Ahhhhh, vacation!

"A vacation is like love -- anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia."

A motley group of friends and I had the wonderful fortune to go on vacation together last week.  We have gone away a couple of times before -- cruises to the Carribean and to  Alaska -- and like to picnic together.  This time it was a land-based trip, to the Great Smoky Mountains outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

"Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation.  To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment.  Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen."  --Leonardo DaVinci

Eleven of us rented a "million-dollar" log cabin for one week, with nine of us staying there and two bringing their camper and staying in a nearby campground.  Our super-organized friend got a great laugh out of the rental agent when she said the group of us wanted a cabin which could sleep nine, "with seven of us not wanting to sleep with one another."  (We had one married couple and seven singles.)  So "Luca's Lookout" was ours for a week.  (To see this modern marvel, google "Luca's Lookout" with the zip code, 37738.)

"Those who say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation."

What do you do on a vacation?  Eat.  Prime among our decision to go away was to experience the great cooking gifts several of us had.  It took us two Sunday-afternoon picnics, but we finally got the menu planned:  ham and all the fixins on Saturday, steak (really prime filet mignon) on Sunday, chicken on Monday, pork on Tuesday, salmon on Wednesday, and left-overs on Thursday and Friday.  And what leftovers!  Of course, this listing fails to include the appetizers, fresh veggies, whipped potatoes, lucious salads with homemade dressings, wines from various locales, and desserts such as fruit, apple cobbler, strawberry shortcake and homemade vanilla ice cream. 

My contributions were three:  eat, say "Fantastic!" about every five minutes, and do the dishes.  I say without a hint of vanity I was excellent at all three.

"Unless there is a grave reason to the contrary, a pastor is permitted to be absent from the parish each year for vacation for at most one continuous or interrupted month."  Code of Canon Law, canon 533, #2.

Among our group were two priest friends.  This made celebrations of the Eucharist easy.  We brought all the "ecclesial stuff" necessary for Mass with us, and enjoyed our prayer on Sunday and on August 15, for the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the luxury of a great room.  The huge windows overlooked several mountaintops of the Great Smoky range.  Offering a long sermon is impossible, when your congregation can tune you out and see God's bountiful beauty right in front of them.  And no collection, either!

"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in."

One of the unexpected pleasures of our luxurious cabin was that there was no cell phone service and no internet service.  No one had told us this during all our preparations.  At first this was terrifying.  What, go without looking at our cell phones about every 15 minutes?  It took two members of our group until Tuesday to stop looking at their smart phones, and finally "learn" this truth.  One, a lawyer, was particularly stymied, and drove to the the top of the hill, about a mile, every day to talk with his secretary. 

I was secure, however.  I had given strict instructions to the parish secretaries and my priest associates.  I was only to be disturbed on three conditions:   If the pope called me; if the bishop called me; if one of my four churches burned to the ground.  Thankfully, none of these happened.

(You never know, however.  As I was preparing for vacation last month, I told this joke to our seminarian intern, who politely laughed.  Then he said that a classmate's home parish pastor had also given this instruction when he went on vacation to the Jersey Shore, only to be called on the second day of vacation.  When the pastor responded testily to the phone call, his parochial vicar said, "Well, the church burned down.  Really.  Really."  And he wasn't fooling.) 

"A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking."

Our vacation got a curve on its first day, when the rental agent called while we were en route, to say that we could not use Luca's Lookout.  Bats had taken up residence, and it would be a couple of days before they could be removed.  So we repaired to Taygen's Place, which one humorist promptly dubbed Pagan's Place.  This turned out to be just as nice a temporary home as Luca's.  Six bedrooms, a home theatre, poot table, kitchen worthy of any cable tv chef's competition, two hot tubs, gas grill, and two wonderful porches facing the mountains.  We learned that each of these cabins sits on no less than three acres of land.  At night I could only see the lights of one other cabin off in the distance.  And a billion stars.

"There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizens than a returning vacationist."

We did not count on unexpected visitors, however.  On Tuesday night, after everyone else had got to sleep, and I was the last one watching tv, two bats decided to join us.  "Beavis" and "Butthead" flew around, well, like bats.  They are fast!  And tiny too.  They seemed to avoid me as much as I wanted to avoid them.  I woke up two of the most responsible of my friends.  We had to drive up to the top of the mountain to get cell phone service, where an hour passed before the emergency call operator finally realized we were not kidding when we said we had a bat infestation.  The rental agent was understanding, no easy thing after we woke her up at 12:30 a.m., and readily offered us a comparable unit, which was conveniently empty further down the mountain.

After much searching on google, and some sleepy discussion, the three of us made an executive decision not wake our friends.  We simply closed the doors yet left all the lights one.  In the morning we could make a group decision.  Blessedly, by morning's light the bats also retired out the unknown opening they had found between the logs, and never returned.  We stayed in our cabin, leaving the lights one all night as a preventative.  It worked.

"No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one."

Among the good things about my friends is that they have the capacity to do things without imposing their desires on another.  So some went walking; one day we made a group trip to financially contribute to the arts and crafts community coffers of Gatlinburg (an eight-mile loop of roads with 150 different shops); a few ventured to the honky-tonk town of Pidgeon Forge; four took a cable car ride to a mountain peak; some read;  I managed to complete a cross-stitch piece.  Several of us drove 100 miles into Asheville, North Carolina, to see the Biltmore, the largest private home in the U.S.

On the last evening we caravaned in two cars to Cades Cove in the national park.  The brochures said that at dusk the wild life (animal, not human) comes out for viewing.  For once the brochures were right.  We saw four stands of deer, assorted crows and squirrels and spyders and old old cabins, and a mama bear and her cub.  In fact, we witnessed mama bear climb a tree at least 40 feet into the air, to protect her baby nestled higher up the tree.  If you saw on the National Geographic channel what we witnessed with our eyes you would gasp.   Nature at its best.

"If only we would give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life to the question of what to do with a two week vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimles procession of our busy days."

Then it was time to go home.  I can say that this was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable vacations I've ever had.  Why?  No cell phone certainly helped.  Great and pleasant friends even more.  And the knowledge that I return to work that I love, refreshed to do the ministry with more energy and perspective.

"Laughter is an instant vacation."  --Milton Berle