Walking a New Path

Walking a New Path

This is a new path at Point Lobos State Reserve.  I walked it last week with my adult children Owen and Norah, at their invitation.

 

It was the day before Norah’s wedding.  Talk about a new path!

If our lives are journeys, (“the way,” “the pilgrim route,” “a long strange trip”) it’s a special day when we find a new path.   This was a special day.

 

In fact, while parts of this path, called the Lace Lichen Trail, are indeed brand new, other sections are the old trail rebuilt.  Before, it had lots of roots and bumps and narrow spots and winter creek beds.  It’s been improved to meet ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards. Now it’s hard and smooth and wide, some little bridges.  For the first time, people in wheelchairs can move with ease through this mysterious forest, where feathery lace lichen droops from the branches of Monterey pine. The trail is better for parents too – they can now smoothly wheel their kids in strollers, as the smell of the sea and the roar of the waves beckons them westward.  And all walkers are safer than before, since the trail, which used to be shorter, now extends with brand new sections all the way from park entrance to the sea. No more need to walk along the road.

If life - and marriage - are journeys, we surely know that these paths have bumps, gullies, narrow spots and some danger, if only from distracted drivers. 

So it is definitely a blessing when folks open up a new path for us.  What a gift to find a route that welcomes us all, safer, with bridges, a way for wanderings and discovery, whatever our age or ability.

Thanks, California taxpayers and Point Lobos Foundation for this blessed new path.

(Come on one of our Blue Theology youth mission trips or adult retreats and feel the Spirit on this new path.  Also, I now post these Wednesday “Tide-ings” at <bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com> as well as here.)