Just a note – Katie said this will be the last entry before she gets back to us.

njb

September 16, 2010

Activity and Contemplation

The Active Life by Parker Palmer is a provocative book about the tension between our need to be active and our desire to pause and contemplate who we are and how God shapes our activity. It has been very helpful in my attempt to enhance the spiritual side of my life. Palmer is a reknowned teacher, writer and activist who also happens to be a Quaker. At one point in his very active life, he became weary and out of touch with God. He joined a monastic community, thinking the life of contemplation was a better alternative for him. That experience convinced him that he was not cut out for the contemplative life, but he also came to understand that action and contemplation were not polar opposites but two faces of the same coin. In action, we find occasions for contemplation and out of our contemplation comes the driving force for action. In our society, the spiritual life has the image of silence, solitude and introspection, rather than sound, interaction and activity. This “quiet” life is seen to have less value than a life of activity. Thus the two are pitted against each other as an “either/or” choice with activity coming out on top. What Parker concluded was that he was more inclined to a life of action, but very much depended on contemplation to keep him on the right track in his activity. He cites Joseph Campbell’s words that “what we are seeking is an experience of being alive, so our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our innermost being and reality.” Most of us have never imagined moving to a monastery, but many of us would like to make a space for contemplating the truth of God deep inside us in the midst of our active lives. As Palmer writes, “Contemplation allows us to strip away our illusions and reveal reality, which shapes the way we act. Both modes seek the same end – to celebrate the gift of life.” Each balances the other and both are necessary if we are to grow deeper in our self-knowledge and in our relationship with God.

September 9, 2010

Glimmers of Glory

We’ve been short on sunshine and warmth for almost two weeks. Fall fell early and hard here in the mountains. We’ve managed a few hikes in between, and in the midst of, rain showers, but my morning swims are long gone. Moose sightings continue, but none as pronounced as the day three weeks ago when the granddaddy of the Lake Thomas clan hung around our cove all day, snarfing up lily pads and seaweed to his heart’s content. We’ve seen a mother grebe and her baby, two turtles sunning on a nearby log, and three osprey dive-bombing a bald eagle. It’s pretty thrilling when the osprey dives down to pluck a fish out of the lake fifty feet off the bow of my kayak. Scenes from The Birds pop into my mind. I also happened to be on the dock when 3 otters came swimming by, cavorting in the water as they made their way along the lakefront. In our forty years of coming up here, we’ve never seen an otter. And once in a while, between the dark clouds, a ray of sun breaks through. So, every so often we have a glimmer of something magical about being here, even if the weather isn’t what we’d like it to be. We just have to pay attention to the world around us. God is at work, blessing us and others, whether we have our eyes open or not, whether we’re at the lake or at home.

Lake Thomas from our deck (on the Left) –----------------------------------- Lake side of our cabin (on the Right)

September 5, 2010

The Huckleberry Chronicles

Just when I was thinking the opportunity to go huckleberry picking with my dad had slipped through our fingers, he called and said he had been up the mountain Tuesday and found lots of berries. Was I willing to go with him on Friday? How could I refuse, after writing a lament on the Web about our aborted attempt last week? With a certain amount of trepidation, I said, “Okay, I’ll be there at 8:00.” Note to Karen Paul: never go huckleberry picking with my dad. I had an idea this would be a dangerous undertaking but I wasn’t even close. Hair-raising might be a better term. I thought my son-in-law Ben, who does crazy flips 30 feet in the air strapped to a hydrofoil pulled behind a boat, was fearless. His death-defying feats pale in comparison to the routine activities of Howard Tiffany. My dad has been defying death since he started to drive nearly 80 years ago. The ride up that mountain day before yesterday was heart-stopping for me. For one thing, the road is a single-lane, dirt track with numerous switchbacks you can’t see around. For another thing, it’s a solid washboard all the way up because people are braking all the way down. Each washboard bounces the truck around, nearly out of control, which wouldn’t be a problem if there were guard rails on both sides. Unfortunately, the Forest Service hasn’t been investing in guard rails for a long time. The road is carved out of the side of a very steep mountain and goes all the way to the top, where there are drop-offs on both sides of the road instead of just the passenger side. I didn’t know which way to lean. By the time we reached the pull-out at the berry patch, I was sick to my stomach and ready to walk down. In fact, I’m getting sick, just writing this.

