Gratitude

TGIF. Thank you Lord for Friday’s. Thank you for the days of the week, the beginning and the end and the work and the time off and the prospect of camping today. Thank you for showers and heat and shelter and the prospect of going back to primitive living with modern tent materials, advanced 4x4 off road trucks and ATV’s, roughing it with high tech light weight sleeping bags and latest designed air mattress coleman Stoves and this nifty new 600 lumen light that charges in a usb port. And thank you for the generator that will help me rough it and be able to charge my computer when I’m out in the wilderness cut off from all amenities and unable to phone up pizza delivery with my satellite phone. Thank you Lord for the paradoxes and the ironies. Thank you for laughter and humour and good spirits and lightness of being. Thank you for my darling little dog and his constant capacity to bring warmth to my heart and a smile to my face. Thank you for women Lord. They have forever made this camping ritual a lark. I’ve been camping since I was the littlest boy and mom had to untangle my fishing line every cast. I’ve got the fondest memories of my brother and I and the dog out walking in the woods or sitting fishing in the boat. Mom’s always been there when we came back with meals and an interest in our adventures.  

I always remember the base camp in the book Congo by Creighton and am amazed at how futuristic it seems and now today anyone who goes to Cabellas with not really too much money can be outfitted the same as that secret corporate expedition into Africa was .Camping today for me is little different than a Star trek away mission. I’ve been blessed with the compact light weight gear collected over many years and improving all the time.  I’ll load up my truck and go out into the incredible Canadian wilderness.  There’s camping spots by lakes and streams with not even a table, others with an outhouse and table and still others with club house and showers. I’m thinking we’ll end up tonight by a stream with a picnic table and maybe a couple of other campers  about or go all the way to the hot tub area where there will be dozens of others campers but no boom boxes or gangs or juveniles but just a whole lot of people that came along way to listen to bird song in the morning and watch the mist rise on the lake.  Thank you God for the choices that are open to us when we leave this often apparently God forsaken city of Vancouver to go into God’s Country BC.  Really Vancouver is not so bad if you forget about the criminals, drugs and bike lanes.  As ant hills go it’s a pretty one.  I’ve maintained my love hate for it for decades so my actions speak louder than words. As a city goes I love it.  But really only because of it’s proximity to mountains and ocean and wilderness.  Thank you God for this city and the country.  Thank you for the water and the soil.

Thank you for this day. Thank you for the work I’ve yet to do before I’m free to have camping fun and therapy. It’s all I can do to crawl to the outside of the maddening crowd and regain an element of equanimity.  The wilderness has been so much my greatest healing.  Away from the loudness of people, the press of the crowds and out where there’s not the constant regulations and endless laws and policing and beurocrats at every turn.  There’s beggars everywhere and charlatans and the liars Lord, please protect me from the liars. I don’t mind the psychotics but the psychopaths and sociopaths and the liars and all the rules that protect them and allow them to do even greater harm.  Help me Lord to forgive and continue to follow in your will. 

Thank you Lord for the world of bear and lynx and cougar and snakes and sharks and slippery rocks and steep ravines and worn out roads and all those things that don’t matter because they’re just there and don’t lay siege to your soul demanding your time and interest for months and years because they have no soul and lost their heart and lack empathy and hide before mounds of papers and play with themselves endlessly as the wankers of the Kaffka Castle. 

Help restore my sense of humour Lord.  Forgive me for taking the politics of this world seriously. Let me rest in you. Thank you for the inner spaces Lord. Thank you for meditation and prayer. Help me more in thanksgiving and praise. Help me to be less negative and less critical of my enemies but help me to duck and evade and return fire in the timely way so that I can live to sing your praise another day. Help heal my scared and broken heart and restore my faith and still my doubts.

Thank you Lord for a mother day of dancing with you. May all my family and friends know love today. May this day be a day of peace and joy. Thank you Lord. TGIF!