I Was On a Walk

 I was on a hike in an area where the fresh river meets the salt tide in the junction. As I followed the trail I could hear sandpipers, frogs, and the wind as it moved through the spruce trees and rustled the pine needles. Glancing to my left a Great Blue Heron stood majestically in the Pugwash estuary at low tide. 

The Blue Herron was over a meter tall, had long slender legs, a white head, and a black stripe above the eyes. I had seen one in flight before and admired his massive six-foot wingspan. The impressive bird was standing at low tide in the warm shallow water under a blue mostly cloudless sky. He was in a mysterious unexplained place somewhere like I was as the sun shimmered across the tidal pools. Being here inspired my sense of wonder. I suspected hidden out of sight in sublime genius was a creativity responsible for the mysteries world. I was no fool, at least in this way. 

As I contemplated these wonders, I noticed an Osprey with a dark brown back and wings. He had a bright white chest and belly. I stopped walking and admired him in flight for a minute until he landed in a nest in a tall Red Pine beside the water.  

Over one-hundred and sixty-eight species of birdlife were found in the Pugwash Junction estuary revealing impressive birds like Bald Eagles, Hawks, Kingfishers and Cormorants. The mix of fresh and saltwater created rich feeding grounds for fish and invertebrates supporting the bird population. The estuary provided nesting sites for marsh birds and tall trees for herons and eagles. I was walking on a popular trail that gave easy access to views of the numerous wildlife.

The estuary was surrounded by diverse Acadian forest with dominant conifers like Red Spruce, White Spruce, Eastern Hemlock, and Red Pine. These trees stood alongside hardwoods like the Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch, and Aspen. Noticeable in the wetlands there were also Black Ash and Northern White Cedar.

I had come here today with a notebook, a pen, a desire to write down my thoughts, and a plan of talking to my friend God who frequently revealed clear thoughts to me. I didn't need to be here, or somewhere else special like on the Northumberland Straight, looking over the sunlit ocean, or on a quiet secluded gravel road I visit, where an old green bridge spans across a peaceful river valley, nor did I need to be on one of Nova Scotia's peaceful lakes in the early morning before dawn, to connect with God and have a conversation with him. 

These are the locations I visited originally when both Jesus and God the Father first began to talk to me. This is where our friendship began but since then God has talked to me almost every day. He usually talks to me when I'm lying in bed beside a manger scene of Jesus in my bedroom or while sitting in my living room. The only exception is days when I'm having a drink of whiskey. On these days I've learned to stay away from the manger scene in my bedroom. I've tried to sleep there dozens of times after drinking but awoke each time to a frightening presence that I realized with considerable fear was observing me and this was quite terrifying. 

I trust God greatly, he is a friend not only to me but to anyone who seeks his friendship and God wants our friendship. I know he's good and I know he's fair. The evangelists and theologians, in my opinion, don't have a fair or inclusive enough understanding of God to recognize the love he has for human beings. They thump their old Bible's, written in a cruel age and culture, without really knowing God's heart completely to realize the unending love he has in store for imperfect people. What I learned talking to God is there are no narrow roads leading to salvation, like spoken of in the Bible, where the human being everywhere must find the difficult and often impossible right path to be deserving of God's plan of love. Such hard to follow roads don't actually exist at all. There is instead a universal road, like a hundred lane freeway, leading imperfect people everywhere to God. Jesus death on the cross revealed God's love for all of the world and how God will be fair with humanity. There are likewise no broad roads to destruction that most people in existence are destined to follow. There is also no cruel hell at least the terrifying kind invented in the early days of the Church. Only truly evil people in this world deserve fairly to be separated from God and his goodness.

Walking along the trail in thought now, discussing these ideas aloud, I approach a wooden foot bridge. Stepping onto the bridge I notice wildflowers in bloom nearby before spotting a bench next to the water that overlooks the estuary. 

I remember how my mother shared her knowledge with me of  Nova Scotia wildflowers. My gaze then falls on the Trout Lily, the Spring Beauty, and the Bloodroot. The wildflowers appear in sync with the return of migratory birds and the emergence of pollinators like the bumble bees. 

Nearing the bench, I step off the trail, walk down beside the water, and sit down so my back is resting against the wooden bench. In the quiet I then retrieve my notebook and sit in the silence thinking. After a few minutes I begin to write down different thoughts I have that matter to me.

"I miss my real home; I talk like I know it so well or like I've seen the place where God assures me I'm going. I want to be there now is the truth. My time spent talking to Jesus and often God the Father each day is so important to me. I've lost the ability to be happy with people. With my mental illness I suspect great unfairness from every face, in every dealing. There is no ally for me, no honest companion, not even an occasional inquiry into my wellbeing. I stand alone amid those I see as, right or wrong, adult children."

"When I call them adult children they could point at their elite; they could look to a minister of the church with his ideological convictions, his supernatural myths, his belief that God only favors those in the end who think the right beliefs like he does; they are pointing in my opinion to an adult child, one without a heart fair enough, wise enough, knowledgeable enough about God to see universal dignity in people exposed to different ideas, struggling with different thoughts, in different experiences, uncertain about life, struggling in chaos, wondering in pain, sorrow, heartache, wanting to be loved, wanting to have hope, to see good, but no everywhere I look I see adult children."

"When he came into this world we conspired, all of us, to control him, to punish him for his insight. He was here; he was in this world and he's here now. God is not dead but God is around us and not far away. God talks to me and I know him as a friend. I know he has the same love for everyone. Yet I find it so hard to navigate people, to hear them whisper, to learn of their hate. I find the struggle difficult, I find it hard to communicate in their petty ways, with their changing tempers, their angry remarks."

"No one here will notice when any of us are gone, at least very soon after we're gone, but I know we're going somewhere good outside the reach of what our imaginations can envision. There exists creative wonder beyond earth, a genius, though these wonders are unfathomable to us now they are very much at play in the mystery of our present habitat here in the midst of this uncertainty."

"If I fall down dead on the ground will anyone here recognize a life that matters to the universe, to God, to someone wiser with a superior way of thinking who sees and discerns correctly the ways of mankind, perhaps by looking at my heart, struggles, challenges, the love guiding my person; will they see relevance in me though I walked an unsuccessful life in monetary terms; is my life one of only ruin, of failure; is my life a meaningless waste on the mysteries terrain of earth."

"The God I talk to loves everyone, everywhere, including all of India, all people, regardless what they understand about reality, regardless what they think is true about him, regardless if in this world of confusing claims on what truth is people believe correctly what life's purpose and meaning is, regardless if they think one groups "saving ideology" or not, regardless if they doubt God's existence; I know from talking to God he loves people; What God despises is war, cruelty, indifference to the lives of other people; he despises poverty, when we fail to stop hunger, or stop preventable disease."

"I have seen the unwise and I have followed this life's road taking the same footsteps. The error of man is everywhere but there exists a wisdom we don't see, a wisdom more fair then what our historical literature teaches, and even greater then some of the words we think can be attributed to God speaking; our ancestors tried to create ways to escape this world's unfairness and cruelty but the cruelty they knew in their day  has been shared with us and is infringing on our moment in this world; we seek to be good, to live fairly, to be kind, to love others, to hope in what's right. 

I look up from the paper I'm writing on now into the heights to the cumulous clouds. I'm sitting next to the Pugwash estuary, in the back country, below the stratosphere, on this bright blue spring day.