Thursday, June 12, 2008

Provision Company



Provision Company, originally uploaded by chanchanchepon.
Last Friday, in order to make a space for grieving my mom, I pulled away from my LT responsibilities for most of the day. I rode my bike between 30 and 40 miles, and I took a ferry ride across the Cape Fear River to a small town on the mainland in North Carolina called Southport. On my journey I started a conversation with a lady who was taking her autistic sun on the ferry for a ride. I asked her about places where I could go in Southport that would allow for a decent meal, and a place for reflection. She recommended the Provision Company.

I took her up on her suggestion, and I didn’t regret it. The photo above was taken from my table at the restaurant. I enjoyed a quarter pound of shrimp and a crab cake for lunch (only $7.95—it was the special!), and then I just sat, and wrote, and prayed, and reflected. It was nice to make a space for that. I don’t know about you, sometimes I feel like I am moving through this life super fast with little margin for rest, for reflection, and for simply being. Sitting along the marina in Southport, I was able to do just that. I had an unhurried meal, and an unhurried time of sitting and reflecting. You know, it’s kind of wild. As I sat there, it was as if I was being guided through memories, and it was as if I was being guided as to when the proper time to leave was too.

I sat there, and I thought about my mom’s love for the water. We as a family are water people. We have made our homes near rivers and oceans for generations. There’s something about sitting by the water that calms us, restores us, and refreshes us. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but think how much every member of my family would have enjoyed that restaurant. Especially my mom. There wasn’t any particular flair to it—in fact, to look at it you might find it entirely unimpressive like many other great places along the coast and in towns across this country. But it was a beautiful place. It was a perfect mixture of noisy bustling conversations, radio, and the calm still solemn quiet of the sea.

I wasn’t long sitting there when the entirety disappeared. Not literally, but it became as though I was the only one there, or maybe I was the only one not there. Maybe I was carried away to another place to enjoy my God and remember my mom. Moments like that are sacred. They can’t be orchestrated through an environment. They can’t be manipulated through an emotional ploy. They simply are.

Problem is, we are challenged to create a space for them in our world. In our world that is full of busy-ness and meetings and appointments and special events, we are challenged to create margins for thinking, for processing, for remembering.

My hope is that you would find space for sacred moments for God to pour into your heart and that in the middle of the mundane, the everyday, the noisy, and the bustling, you would hear freshly from the Creator of the universe.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am glad that you were able to step away from it all and sit and reflect. Water seems to always have some sort of calming function, whether it is in the sounds of a waterfall or the stillness of a small pond. (I wrote something about rain here)

Have a great day