Sweetwater Creek State Park

Ben and I went for a hike at Sweetwater Creek State Park yesterday. To reach this state park, you take Exit 44 off of I-20 West, turn left, then turn right onto Blairs Bridge Rd. Turn left at Mt.Vernon Road and you'll come across the park. Be sure to park in the lot where the Interpretive Center is or you won't be in the right spot to access the hiking trails (we found out the hard way).

We hiked the Red Trail, which runs along the creek and leads you to the ruins of a five-story mill from Civil War times. It is a wide, easy and lovely trail. You can hike another half mile along the creek from the mill. It is rockier and rootier, but worth the effort, and leads to a bend in the creek where the water flows down over the rocks. I would recommend a hiking stick for this portion of the trail. We returned to the car along the Blue Trail which is also spacious and well-marked. The Yellow Trail is supposed to be steeper so we saved it for another time. Our hike took a little over an hour.

Sweetwater Creek State Park is a beautiful place that will remind you of the North Carolina mountains. You won't believe it is just past Six Flags off of I-20. We sat and prayed a bit, thanking God for the beauty of his creation and apologizing for spending so much time in front of the TV or computer screen and not enough time outdoors. Stones abound here, in every size, but we did not build our own altar. Instead, I collected some bright red sumac leaves and arranged them on top of a flat grey stone. I knew my arrangement would be a short-lived one, blown away by the fall breeze, like the brightly-colored sand mandalas of the Buddhist monks.

Mary Oliver poem

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Welcome to Our Class Post

Hi, Spiritual Livers! We have begun our discussion of Barbara Brown Taylor's book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University and Yale Divinity School. She was ordained in 1984 and began her ministry at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She now holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in Demorest, GA, and is Adjunct Professor of Spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur. She is the author of 12 books.

An Altar in the World reached #27 on the New York Times Bestseller List in 2009. In her book she encourages us to reclaim the physicality of our faith. "The whole world is the House of God," she writes, and "the meaning of life can be found in the everyday activities, accidents, and encounters of life."

Class members are invited to use this blog to post their thoughts on the book, as well as recommend sites to visit out in the world, post photographs of nature, or otherwise keep in touch.