Reflection Masthead
Issue 91 - August  2013 -  Crater Lake

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A Taste of Crater Lake
  We were in Oregon for Bill's family reunion, and set aside one day to visit Crater Lake National Park. Not enough time!
  But if you have three minutes, this video will give you a sample of the grand beauty of this corner of God's creation.
Take a 3 minute Crater Lake Park vacation
Take a 3 minute Crater Lake Park vacation
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Past Issues

1-Inaugural

2-Creating Sacred Space

3-Leaving Footprints

4-Ordinary

5-Ordered Life

69-Vanier,Nouwen,LArche 

74-Pilgrims Surprise

75-Never Alone

76-Vanier Visit

77-Spiritual Fitness

78-Noble Path

79-Simon & Garfunkel

80-Present at the Scene

81-Desert Alive

82-100 Years Ago

83-Becoming Who You Are

84-Beckoning Beauty

85-Expiration Date

86-Summertime

87-Wondrous Fear, Holy Awe

88-Ask the Expert

89-Worth Imitating

90-Bent Over

Link to all past issues

  

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All is Well

"May all be well with your soul." This blessing came across my attention in some spiritual reading the morning of our excursion to Crater Lake, OR. In considering the wellness of one's soul, it occurred to me that the body, mind, and spirit all reflect wellness. The body always obeys the mind. The mind is the cognitive reflection of the soul. The way I see it, all of one's essence arises from the soul.

Streaming these thoughts throughout the day, I notice something pristine about the essence of the Oregon "great outdoors" as they proudly call it. All is well with the Oregon sky: pure air lingers between the tall tree-line horizon and stars suspended in clusters. All is well with the Deschutes River: clear to its rock floor. All is well with the honeybees and jays who come to join us at our picnic lunch of tree ripened peaches, cheese and crackers.

All is well at Crater Lake: pure, unspoiled, and balanced. The lake Crater Lake naturally maintains a constant level, adjusting to the relationship between snow fall with seepage and evaporation. Besides the water being pure enough to drink, it reflects a blue, bluer maybe than any other natural phenomenon. Many have reported a sense of the sacred while at Crater Lake, possibly because of the wellness of its soul.

Ancient legends also tell of the sacredness of Crater Lake. As indicated in he visitor display, the Klamath Indian tradition describes the collapse of the mountain and formation of the caldera as the outcome of a tremendous battle between the spirit gods. After the battle, medicine men gave thanks for the victory in sacred song. The lake was called Giiwaas ( a most sacred place).

May all be well with your soul in your sacred place.

                                                     - Jan

 

Alive in the Living World  - by Bill
  

Crater Lake was "discovered" at least three times, between 1852 and 1863. Bands of miners or soldiers, topping a mountain crest at roughly 7,000 feet elevation, were surprised by steep precipices at their feet leading down to a large lake (6 miles long, 4.5 miles wide) of incredible blue. Over and over, they report stopping, stunned, "gazing for awhile upon its wondrous and awful majesty."*

Of course, we are talking about discovery by Euro-Americans, pioneers lured west by gold or rich farmland. Native Americans knew about Crater Lake all along. Still, because Native Americans considered the lake to be sacred, they did not speak of it to the newcomers. The newcomers had no means to broadcast news of the "discovery." So, over and over again, early explorers simply stumbled upon the lake, to be stunned by its "awful grandeur."*

Whenever we encounter wonder, wherever we experience awe, it matters little whether we are the first to do so or the ten-thousandth. What matters is taking time to truly encounter wonder, to truly experience awe.

Theologian Douglas Christie writes of the importance, in this age of ecological risk, of sensing "the limitless beauty and vitality of the natural world itself and ... the expanded (or transcendent) awareness of the self that arises in relation to this mysterious reality." Put more simply, he calls us "to become aware of ourselves as alive in the living world."**

Writing about Crater Lake in 1904, Joaquin Miller put it this way: "The one thing that first strikes you after the color, the blue, blue, even to blackness, with its belt of green clinging to the bastions of the wall, is the silence, the Sunday morning silence, that broods at all times over all things. The huge and towering hemlocks sing their low monotone away up against the sky, but that is all you hear, not a bird, not a beast, wild or tame. It is not an intense silence, as if you were lost, but a sweet, sympathetic silence that makes itself respected, and all the people are as if at church."*

________

 

*Quotes from early visitors are taken from Linda W. Green, Crater Lake: Historic Resource Study (National Park Service, 1984).

**Douglas E. Christie, The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology (Oxford, 2012), p. 6,

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Sincerely,  Bill Howden & Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries