Leaving One’s Soul

Author’s note:  This one is from the archives, but I’ve not been able to get it out of my head lately.  It’s basically a short, romantic expose into my psyche!   A few years ago my friend wanted to know what was so great about these experiences I had in the middle of a lake, in the middle of the night, in the middle of God’s presence.  So I took him out to experience it.  We drifted in a canoe in the pitch black lake with a full orchestra of heavenly lights above us.  We lay back in the canoe and listened to the waves lapping up on the side of the canoe.  Above us a meteor shower streaked the sky in a dance of glory.  I always think of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” when I see that… a universe not stagnant and still, but alive and pulsing.  It was breathtaking…

It was God telling us that despite all the stress, and horrors and sadness and loneliness that this life can bring, we can have hope.  We can have the hope that there is one that still holds it all in His hands.  

Is there any wonder I always leave my soul in such places?  Remember, if you never allow yourself to get lost, you will never know what it’s like to be found!  Enjoy

Let me ask you a personal question.  Have you ever left your soul someplace?  If so, I would like to know where.

No… not LOST your soul. LEFT your soul.

How do I explain this comment?  Let me share with you where my soul was left…

It was the stillest summer night roughly a million years ago.  I sat alone in a canoe in the middle of Algonquin, several days journey away from the things of man.  The lapping of the lake on the girth of the canoe foreshadowed the distant and eerie cries of the loon (a sound that I will always associate with the emptiness and joy of a spirit that has briefly glimpsed something eternal).  As I sat in the belly of the boat, I remember, I was enchanted by the field of glory that ordained the sky with a million pin-pricked holes in the cosmos.

And I thought…

I thought of futures and pasts.  How often have I lost those thoughts since that time.  When God is forsaken in the now, the past fades, and there is no future.  But when one has the love of God in their present, the patterns of the past are seen and the future is a time of hope.

As I sat there that night, looking skyward, God was in His holy temple looking across the still void to a small soul on the bank of a forgotten lake.  His gaze was kind and His thoughts were true.  It was the time of love.

I’ve moved on from that moment, but often wonder if one came across a seemingly abandoned lake deep in Algonquin on a dark summer night if they would not see the echo of a canoe, and a boy and a soul.

If I ever disappear from all traces of the things of man, and you feel the urge to come looking for me, you just might want to begin there…