As we made our way into the brush to find a few elusive berries, I tried to convince myself that spending my few remaining moments on earth picking berries with my dad was a good thing. We could both die happy. Luckily, we were a hundred yards from a cell tower, so I was able to call Bob and bid him a fond farewell too. I also had to tell him that we hit the Mother Lode of berry patches, just for the record. It was the kind of spot every berry picker longs for – bushes that are covered with huge berries and concentrated in an area where you can sit down and pick half a bucket without moving. We picked ourselves silly and then it was time for the trip down the mountain. Dad said there was another way down that wasn’t quite so “on the edge.” It did have more of those large, pointed rocks that cause tires to blow out, but he thought it would be a better way to go. I do remember him talking about how horrible that road was last year.

Fool that I was, I let him have his way. After all, he was driving. I offered, but he said he was used to this kind of driving. That should have been a hint, because ten minutes later we were still climbing and there was still a steep drop-off on at least one side. Meanwhile, my dad was craning his neck to spot any good huckleberry bushes on the side of the road. This was after I suggested he shouldn’t go up there ever again, but before the road blundered right into a logging operation. It wasn’t much of a road before, but it quickly became nothing more than a loose dirt bulldozer track down the mountain - with deep erosion ditches cut across it every 100 feet. We jarred through the bombed out clear-cut for a while and then went into near-freefall down a steep slope and into a loading area. Dad halted our descent on a bed of logging slash with dozer piles everywhere, because we couldn’t find any sign of the “road.” I walked on ahead and found a crude road, but we would have been mired axle deep in dirt and limbs long before we got there. The only alternative was to turn around and go back the way we came – straight up that steep, dozer trail on the edge of eternity. I was so scared, my hair turned brown. But in Dad’s words, “It shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got four-wheel drive.” And so he put it in low and we steadily ground our way up that slope, over each water bar, through the brush and rocks till we got to the timber sale boundary and the familiar rocky road. “Look at that view,” he said as we rounded the corner. “Do you want to take a picture?” And so I made him stop for a moment, more to take a breath than a picture. But the view was pretty breathtaking too, as you can see.

By the time we got back to where we had parked to pick, 45 minutes had elapsed. It felt like a lifetime of terror, but we still had to go down that road. The precipice-skirting, wash-board jarring road, hoping we didn’t blow a tire on one of the sharp pointy rocks. I made a half-hearted suggestion that he keep it in low gear on the way down, but it was futile. What I wondered, as each set of washboards bounced us closer to the drop-off, was how anyone catapulting down a narrow, windy mountain road would need to use the ACCELERATOR? But that’s the way it’s always been, since I was a kid. Now I know why my mom was always saying, “Howard, slow down!” I had a flashback to those Sunday drives we used to take in our Plymouth sedan over every mountain road in Ferry County, sometimes all of us kids getting out to push on the steep parts. But now he has four-wheel drive. Thank God.

August 31, 2010

Making a Living

The last couple mornings during my daily run, I’ve been intrigued by passing motorists. The first was a pick-up truck pulling an open-sided trailer. In the back was a pile of lumber, a table saw and a motorbike. I assumed the fellow was on his way to a construction job in the woods where he could take a break from his work to ride when the occasion arose. This morning, I glanced up from the pavement to see another pick-up, this one pulling a construction trailer and sporting a canoe on top. Both drivers seemed to be intentional about combining what it took to “make a living” with living. There’s a wonderful integrity about that kind of life, where vocation melds into recreation to bring health and wholeness to every aspect of life. I have a sense that that is what God wants for all of us – a shalom that pervades every corner of our life so there’s a harmonic resonance in all we do. Maybe that’s where our relationship with God will take us if we allow it to happen. It might be that we are so busy making a living and picturing a disconnect between that task and our leisure time, that we can’t see how the two can be complementary. If we can abandon our Puritan work ethic long enough to let God shape the whole of our lives, we just might find a breath of fresh spirit renewing our lives.

