Happy are the people whose strength is in you! whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way. Psalm 84:4
What does it mean to be happy?
I can think of two sorts of happiness right off the bat. One comes from the confidence that no matter if I stumble or head down the wrong ravine, I will be able to eventually end up well, I know where the sun rises and sets, and really this enough. This is a deep satisfaction that the ground underneath my feet is solid. That even if the moment by moment sometimes dashes straight through the prickly underbrush I am confident I can find my way home.
And the other happy are the springs of water along the way, if I bother to notice. Promised yet sometimes difficult to discern, unless one is alert and intentional. It really helps to have a camera around my neck, to look at the world through a lens that cuts out all of the clutter and frames life clearly.
So a couple of weeks ago Giovanni had fall break and not much to do. So mom dropped him off at the Sabino Canyon parking lot and pointed him east, to Seven Falls, which should be plenty a fairly safe and relatively entertaining way to pass time for an almost seventeen-year-old. He had a bottle of water, a sandwich or two, and that’s about it, but he had looked at the map and sort knew what’s what, and all was good.
But the problem is that just as he was about to turn down the path marked on the map, two girls told him, “No, no, it’s the next one,” so off he went. Way off. Like ten hours hiking by himself in the Sonoran desert in late summer. Yes, the first week of October is still summer in Tucson, because it’s still 100 degrees. In the shade.
And when he got back he had a lot of stories. A question about the water quality that one finds in a small puddle after one’s own water ran out three hours ago. The one guy he did meet who was very effusive about the beauties of the Santa Catalinas. And waved his arms around a lot. And pretty much the rest of the time it was just Giovanni and, well, because he has done El Camino de Santiago with his father before, he was aware of God. A spiritual pilgrimage. He got it. But to me, the most important thing Giovanni had with him was his camera. So he saw things differently that someone worrying about the sun and the heat and the aloneness and where the heck was he and why. He was focused on the small beauties. And the springs and pools.
As they go through the Valley of Bitterness
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
And at the end of the day, when I, who was imagining Giovanni pleasantly paddling about in seven cascading falls with sweet young things with tiny bikinis and all of my motherly advise had been about not smoking dope and nothing about people dying all the time in the Sonoran Desert without water, finally received the call to go pick him up at last, just as dusk was settling, I found a very cheerful young man, absolutely pleased about the unexpected turns of his path. Happy. Both kinds of happy.
So for the rest of my life, I have pictures. Pictures framed in truth. With light. And happy are they whose strength are in You.
What does it mean to be happy?
I can think of two sorts of happiness right off the bat. One comes from the confidence that no matter if I stumble or head down the wrong ravine, I will be able to eventually end up well, I know where the sun rises and sets, and really this enough. This is a deep satisfaction that the ground underneath my feet is solid. That even if the moment by moment sometimes dashes straight through the prickly underbrush I am confident I can find my way home.
And the other happy are the springs of water along the way, if I bother to notice. Promised yet sometimes difficult to discern, unless one is alert and intentional. It really helps to have a camera around my neck, to look at the world through a lens that cuts out all of the clutter and frames life clearly.
So a couple of weeks ago Giovanni had fall break and not much to do. So mom dropped him off at the Sabino Canyon parking lot and pointed him east, to Seven Falls, which should be plenty a fairly safe and relatively entertaining way to pass time for an almost seventeen-year-old. He had a bottle of water, a sandwich or two, and that’s about it, but he had looked at the map and sort knew what’s what, and all was good.
But the problem is that just as he was about to turn down the path marked on the map, two girls told him, “No, no, it’s the next one,” so off he went. Way off. Like ten hours hiking by himself in the Sonoran desert in late summer. Yes, the first week of October is still summer in Tucson, because it’s still 100 degrees. In the shade.
And when he got back he had a lot of stories. A question about the water quality that one finds in a small puddle after one’s own water ran out three hours ago. The one guy he did meet who was very effusive about the beauties of the Santa Catalinas. And waved his arms around a lot. And pretty much the rest of the time it was just Giovanni and, well, because he has done El Camino de Santiago with his father before, he was aware of God. A spiritual pilgrimage. He got it. But to me, the most important thing Giovanni had with him was his camera. So he saw things differently that someone worrying about the sun and the heat and the aloneness and where the heck was he and why. He was focused on the small beauties. And the springs and pools.
As they go through the Valley of Bitterness
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
And at the end of the day, when I, who was imagining Giovanni pleasantly paddling about in seven cascading falls with sweet young things with tiny bikinis and all of my motherly advise had been about not smoking dope and nothing about people dying all the time in the Sonoran Desert without water, finally received the call to go pick him up at last, just as dusk was settling, I found a very cheerful young man, absolutely pleased about the unexpected turns of his path. Happy. Both kinds of happy.
So for the rest of my life, I have pictures. Pictures framed in truth. With light. And happy are they whose strength are in You.
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