Yosemite Reflections 

Dedicated to John Page-Tear

 

John 14:26

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

 

So, when I wrote last, I left you at the top of Nevada Falls in Yosemite National Park. Well, the time came to leave that gorgeous place and come back down to the valley. Coming down from elevation has its own particular joys. You know what I mean – the descent uses different muscles than the ascent. More shredding and pain for later. We came down in half the time it took us to get to the top. 

 

My attitude is always different on the descent even though it shows you what muscles you haven’t taken care of lately. This descent was no different, my friends, except it showed me a sign indicating that I have not been aware of the Holy Spirit within me of late. I walked right past it on the ascent. 

 

You, hopefully, listened to what the Holy Spirit offers to our lives in the song above as well as the God lovingly prepared for our weaknesses and sent a very part of himself to live within us and guide us. It is said in the scriptures that this is so. Do we always remember that when we are lonely and alone? God, himself, resides in each of us always. 

 

Think how much stronger we would be if we exercised our access to the Holy Spirit through attention, awareness, prayer and song. Here I was exercising my physical body but am I really committing to exercising the spiritual body within me? 

 

Well, God let’s you know and as we were flying down that mountain, imagine my surprise to cruise around a switchback only to be presented with what I can only call a sign of the Holy Spirit in that place. It stopped me in my tracks as the kids raced on down the path. I said to myself, can this truly be? Is there really the image of a dove on the end of this sawed off log sticking out over the trail. Was I dehydrated? I took a long draw of water from my Camelbak and looked again just to be sure. 

 

It was still there, plain as day to me. And I could feel my heart filling with joy as I stood and stared, checked out all the angles and concluded that if I prayed all the way up the mountain, It was only right to pray on the way down as well! This was a prayer of praise right in the midst of God’s creation to God for all the ways he works with and for us to show us the way. 

 

He downright stopped me on that day – and sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do to me to get me to actually focus. You in that group with me? Well, I was stopped all right. I could still here chatter from the kids on the trail below but it was background noise. I knew they were still there but what I really knew in my heart was that God was present and the Holy Spirit was too right in front of my eyes. Never is there a moment in all we do, good or bad, that we are not covered by God’s living presence. 

 

Search out the Holy Spirit within you, practice connecting with it and your soul will be flooded and you will find the guidance God intended you to never be without as you do your days. It’s delicious in a way that feeds, safe with an edge of risk, inspiring with an intent toward action feeling that comes from within. 

 

Never underestimate the Holy Spirit! I realized this again in that moment. It is a comforter but it is also so very powerful that it may call us to action in a way that frightens us. I encourage myself and you to rise to meet it. 

 

We are meant to rise as the poet Maya Angelou gave strong voice to in her famous poem, Still I Rise. I note she wrote from a perspective of knowing the persecution of slavery in her family  (the grandmother who raised her began life as a slave) and as a civil rights activist. 

 

The beauty of poetry, even if you understand the author’s real intent, which I often don’t as poetry is one of my challenges in literature, you can overlap your own interpretation upon the author’s. Rereading a poem throughout the decades of your life, you may have many different interpretations to interweave and I think that is one of the magnificent things about the genre when I am brave enough to delve into its rich holdings. 

 

So, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove in flight as it hung suspended in air on the end of that log on the Nevada Falls trail surged many thoughts into my brain for pondering. Furthermore, I walked on down the trail knowing anew I will rise with the Holy Spirit in faith and pray for boldness to take it out with me everyday into our world. As we should. Take heart, let the Spirit fill you and rise. 

 

~Shauna Weil

A devotion provided by the Devotion Ministry of Goodrich UMC