Hosannas in the high country are the best hosannas.
My most recent Sunday sylvan worship service is a good example. Although I should pause here to note that Sunday services on steep slopes and rocky terrain in the elevated portions of the Appalachian Mountains can take place anytime, say on a Thursday afternoon or a Monday morning. Store-bought religions tend to focus on one day of the week for group gatherings.
Pausing again, I want to note that I am for every person doing the spiritual thing the way each of them sees fit, as long as it makes them better and helps them to treat their fellow humans with love and dignity. I’m for that as long as they don’t knock on my door on a Saturday afternoon while I am watching a baseball game on television to convince me that their way is the only way.
OK, sorry, another pause. Did you know that the bible starts out talking about baseball? Yep, “In the big inning …”
One final pause … I am the only human at my group gatherings in the woods, but there are many other congregants. More on that later.
So, I’m back to telling you about the recent veneration service in my camouflaged vestibule. Some would call it a hunting tent and others would say I was hunting. They would all be correct, but in my mind hunting and the taking of a game bird or animal, which will be respected and consumed, registers pretty darn high on the worship meter.
I was at services early that day, but dawn was approaching with its sluggish speed. I have a trail camera near the blind/tent/vestibule and I was pleased to see that a member of our campus security team, a black bear of more than 200 pounds, had strolled by making sure nobody or no thing messed with the edifice or its contents, especially the acorns that had already begun to fall. We also employ coyotes on the cathedral’s security force.
Then I could hear the crow choir warming up. At first it was just the lead voice with a few, quick vocalizations, but soon the other members joined. The music was accompanied by the pitter and the patter of an instrumental, light rain upon the roof of my one-person tent. There is only one seat in the pew, actually in the entire church, and my sit parts were upon it.
Soon, three gray squirrels scampered into the service, one here, one there and one someplace. They seemed fidgety. Perhaps they had bad consciences from doing something squirrels shouldn’t do. But that was their business and not mine.
One of the squirrels joined the crow choir, which helped. I had been thinking that the feathered rendition of “Morning Has Broken” had a bit too much baritone. The squirrel’s enthusiasm, which included numerous twitches of its tail, must have musically aroused several LBB’s which decided to sing along.
I am not a very good singer so I just hummed, although the humming was not loud. I didn’t want to startle any 10-point bucks that may want to amble in and join the spiritual festivities.
By the way, the mountainside church I attend also has a sanctuary. It’s that rough, heavily wooded, even steeper countryside off to my left where I never enter so as not to disturb any inhabitants, such as 10-point bucks, that have decided to reside and meditate there before walking out into the more open woods. Have I mentioned 10-point bucks before?
I have been learning a lot from my worship time, growing spiritually, although that is a never-ending learning curve. I have come to agree with the other woodland parishioners that heaven is a here-and-now thing so we should take advantage of it.
What? Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. LBBs are little brown birds. They are at the services every day of the week, lucky dogs.