The Confederation Trail (I)
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A Greeting
I stretch out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah
(Psalm 143:6)
A Reading
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
(Psalm 95:4-7)
Music
Meditative Verses
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence.
(Psalm 51:10-11a)
A Reflection
Peace. You never know what peace is until you walk along the
shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Abegweit
on a summer twilight, when the dew is falling and the old old stars
are peeping out and the sea keeps its nightly tryst with the little
land it loves. You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not
a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.
And you look around on the dimming landscape of haunted hills and
long white sand beaches and murmuring ocean. On homestead lights
and the old fields tilled by dead and gone generations. Even if you
are not Abegweit-born you will say “why, I have come home”.
- from "Prince Edward Island" written by L.M. Montgomery,
for a booklet called "The Spirit of Canada: Dominion and Provinces 1939,
published by the CPR in honour of a royal rail tour that year. Found on anneofgreengables.com
Verse for the Day
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit
(Psalm 51:12)
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| Undated photograph by Lucy Maud Montgomery of her friend Nora LeFurgey who is herself taking a photograph, on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island. Found on cbc.ca |
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A STORY
From coastal New Brunswick, travelers walk on to the Confederation Bridge and come into Prince Edward Island on the traditional lands of the Pigtogeoag and Epeogoitnag peoples of the Mi’kmaq, walking on the Confederation Trail. The island is home to the Lennox Island First Nation and the Abegweit First Nation. Abegweit is a Mi’kmaq word meaning “land that is cradled on waves”. In today’s reflection, Lucy Maud Montgomery uses the word 'Abegweit' as the name of the place that holds her heart. At the end of today’s video story, taken from the 1985 film adaptation of her book Anne of Green Gables, Marilla says “to despair is to turn your back on God”. This very strict theology holds a deeper struggle in the writer. As the wife of a minister, and the survivor of a very unhappy childhood, ‘Maud’ Montgomery knew a lot about despair. The recently re-published journals reveal a debilitating depression that she struggled with for most of her life. Her great comfort was in her writing and in her connection to her birth place, even when she was not actually living there. In capturing it for the royal family tour of Canada in 1939, she describes a peace of spirit in which God is present. In her journal, at the end of a childhood story about church, she adds, “And how glad I was when it was all over and we got down and out under the blue sky once more, where we could drink of the wine of God’s sunshine in his eternal communion that knows no restrictions or creeds.”(Source) It was through God's creation, and specifically Prince Edward Island, that she found peace. In a hobby of photography, she sometimes captured those dear to her on the land she loved. As a writer, she also found comfort in the invention of a character who lived in search of ‘kindred spirits’, who sought out each moment in its capacity for intense emotion, often joy. Is there a place that gives you that deep and abiding sense of peaceful connection to God?
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| From New Brunswick, hikers cross the Confederation Bridge on to the Confederation Trail in Prince Edward Island. (Source) |
LC† Stories of the Land is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto
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