Summer Spiritual Journey: Time to Be Still

I'm a lake lover. I love to canoe and watch the wildlife along the shore. Before we had children, my hubby and I would go into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota, camping, portaging and canoeing. I still love lake time, but the days of sleeping in a tent on a 1/2 inch pad, and portaging with a Duluth pack on my back, are over.  Now, when I get the chance, a cabin on a lake is the way to go.  

Sometimes we can finagle the whole family to join us for lake time... then we do some hiking, canoeing, exploring. Here are some bits of natural beauty that we found one day. It was fun to gather and arrange, and then put it all back into the woods. Later we had campfire, walked out on the dock and looked at the Milky Way. It is a memory I cherish.

Collection from a hike in the Adirondacks, 2018

The time spent quietly in nature fills my heart and soul. There is no pressure to be on a schedule, to look a certain way, or to perform a task. No traffic snarls. There is just calm and beauty. For me, lake time is time to "Be still and know that I am God."   - Psalm 46:10

The water was cool in September...

For me, a good lake vacation includes loons. I love their magnificent ruby eyes, their elegant tuxedoed bodies, their dignified profile. But most of all I love their eerie calls. I have heard them in the northern lakes in the fall, calling back and forth, wildly raucous deep into the night. I'm convinced they know how to party. And it is sometimes said, in the north woods, that the loon's call signifies that all is well in the woods. 

When I'm on a lake, listening to loons, I do feel that all is well. 

Check out this wonderful website about loons:  www.loon.org

And don't miss the various calls of the loons   https://loon.org/the-call-of-the-loon/

Who can put this feeling to words better than Mary Oliver?  Here is the beginning and end of her Morning Poem... you can find the rest here.

Morning Poem  by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

...

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

***

I wish you the peace of summer, the joy of burbling water, and the sweetness of laughter.

Thanks to Carol Varsalona for hosting today's Spiritual Journey group and for creating and sharing the beautiful image above.  Join her at her blog for some beautiful summer gratitude, and follow the links to other bloggers in the group.