ARTIST AT WORK

Gifford Pinchot Park - Boat Mooring Area 1

So I'm enjoying the newest Philip Yancey book called Vanishing Grace". He calls chapter three "Soul Thirst" and writes....

"Nature was one of the keys that brought me back to God, for I wanted to know the Artist responsible for both the beauty and the whimsy that I found there.

 
When I feel grief over a friend's illness or death, and my world lurches to a stop, instinctively I want to take a long hike as a reminder that the larger world moves on, fiercely beautiful, regardless of any crisis great or small."

Yancey is right. When life gets hard we really do need to take a hike to remind us who is still in control. This past summer I took lots of hikes around a lake, and here are some images of the Artist at work.

Gifford Pinchot Park - Off of Quaker Race Trail

Gifford Pinchot Park - Nearby Boat Launch 2

Gifford Pinchot Park - Trail off of Cabin Area

Gifford Pinchot Park - Lakeside Trail

Gifford Pinchot Park - Mason Dixon Trail nearby the dam

In chapter seven Yancey continues to write....

"The year he lived in Bolivia, Henri Nouwen saw a popular movie just before Advent. It overwhelmed him. The movie was so filled with images of greed and lust, manipulation and exploitation, feaful and painful sensations, that it filled all the empty spaces that could have been blessed by the spirit of Advent," he said. 

"Spaces need filling. I know of a man who learned he was going blind. As his sight began to fail, he booked a plane to Amsterdam and spent a week in the Van Gogh museum. He wanted these images to soak into his brain as his last visual memories." 

Guess I've got me some memory spaces to fill. I will head to the lake again later this week.