Camping Retreat

Just take it in:

Kicking my feet up on the patio table support bars and leaning back in the cushioned chair I hear and smell everything. You don't need to see to love being here. In the distance Children are playing. One is banging a stick on a bucket and another is dragging a big wheel through the stones. A little girl keeps squealing. I think she's bein chased. Surrounding the kids I hear birds. Birds talking. Birds singing. Birds releasing the prettiest of melodies to their closest of kin. There is a truck slowly creeping up the dirt and rocky path. Up closer the rustle of tin foil and the country music radio play at our site. Chatter amongst fellow companions talk of work, food, and what's on the agendas. Calm voices and aggressive ruminate the campsite. Sounds are all becoming one. 

I smell the bark of an array of wooded towers surrounding us. The barbecue emanates sweet hickory and bourbon as it filters from just a few meters away. I know it reaches the camp sites around us. Roasted french onions and buttered potatoes and sweet corn round out the scents of what a camping fantasy should be. 

I absorb all the sounds and smells as I bask totally in this moment. Memories and plans mesh together as the last 24 hours feels like forever and the next 24 seem like an eternity away. I am happy. I am free. I have not a single worry. Reality is a dream and this dream is a reality. No one asks me about my day job, but my passions for photography, traveling, and art. 

The richness of humanity just flows as I see this importance for relationship so strongly in the midst of feeling so in tune with all else. It makes sense. In all that you do, do all to the glory of God. Eat to the glory of God. Smell to the glory of God. Listen and hear to the glory of Gody. Converse and share love, life, and passions to the glory of God. Whether you're singing hymns or drinking a beer, you can still live your life to the glory of God via relationship. But it's investing what you already know and have to offer in all those in the here and now that surround you every moment of every day. 

Jim Elliot once said, "Wherever you are, be all there." 

There's a few ways you can take this. Physically, mentally, spiritually, but I see it as aspirationaly. It's all 3 in one. You can dream of other places,but be so in tune with who you are, what you believe, and where you want to be. It makes living where you're at with who you're surrounded by not only easier, but a tool to be an example and inspiring at the same time. 

.:: A Far Off Britt ::.