August 29, 2010

A Walk in the Woods

Wednesday was the day it seemed that the planets were aligned for me to go huckleberry picking with my dad. He has wanted me to go with him for a very long time, especially since his usual companions weren’t in the mood. He had finally talked to some people who found a hot spot on his favorite mountain only four days before and he was chomping at the bit to go. He knew right where to look and wasn’t occupied with golf or lunch engagements. I got up early and drove into town to his home so we could beat the heat with a 7:30 a.m. start. He stowed the buckets, set his altimeter, zeroed his trip odometer, packed a cooler with 2 root beers, 2 bottles of water, and 4 granola bars and made sure I had a walking pole to steady me on the slopes. We were ready! We drove out of town and up into the hills, with me doing a mental inventory of his driving skills – a little over the speed limit here, crossing the center line there, but only one wrong turn – maybe I’m not putting my life on the line after all. We found the turn off and got part way up the steep, washboard dirt road when Dad’s truck died – just stopped in mid-stride. He tried to start it several times to no avail and backed it down the road to the highway (a little scary). That’s when the diagnostics portion of the outing began. Dad was an auto mechanic for years and still tinkers with his truck on occasion. Out came the tool kit and up came the hood. He quickly honed in on the fuse compartment, trying to isolate the ones connected to the fuel system. This is not something to rush – every symptom must be deliberated over, every wire and hose jiggled, every fuse tested. A nearby neighbor came to add his expertise and equipment and finally the diagnosis was made – a bad fuel pump. Of course, you have to pull the gas tank to get at the fuel pump and that takes a shop. Naturally, there’s no cell phone service on the mountain, so we walked up to the neighbor’s to call the towing company. Then we mosied on back to the pick-up to do a few more tests for good measure, tried to start it just in case something loose had tightened in all our manipulation. Not much else you can do when waiting a mere eternity for a tow truck that sped on past our turnoff before realizing his mistake five minutes later. Then came the interminable process of hooking up to the tow truck, dropping the drive line (automatic transmission precaution), putting up lights, turning around in a narrow road. All the while, huckleberry pickers were passing us right and left, heading to the berry patch that was most assuredly dripping with plump berries. Each one was a fresh insult to my Dad, who was watching his dream of a decade slowly evaporate on the dust road. As I stood next to the truck thinking what a waste the day was, it occurred to me that there were worse ways to spend a day than in the shade of a fir forest watching my father ply the tools of his trade, still sharp after 93 years. It was a great example of “Bring Your Daughter to Work” Day about fifty years late. I doubt my dad is feeling quite so poetic about it. He told the mechanic that he wasn’t so upset about the $500 for the new fuel pump and reconnecting the drive line. It was missing out on those huckleberries that was the biggest disappointment. Maybe next year, Dad.

August 20, 2010

Give and Take

We finally got our first mail in our newly-erected mailbox at the lake. The next milestone was placing a handful of birthday cards in the box and raising the red flag to signal the mail carrier there was a pick-up. I was reminded of the mail situation in Scotland. The “postie” (that’s what they call the mail carrier) brings mail to your house, but he or she doesn’t pick up any outgoing mail. You have to take your mail to the post office, maybe like the one on Iona in the photo. There’s give, but no take, when it comes to mail. Sometimes we get that way with God – we’re willing to deposit our requests, our bills, our junk mail in God’s mailbox but we’re not anxious to pick-up the outgoing mail. We don’t really want to carry those messages from God to others. We’re reluctant to hear the requests God has for us, the urgings to see things differently, the nudges to respond to people in our life with joy and acceptance. That give and take is important in any relationship. There’s a necessary mutuality that allows trust and respect to deepen. I’m grateful for the way our postal system operates because it’s really convenient, but it also reminds me of the importance of give and take in all of life.

