I spent this past Sunday as a heathen of sorts, again, not in church building worshipping at the appointed hour, singing with others, praying that our silent words make it to heaven, or wherever God is these days.

I spent the better part of the day in a different sort of church, or better, a different sort of cathedral, in the Redwood forests of Northern California. It felt like worship.

”How lucky are we to be in this place today?” I kept asking my daughter, my companion for the day – and that is exactly how I felt. Privileged, and blessed, and maybe a bit unworthy of breathing in the air emitted from thousand-year-old trees, carefully walking the dirt paths, tsking at those who dared to carve their initials in the trunks of some of these fallen giants.

I might have done that when I was sixteen, eighteen, oblivious to my own short span of life when compared to these trees. “I was here!” I might have said, carving my rough initials. So I judge these folks lightly, and hope that someday they will feel something different should they come upon these forests again.

”Do you think our necks will be sore tonight?” I asked a couple who, like us, were staring up to the tops of the trees. Because it’s hard not to do that – stare up to see where they end, to marvel at all of that. Some of the trees are dead but still upright, barren, but still pointing upward like a church spire. God makes a pretty good architect, all in all. 

At one point along the trail, we were marveling once again at the trees and the forest and the beauty, and I said ‘thank you, trees.’ I hadn’t noticed a woman walking by, and would not have said such a ridiculous thing had I known I would be overheard. But she smiled at me and said, “Exactly.” Grace upon grace.

When the trees made a little room in the canopy, the ferns took over, presenting their unfurling fronds in a dance of praise and gratitude, or so I imagined. Once in a while I’d see a wild rhododendron peaking through, a bit of pink amid the browns and greens. Perfection.

If anything magical were to happen, I am convinced it would happen in a forest. And maybe magic does happen there, every day – the ordinary magic of nature renewing herself, the magic of people becoming aware of their own insignificance and their own part in the ecosystem, the magic of gratitude to receive this holy beauty when our first impulse is to carve into it.

How lucky were we to be in that place on that day? So lucky. And so blessed.