Settled.
My dad’s fishing boat is a sacred place. God shows up here often, likely because of the sheer distance it is from our wobbly world… It is not that He isn’t everywhere all the time, but that my attentiveness to His presence heightens with the lack of other noise. The boat lives almost exclusively on Lake of the Woods, MN where our family owns a cabin on its shores. Some days, we pull in a lot of walleyes. Other days, we tool around the lake rather blindly just fishing for them. We have not, and likely will not, invest in the fancy gear to locate fish beyond a GPS-enabled depth finder. It’s only partially about catching and mostly about the experience of being together in the boat.
An enlightening outing happened last July, when my brother, niece + nephew joined us for a night on the waves to put our lines down. My nephew sat back with his grandpa to drive the boat and was just chattering away about all manner of topics – wondering loudly + openly about everything he was seeing + thinking, as 4-year-olds so endearingly do. Energy. Nervous excitement. Slightly uncontrolled. Scattered. Unfiltered. And it was beginning to wear on the rest of us in the boat. His dad wisely invited him up to sit with him, an invitation he accepted eagerly. And as he crawled up into his daddy’s arms, instant and utter stillness arrived. He settled. Some kind of miracle silenced the boy.
In thinking back on it, it wasn’t so inexplicable. It was the presence, touch, + attention of the one he most deeply wants to be known + loved by that quieted his little soul. His anxious energy turned into settled contentedness. One might say that the call of his creator calmed him. And it wasn’t “stop talking so that you can sit with me.” It wasn’t “spruce yourself up so I will accept you.” It was, instead, “come as you are, with the buzzing bundle of boy-ness that is you. That’s the one I want to come sit with me.” Truest possible human knowing and accepting. Love.
Wonder of wonders… Come to me, all who are weary + heavy-laden and I will give you rest. (Matt 11:28-29) Trade your scatteredness for steady settled-ness, your frenzy for true rest. This invitation was illustrated in that sacred fishing boat.