August 16, 2010

An Ode to Simplicity

So many things about our time in Scotland keep cropping up in conversations and in thought patterns. Right now, I’m thinking of the laundry and our American tendency to “supersize it.” We’re in Colville at the Laundromat, doing a mountain of clothes, sheets and towels. The possible combination of machines to use for all these different loads is mind-boggling, but all of them are larger than the washers in Scotland, which are all the same. Here, there’s the $1.75 basic top loaders. Then there are the $2.50 front loaders, not to be confused with the other orange front loaders that are $3.75. And of course you can always go to the $5.00 jumbo machines. You have to sort your clothes from the not-so-clean floor and figure out by trial and error which load fits in which machine. Your roll of quarters disappears faster than they do in a post-lunch stroll through Legends. Then you’ve got the same drill with the dryers, provided you can figure out if the washer is done or if it’s just resting from all that spinning. There’s a little more guesswork involved in the dryer situation because you have to put in the right number of quarters to reach the optimum dryness. Once you’ve achieved the pinnacle of laundrydom, you have to get the clothes out of the dryer into the rolling basket and onto the folding table without letting those random socks touch the floor or you start the whole process over. Think how many brain cells are occupied in a task we usually take for granted. I could have been inventing a cure for warts with all that brain power. Bob chose to hang onto his brain cells by walking over to his high school classmate’s sporting goods store and chewing the fat for an hour and a half. If I get Alzheimer’s before he does, you’ll know why.

All this is to say, how many choices do we need before our brain is overloaded and we wake up one day, having spent much of our life making trivial decisions that didn’t enrich our life or relationships one iota? The Scots have traditionally brought up the rear in terms of consumer options (breakfast is always poached egg, grilled tomato slice, bacon and mushrooms), but they are gradually buying into the American model of consumerism. WalMarts and Fred Meyers (Tesco) dot the landscape. Perhaps, enough people will resist that they will turn back to a simpler life style. Maybe we can join them.

August 2, 2010

Pilgrimage Complete

Yesterday was Sunday – a fitting day for the climax of this Scottish pilgrimage. We reached the tiny seacoast town of St. Andrews which is the holy land of Christianity, academics and golf. I went to the golf mecca first, since the Old Course is closed on Sunday so the non-golfing public can roam about its manicured fairways and marvel at the rolling greens and canyon-like bunkers. The stands and leader board from the British Open were still in place. Walking onto that storied 18^th fairway, I could still hear the crowds cheering Louis Oosthuizen as he crossed the Swilken Bridge and headed for victory. Even for a mediocre golfer like myself, it was a hallowed moment, akin to an amateur tennis player setting foot on the grass of Wimbledon. Funny, how a sport can give rise to such spiritual feelings within us mortals. To the uninitiated, it may seem trivial and meaningless, but I’m often reminded of the way Jesus hallowed the mundane and earthy in human life. He used his miraculous powers to make wine at a wedding, after all.

We moved out of that heady atmosphere and up the street to the University of St. Andrews, the second oldest academic institution in the world, next to Cambridge. The quadrangle where graduates toss their caps was a beautiful courtyard with a view of the sea. Right outside those formidable gates was a monument to Patrick Hamilton, a religion professor who dared to teach the heretical ideas of Martin Luther back in the 1520s. That’s where the enlightened academics burned him at the stake. It’s a sobering reminder that human institutions are prone to err, regardless of how venerated they are. I wonder if today’s students pay any attention to that marker as they scurry to and fro on the important business of securing an education. Do they know what price was paid for their freedom of thought?

Just up the street was St. Andrews Castle, the site of another burning, this time by the Cardinal who was fed up with the Protestant preachers stirring up trouble. It didn’t take long for retaliation. A group of Protestants, including the young John Knox, stormed the castle, killed the Cardinal and held the Catholics at bay for a time. Eventually, the castle was breached and John Knox was sent into slavery on a French galley. After his release, he went to Geneva and studied under John Calvin. When he returned to Scotland, the Catholics had abdicated the throne and Scotland became “Presbyterian” in government and in religion. The Church of Scotland was born.

