A Journey

Mountain Stream
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

A piece I wrote for our church's Lenten season focus on Journeys...

I moved into my church’s Youth Group with great anticipation. We had a busy, vibrant youth group with a great crowd of young adults/college-aged kids above us.

I couldn’t wait to get started in Sunday School and all the other neat stuff that youth did – especially the famed Youth Retreats to Christian camps like Ridgecrest and Cedar Ridge, as well as regular local retreats.

I even looked forward to being part of the Sunday School classes for the youth group. My first SS teacher, though, was not one of the hip college kids we all admired so much. It was Dalton Mullins – whose father’s name was Moon Mullins.

Dalton was a quiet 30-something hick sort of guy. Whereas the 20-somethings all wore their hair long, Dalton had more of an army crew cut. He wore a sheaved knife on his hip. He was a hunter and fisherman. He was a loner and sort of a misfit.

Much more square than the young adults we looked up to.

And when he taught SS, it was very different than my grade school teachers. His class was loose and unstructured and we often talked about real-life stuff instead of Bible stuff. On top of that, Dalton was divorced and, in the Southern Baptist church I grew up in, that was a BIG red flag. Looking back, I am rather surprised they even let him teach SS.

Still, Dalton was a likable kind of guy. So, when he organized a camping trip to Red River Gorge, I signed up. I couldn’t wait for the Bible studies, prayer times and devotionals, as well as the great fun. I was a Bible nerd, that way.

I had been camping in my early years, but not like this. This was primitive camping.

Dalton had us bring backpacks and sleeping bags, but no tents. We carried our food in and our garbage out. We hiked up and down some serious hills and cliffs at the Gorge, stopped for lunch, hiked some more and then stopped for the evening and found a good place to lay our sleeping bags. We hiked up and down these mountains for about ten miles that first day. We had very little food and we ate it ALL. Not a bit of scraps were left over.

At the end of the first day’s travels, we were beat and starving. And sleeping out on rocks and leaves with only our sleeping bags to protect us.

And it started raining.

Fortunately, Dalton was smart enough to have us make camp that first night beneath a rock overhang to protect us from the rain. Then we woke up the next day, still tired, ate a tiny breakfast and began again.

That day, we found a grapevine that we swung on for a while (and it was on a steep hill, so when we got out to the end of the swing, we were like 100’ off the ground!); we saw green valleys and mountains spread out as far as the eye could see – uninterrupted by roads or telephone poles or any signs of humanity; we saw white-tailed deer through the trees in the morning, red-tailed hawks soaring overhead, raccoon tracks in the mud next to pure streams.

We walked beneath incredible rock arches and stopped to rest in the cool of their ancient shadows. We helped one another get up the hills, waited when we needed to for people to catch up, and stopped and greedily ate our lunch, then dinner.

We had a great time.

Still, I wondered where the spiritual content was for this Church Youth Outing. When would we do Bible Study? Have devotionals? Prayer time?

Was Dalton, son of Moon Mullins, the right guy to lead us on this trip?

That second night, in the middle of the night, Dalton woke me and a couple of others up.

“Wanna see something?”

So we got up to see what he wanted. He told us to leave our flashlights behind, that there was enough moonlight on this night to see.

And there was. Even through all the trees, we could see the bright light of a white moon, shining larger than seemed possible, even though we couldn’t see it through the trees very well.

We walked carefully down the path following Dalton. We could hear night creatures moving about in the woods. “Are there any bears out here?” we’d ask.

“Shhh.” Dalton told us. After a short hike, he stopped and we could see him looking around on either side of the path. We looked around, too. All around, there were tiny eyes glowing faintly green in the dark, staring at us. There must have been dozens of them – hundreds!

Dalton smiled and said, “Don’t worry. It’s foxfire – a plant that glows in the dark.”

He turned and walked a bit further, telling us to be very careful. And then suddenly, the forest fell away and we were on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the shadowy mist-shrouded valley. Stars were overhead, more stars than I’d ever seen in my life.

And lighting it all up was this alien moon – large, white, impossibly close. Beautiful.

We never did have any Bible studies or devotionals.

But then, we didn’t really need to.

So, this morning, I remember the misfit and social outcast Dalton, Son of Moon, who showed me the moon and the stars and a glorious portion of this creation; who took me on a journey beyond my expectations and taught me that there are more ways than one to learn about Mystery and Grace.