Inclines

Yesterday was the first full day and first walk of what my wife calls our "read-cation." While my brother and his family have gone to the beach, my wife and I are house sitting and taking care of their pets. So most our day is spent reading without the distractions of regular life. 

I was told that if I walked down the road in front of their house and took right at each intersection of country roads, I could make a circuit of 2.7 miles. Because the dog that insisted on traveling with me got stuck at one point, afraid of a tiny yip dog reminding passersby of where he lived, I'm fairly sure I got in a full three miles. The soreness in my hips and lower back tell me I may need new shoes after a week of perambulating some of the inclines along this route.

the recent storm
blew down trumpet shaped flowers

amidst a pile of discarded beer cans 

both were too soon fallen

to have lost their color

but what I want to know

is what creature

crawls among them.

The night before, my brother and I talked about sin and pollution. Polution isn't sin, but really a picture of the effects of sin. Not sin as action, but as being. James wrote, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” The word "polluted" could easily stand in for "unstained" (and is in at least one translation I know of). We are also told by John, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world."

The world is God's creation and I am to love it. But I must not take in its spirit, for it crowds out what is holy. The word holy means "set apart."  One reason I walk, I suppose, is because I must get to that place, unreachable by car, where I love God by loving the world without polluting or being polluted by it.