This week we are pleased to welcome Rev Donna Knutson as our guest blogger on the theme of Creating Encounter…..

I’ve just returned from being on the road for over a week. From the Nebraska plains to the hills of North Carolina, a journey I relished as it reminded me of my two years driving or flying to Hendersonville, North Carolina to become a Spiritual Director.  Blackberries hanging from trees and showers raining down from the skies, every afternoon around five. Classes held in tiny mountain cabins and the smell of pine trees coming off the earth.

But, this road trip was about God in a new way this time.  I set out with not much direction, needing rest as my mind was busy and too occupied with family and the world announcements on the news.

Was I looking for something or merely wanting direction or even clarification as to where to step next?

As a contemplative my practice of silence is disciplined and yet…there is always something new to be discovered by silence in an active world. Chaos is no longer a word that brings frustration or even doubt as to where or how God participates, creates, manifests and provides but is a world of comfort and holy encounter.

Chaos is also a word that I found soothing and somewhat adoring as I drove for six days through states and landscapes of similar seasons, but varying degrees of color and new life.  And what is there possibly to see and to encounter of God while driving through mountain passages, by forested hills and down into the valley or way up into the clouds?

Truck drivers with purple cabs and long, long rigs hauling cattle and logs.

Speed limits and rules, barely enforced and yet, it only takes a simple kindness to let a vehicle of such height and magnificence glide by you, and you will understand that we are here to work together while arriving probably at the same time. Gentle release in a world of struggle and conflict.  In a world of “me first” and surrender last.

Truckers hauling weight that seemed to fill every ounce of the road and I so small next to its mass.

Hauling equipment, pieces and particles of people’s homes and people’s lives we will never know of.

Men behind the wheel and tons of steel with huge wheels that come close to my little car as we round the curve, and I pray for ease and passage, as I pray for their safety home.  It seemed so simple to be hours on the road and praying prayers of gratitude, as I did not know where I was going and when I would return.

How could time alone with God while driving my Kia Sportage, Queen, ever amount to such a trusting of the invisible work of my interior being, and yet when I arrived back home in Omaha, Ne. I was in a different place.  Having let go of my expectations, my need to know why I took a trip off into the world and was changed by the road, by the prayers seeping from my heart space; by the willingness to slow down and make room for a living breathing person on the road next to me.  Our directions different but surely, God sitting next to each one of us and our lives changed by the moments we passed one another, whether conscious or not.

Changed by some gentle presence of consciousness that knew how to speak and when to be quiet.  When to drive faster and when to let another go by.

How encountering God on the road for a week, renewed my spirit and relaxed my wonderings.

How watching the movement of cars, trucks, the shift of the grade of the road and the tunnels I drove through, had some power of incarnation that only the heart of another contemplative, might understand.

God is mystery, magnificence and mighty; and with that in mind, we can begin to live again in some unraveled revelation of God within and God around us.

Beauty and Blessings,

 

Donna

 

Text ©Donna Knutson 2018    Photo from Pixabay

Donna’s book of poetry and reflections “Finding God on Mayberry Street” is available on Amazon