On Mini-Vacations and Grand-Scale Salvation

When I laid down to go to sleep at night,  I could feel the lake rocking me to sleep. Torch Lake, that is, the "third most beautiful lake in the world"–or so we all kept quoting a National Geographic statistic (I haven't Googled it, but I believe it. Caribbean blue green, sandy bottom. Divine). Yes, Whit and I went on our first vacation in several years. We joined his two sisters and their families and his parents in  a huge house in Northern Michigan on a sliver of land between Lake Michigan and Torch Lake.

Torch Lake Sunrise my first morning of vacation!

I'm not as experienced with traditional vacations but I take mini-vacations every day: in the shower, early in the morning (assuming I get up early in the morning . . . ), on a long walk. These are all situations where I can let my mind wander, absorb, reflect. That first day at Torch Lake (got up to see the day dawn, as the picture above proves!), I inserted myself into that glorious landscape and disappeared. I didn't fade to nothing or cease to exist; instead it felt like I expanded to become one with nature. All burdens to do with self dissipated and what was left of me was sky, lake, trees. Talk about room to think. That's all I want from vacation . . . room to think and be.

Here's me "thinking" and "being" ie, painting the sunrise

I do my best thinking in the shower, my best writing on an airplane and my best being in nature. (In the shower, I can't tweet, take calls or check Facebook; on an plane ride from STL to Denver is where I wrote the first–which turned out to be the second–Petalwink book.) Though our time at the lake was only four days (it could have been seven if we didn't spend 3 days driving . . . but Whit and I had some awesome conversations on our road trip, so it was good), the glow of that time is reaching out every direction and touching my days before and after golden; I learned a lot that I will take with me (and blog about as it distills).

In the Bible, one of the definitions of "salvation" is to bring into a wide open space. So to me, my vacations are wide open mental spaces where thoughts are free to come and go, expand and progress in a spontaneous carefree rhythm, to serve and reflect the greater good. This is not frivolous, it is essential. Michelangelo said 75% of his work was thinking. Just imagine how glorious his thoughts if David was only 25% of his work! How happy am I that "behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation [vacation]." As Mary Baker Eddy so graphically articulates it, ". . . for you make radiant room midst the glories of one endless day."

Radiant room for me and my guy