canoeist

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I have so many memories from canoeing on the San Marcos River that I have concentrate to separate them into different trips. They sort of get clumped together in a big refreshing, green, sunny memory. I remember catching bass on a fly for the first time, and I remember trying to paddle in the dark of night with a headlamp on (I say "trying" because there were a ton of insects attracted to that light...) I remember breaking a paddle, determined to dislodge some debris so we could drift through. I was able to splint the paddle with sticks and rope, and it worked. My very favorite trips, though, always involved taking people on the San Marcos for the first time. I've always had a love of nature and I value spending time in nature as sacred. That, coupled with learning river processes in geology and geography classes, and I can get pretty geeked out to introduce someone to experience of paddling the San Marcos. I enjoy paying attention to a person's curiosity and encouraging discovery. If someone doesn't really care to learn about a point bar and cut bank, then no need to mention it; not on that trip. 

A preaching professor once asked me to come up with a metaphor for my preaching style. I thought about it, and came up with canoeing. Preaching, to me, is like sitting in the back of a canoe, guiding someone along, teaching her or him to paddle, to pay attention to the flow of the water, and most of all to notice the beauty of nature all around: the leaning cypress trees, the diving cormorants. My professor didn't really get it. She's never paddled the San Marcos River. I actually thought at the time that I missed the point of the exercise, or that I just picked the wrong metaphor. Maybe I even thought I was preaching wrong.

Last Sunday that metaphor came back to me as we glided from text to text and I invited the congregation to pay attention to the flow of the literature and notice the beauty of life revealed in Jesus' teaching. The canoe metaphor does work for me because the mystery of God, the gift of life, and the beauty of our world are not my creation and certainly not in my control. God's creation and relationship with all of  creation just is. As a priest and preacher I get geeked out about the journey with people as we discover that mystery, that life, and that beauty.

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