Tonight my wife was getting rid of some camping equipment we no longer use and I was reminded that before I became disabled we used to go backpack camping. I thought of those times fondly but was then reminded by my wife that we were always searching for something. I wanted a feeling of completion, peace and love which I approached when I was in something like wilderness. I never quite found that, even when my wife and I spent our honeymoon backpacking in Alaska. I am now disabled and quite a bit older. One of the gifts of my disability is that I can’t do much. I am forced to sit and meditate and in so doing have found what I was looking for I also now realize it was all around me all that time. All I had to do was sit quietly, be of service and give that gift to others. “Few things — no things that I know of — are so completely and effectively restorative as the discovery that this World of the environing Spirit is verily closer to us than breathing and is charged with the resources of Life for which we pant.”(Rufus Jones)
