The Peak of Inspiration

We have a tradition where I live.  Every Memorial Day morning, whoever wishes to gathers at the Rock Creek Campground for a breakfast cookout.   Sort of a breakfast potluck.   People bring coffee cake, pastries, juice, coffee, and the fixin’s for every breakfast dish you ever wished for.   Everyone spreads out, sets up their gas fired griddle, lights a fire under the waffle iron, starts frying the bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese, jalapenos, tortillas and… you get the picture.  Each person fills the role of host and guest.  As a host, you dish out whatever it is that you’re cooking to the folks that have been standing downwind of your dish.   As a guest, your task is simple.  Pace yourself.  With some diligence and patience, you can make it around to most of the vendors for at least a sample.  If you leave hungry, it is no ones fault but your own.  There is always more food than our collective stomach can hold. 

We, that is my wife and I, don’t always attend this event.  But this year we did.  It was a beautiful Rocky Mountain morning.  The creek that runs alongside the campground was doing what creeks were born to do, singing the song of the hills.  Mix that with excellent food, good conversation, the cool air and the warm sun, friends beside you and a God above you, and you have “abundant life”.

After an hour long breakfast and a few rounds of corn hole we packed up and began the drive home.  On the way to the campground that morning, we took note of an old cemetery that sat a bit off the road.  Now, let me pause here for a little and say something about cemeteries.  I don’t have any specific, personal, DNA level interest in cemeteries.  Not so for my wife.  Or for the majority of my in-law family.  There is something there that pulls to them, and the older the better.  Being grafted in as I am, I have found myself in more than one graveyard that, had I passed it previous to being married, I would not have entered. If I am honest, and if you disregard the sarcastic comments and eye rolls, I really don’t mind them either. 

The Rock Creek Cemetery, est 1874, lies among the sagebrush on a windswept and unsheltered hill.   A few recent graves, but mostly old.  Quite a number marked only by a simple, weathered wooden cross.  No name, no date, no epitaph.  Just a marker to remind us, the living, that someone has returned to the dust beneath our feet.  Standing there I wanted a connection.  I wanted to know.  When were they born and why did they die?  Who, or maybe what, did they love?  What was the world like when they walked it?  My questions were not answered.  I was left with one thing, the image of a cross and the knowledge that someone lay beneath it. 

Contrasted with the scene we had left behind in the mountains, the difference was stark.  And sobering.  There is an inevitable cycle to life.  Living the full life in the mountains, we can lose sight of that.  Visit the quiet and still cemetery, and the reality becomes clear again.  Life is a curious study in this way that life, in general, will continue. But life, in a personal and specific sense, will not. 

Someday, should this old world stand, someone will walk through the graveyard that contains the dust that was once me.   That person may or may not have a connection to me, may or may not be familiar with the circumstances that formed the fabric of my life.  Maybe that isn’t important.  Mankind likes to be remembered for something.  Likes to know they made an impact.  Cities, streets, and buildings are named after the famous ones.  We take pictures, write biographies, record events, even carve statues and erect memorials.  I’m not saying this is all bad.  I think there can be value in knowing, and finding a connection to, our forefathers. 

But I also like the picture stuck in my mind of the old cemetery and the simple wooden cross.  A picture where the details and circumstances of life have faded and been forgotten.  Where only the cross remains.

I like the security in that scene.  That seems safe to me.   

Join me in this pledge, that I will live, die, and rest in peace.  Sheltered beneath the Cross.

“In life and death I need thee, O blessed friend”  Take Thou My Hand and Lead Me – Julie von Hausmann