had no choice but to go with what was in the camera.

The developed pictures surprised me and taught me a few photography lessons. First, light is everything. The gold that caught my eye in the picture became vibrant rock formations. If you didn’t know better, it was a picture that seemed to be in the tradition of Ansel Adams. It wasn’t, of course, but still a very fine photograph was created by the light reflecting off of the rock formations in just the right way. The truth is that the right exposure was there in front of me and I only needed to recognize it. The second thing I learned was never hesitate. A brilliant moment can vanish like the wind, leaving you with nothing but, well, a not so great picture. How can an average photographer with an inexpensive pocket camera capture an outstanding picture? I think Ken Duncan, the world renowned landscape photographer (http://www.kenduncan.com/), captures it best: He has said many times, “I am just an average photographer with a great God.”

ROCKS

Hiking northward across the open ridge of the northern Presidentials in New Hampshire, I marvel at the odd arrangement of giant boulders lying all around this beautiful and forbidding place. Huge rocks, some the size of houses, lie scattered everywhere with some resting precariously at the edge of deep ravines. This vast, improbable stone-strewn landscape beckons me to ask myself the inevitable “how” questions: How did all of this come about? How did these rocks get here? It all seems so unlikely when it has taken me a huge amount of energy to just get myself up to and across this barren miles-long ridge.

Of course, I know the popular geological answers to these and other questions, but that is not the point. Up here, away from the cacophony of everyday knowledge and discourse, I am prompted to ask some of the more basic questions that go to the heart of why I am here observing all of this in the first place. For up here, surrounded by rocks and boulders, I am confronted with the improbability of it all. This disharmonious arrangement of granite reminds me that I am seemingly just as strangely situated on this revolving planet that whirls on its own journey through the universe. Here in the mountains, it is hard to avoid the deeper questions of my existence and the purpose behind it all. For to me, the rocks and ravines spell mystery and my mind naturally searches for solutions to the puzzle of life itself.

Philip Yancey describes G.K.Chesterton’s view of the world we live in “as a sort of cosmic shipwreck. A person’s search for meaning resembles a sailor who awakens from a deep sleep and discovers treasure strewn about, relics from a civilization he can barely remember. One by one he picks up the relics-gold coins, a compass, fine clothing-and tries to discern their meaning.” Yancey goes on to say that we, like the sailor, have only hints of a world that existed in the deep past: “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.”

For the next several weeks I want invite you to walk with me as I journey through this rocky landscape. Imagine, if you will, that we are companions and that we have abandoned the usual superficialities to engage in an exploration of the meaning of the “bits of Paradise” that have scattered themselves all around us. Can we find a way of fitting these fragments together? It promises to be a worthwhile journey, for we will ask the same questions posed thousands of years ago: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4) What is man, indeed? The next time we get together, we will begin to pick through some of the fragments.

TIME

How easily the joy of Christmas dissipates into the manufactured revelry surrounding the turning of the calendar to a New Year. For within a short seven days, we have moved from the celebration of the mystery of the miracle of the birth of the Son of God to the bittersweet embrace of the passing of time.

When it comes to time, are we not struggling to balance the hope of the new with the impossibility of retrieving experiences that have faded into the past? For while the novelty of something anticipated excites our hopes, remembrance of things past remind us, if ever so subtly, that life is transient. This is why the celebrations associated with the turning of the pages of the calendar seem forced, artificial and even sad. In response to the iron law of time, some continuously erect mighty artificial bulwarks with money to stay the impending stream of change, but just as time cannot be stopped, so these futile gestures inevitably come to nothing. While the lavish parties of the revelers are impressive for their momentary splendor, in the flash of a moment everything that was once perfect has now become a wrecked vestige of what was before. The band has played its last mournful note, the guests have departed, and the despoiled tables have lost their ordered elegance.

We may seem to have the power for a moment to stand athwart the stream of time, but whatever our strategy might be, it will always prove fruitless against forces that we can neither change nor reverse. If we stake everything on our own power to control time, we will inevitably feel the cold breath of mortality brushing silently by. For behind all the pomp and circumstance, we know in our hearts that “our days are like a fleeting shadow” (Psalm 144:4) that “vanish like smoke.” (Psalm 102:3) Thus wisdom dictates, “Though your riches increase, do not set your hearts on them.”(Psalm 62:10) And as the year opens to new promises both real and imagined, we might try to balance the eternal reality of the presence of God in our lives with the temporal considerations of the here and now. Perhaps the time is ripe to alter our relationship with both time and eternity and absorb the wisdom of Jesus’ compelling words: “Come, follow me.”(Matthew 4:19)

Sin

Few words provoke a greater negative stock response than the word "sin." The secular world generally rejects sin in their progressive view of the world which, from the Enlightenment period up to the present moment, has been an optimistic view of man improving his lot without the fiction of a creator God. They reject the biblical narrative entirely and have replaced it with a therapeutic concept of life where professionals can medicate and consult all of humanity into well being through a secular version of salvation. But such a philosophy seems so incomplete and disregards the unruly reality of our existence. Much of the calamities of the 20th Century seem to contradict the happy view of the progressives.

The Bible tells the reader that "sin is lawlessness" but lawless against whom, and what is lawlessness anyway. If law is a mere construct of man and nothing more, then the law is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of socially based tyranny.

King David gives us the biblical view on the matter: "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight...” (Psalm 51). By "you" he is directly addressing God and no one else. The secular modernist defines sin (they never use this word) as an affront against one's neighbor, not against God since to them, God does not exist. But in such a world, only the mighty sinner prevails, for it is strength that defines the law. And the law under this regime can lead to some very dark places. David Berlinski in his excellent book The Devil's Delusion addresses these questions from the perspective of Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s classic novel The Brothers Karamazov: In that novel, the question is asked: What happens if God does not exist? The answer: If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. Berlinski goes on to tell a story about an elderly Hasidic Jew who was commanded by an SS guard to dig his own grave. When he had finished digging, the Jewish man stood up straight and addressed his executioner: “’God is watching what you are doing,’ he said.” And then Berlinski wrote: “And then he was shot dead.” If God does not exist, everything is permitted. Berlinski goes on to say this: “What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of these carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either.”(The Devil’s Delusion pp 26-27)

So when the world focuses on the second of Christ's two great commandments, it is echoing to some extent the world's view on the reality of the existence of God. In fact, this happens when the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-30) runs up to Jesus and asks what he (the young ruler) must do to gain eternal life. In all three versions of this encounter (whether it is Jesus replying or the young ruler); the answer is limited and ironic. For the rich young man answers with a version of “love your neighbor” which is nothing more than the last six of the Ten Commandments. King David has it right; the Rich Young Ruler has it partially, but tragically, wrong. For without the first four commandments, the last six will always lead to one or another form of tyranny, and not freedom. But Paul says, "you are called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature."(Galatians 5:13) If societal tyranny is the name of the game rather than biblical freedom, then we now live in a diminished world indeed. Sin is lawlessness and man without God is destined to die in lawlessness and deprivation and in cynicism, skepticism and spiritual poverty. This is true for Cain who was destined to become a "restless wanderer of the earth" because he disregarded the plea of God which eventually led to the murder of his own brother. Disregard the first four commandments, and as B follows A, you will end up engaging in one or all of the last six. For if God does not exist, then everything is permitted. It is only the fear of the sword of the tyrant that will maintain forced order. And “love your neighbor” will be transposed in nothing less than “fear your neighbor” for your squalid life depends on it. In this version of things freedom becomes a slogan of the tyrant who is free to enforce the law in any lawless way he desires. Your neighbor now may be the instrument of your undoing and so you are no better off than any survivor cast up on a desert island; you have been exiled from genuine community.

Paul tells us that one thing is needed for authentic freedom and that is Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians). If sin is only neighbor to neighbor wrongdoing, then the cross is drained of all meaning and Jesus becomes only one of many teachers who we may or may not listen to. But Jesus as teacher only is just a strategy for many to avoid the more difficult implications of the crucifixion. By focusing on the last six commandments, we are ceding much too much to the way the world looks at the matter. For if the devil has succeeded in deluding us into thinking that God does not stand behind everything in creation, then we are reduced to mere human enforced order and that leads exactly where?