So what did I do on my summer vacation?

Many years ago, our United Church forebearers decreed that a minister should have one month of vacation. They were wise. One month of vacation begins in your first year as a minister and continues all through your career, unlike other places where you add a week after working so many years.

As the child of a minister, I grew up with my father always taking one month of vacation. And as I child, I spent it at a cottage in the Gatineau, north of Ottawa.

There were no electric lights. We had one propane light in the kitchen, a propane refrigerator and a wood stove.

The bathroom was an outdoor privy made of shutters from my grandparent’s home in Ottawa, nailed together with a crude, shingled roof.

Water was held in a pressure tank under the cottage and pumped up the hill from the lake with a hand pump.

At least twice a day (and more often if it was wash day; my sister was still in diapers) I was expected to "go and give the pump 100 strokes", which meant I wandered down the path, rain or shine, and moved a 3-foot metal handle back and forth on the pump until the tank was reasonably full. And you had to remember to leave the pump lever pointed up the hill, or all the water would drain back into the lake, meaning another hundred pump strokes were necessary.

Over the years, I learned that I need a month of vacation. Ministry can take a toll. Oh, I did other patterns, particularly when I had young children in school, but I returned to that one month of vacation I one stretch.

For the past few years I have done something of a "busman’s holiday," preaching for one or two sundays at South Sauble Community Church, an interdenominational church overseen by the United Church of Canada, on Silver Lake Road in Sauble Beach. I had served there as a student in the 1970's and was invited to return to preach a few years ago. I keep getting invited back.

What I have learned over the years at Sauble Beach is that there are three things I need for peace; rocks, trees and water.

To feel the firmness of the land under me grounds me. To be gifted with the sharing of access to the lands of the Saugeen First Nation is a blessing for which I am deeply appreciative. Meegwech.

The trees are a sign of the Creator present. The flagrance of cedar, the sound of wind rustling the leave of the birch trees are all ways to sooth the soul.

I have discovered the many moods of Lake Huron. It is a powerful body of water. There are days and nights when it whispers quietly, soothing me to sleep. There are times when it roars and blows and crashes against the shore in an unrelenting power which changes sand and shore. It reminds me that for all our human power and hubris, Creation speaks and we are wise to listen.

I am told that wildlife is changing and declining in the beach area. Yet on several occasions, usually in the morning, just after dawn, I heard that most Canadian of sounds, the call of the loon.

Earlier in the summer there was a bear running around, looking for food. Not a big bear; perhaps a juvenile. But very clearly reminding us that although we might build habitation, there was still a top predator in the neighbourhood and to beware.

Then there were the flowers; the tiger lilies and the yellow orchids and if you knew where to look, purple ones.

All of this was in the glory of God’s creation. It was a pleasure to share in this glorious place, but reality does intrude. It’s time to go back to work. No more watching the sunsets, which are as beautiful as they are pictured and less time to read books. But I will remember all these things and in time, return, for I will need another vacation, next summer.

Rev. David Shearman is the minister of Central Westside United Church, Owen Sound and host of Faithworks on Rogers TV - Grey County