Camping Prepared: A Deeply Peaceful And Spontaneous Experience
This past weekend, five of my friends and I went camping at a campground outside of Helen, Georgia, building upon an annual tradition of camping that another group of friends and I have gone on in the past. While the title of the previous article was “Camping Unprepared: A Deeply Spiritual Experience” (because there’s nothing more spiritual than the aftermath of almost freezing to death in the Smoky Mountains), this time, my group was much better prepared to handle nature’s predicted hurdles than last year.
There was a quote I shared in that article last year, from Maureen Dowd’s 2012 NYTimes article, “Why, God?” Quoting a meditation from Father Kevin O’Neil, the article addressed a common question asked in circles of people who question God and ask why God would allow tragedy, suffering, and pain to happen, and the reason for that. The answer is this:
“For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.”
This year, however, was a much different experience than the year before. Yes, the God of unconditional love comes to me in the form of…