St. Andrews was a fitting place for that foment of religion, since the town was founded around the remains of St. Andrew, the apostle. A ship carrying his arm, a knee, some fingers and some teeth wrecked just offshore and so a cathedral was begun in 1160 and pilgrims began to arrive. For centuries, St. Andrews was the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland and the Cathedral was its showpiece church. All roads lead to the Cathedral as the faithful from all over Europe flocked to the holy place where St. Andrew’s relics were enshrined. After the reformation, the statues and artwork were removed, then the roof was torn down for the lead, then the stones were gradually carried away for use in other buildings. Today, the Cathedral is a haunting shadow of its former self, but pacing between the two end walls and walking around the foundations of the pillars gives you some idea of the massive structure that once inhabited the site. The remains of the nearby monastery and cloister are no less impressive. Tearing down an institution of that scope and substance must have been a monumental task for the reformers. Their legacy is palpable in that extra-earthly place.

A note of clarification – I’ve had several people ask about the Scottish language I mentioned a couple weeks ago regarding the differences in our worship services. When I said they were quite similar except that the Welcome and Announcements were in Scottish, I was joking. They were delivered in English with a Scottish accent. Some consider the Scottish dialect a separate language from English, because there are quite a few words you don’t find in English, like fitba (football), muckle (large) and wee (small). A church is a kirk, a mountain is a ben and a stream is a burn. Some of the Highlanders speak Gallic, which is a Celtic language, and the road signs up north all have the place names in both English/Scottish and Gallic.

The Old Course at St. Andrews (Above left) St. Andrews Cathedral (Above right)

August 1, 2010

North by Northwest

Friday, we awoke to rain, just in time to catch our ferry to Mull and then to the mainland. The multi-legged journey included boat, bus and auto and by the time we reached the Isle of Skye, we weren’t sure which we were riding in. In spite of the northern latitude, our guest house had palm trees in the yard. It was a far cry from the craggy mountains we saw on the drive up and the wonderful waterfalls adding their delicate tracings to the landscapes. Up until now, the rain hasn’t been an impediment to our sight-seeing. Unfortunately, the reason for going to Skye is the scenery and when the cloud ceiling is at 12 feet off the deck, there’s not much scenery to see. We even ventured up the coast to find the world-famous Cuillin Mountains at Sligachen, a sure-fire bet according to Rick Steves. Unfortunately, all we could see was a rainbow and a stone bridge and a bank of clouds where the craggiest peaks in Scotland were supposed to be. It might have been a hoax for all we knew. Kind of like the Loch Ness monster

We decided to check that out too. Saturday we back-tracked to the Caledonian Canal at Invergarry and followed it to Loch Ness ending at Inverness. Apparently, an Inver___ is a town at the end of a loch and a glen is a valley, so we also drove through Glen Garry, which is the valley the River Garry runs through. And if that’s not confusing enough, a bar is a gate and a gate is a street. Oh well, we just listened to the soothing voice of the TomTom and didn’t worry about the road signs. The Caledonian Canal is another thing altogether. It’s 62 mile channel allows ships to cut across the middle of Scotland from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea and avoid the treacherous seas at the northern end of Scotland. It was built in the early 1800s along The Great Glen Fault as a way to employ the thousands of displaced farm workers. Forty miles of the canal are a chain of natural lakes, the largest being Loch Ness, which is 24 miles long. A series of 18 locks (not to be confused with lochs) raises and lowers boats to the level of the next part of the canal. It was a monumental undertaking, considering 22 miles had to be dug by hand and there were very few roads to transport equipment, materials and workers to the site. The original locks are still in use today, a testament to the engineering genius of Thomas Telford. I continue to be amazed at the genius exhibited by individuals in this wonderful country.

There are also scientific geniuses hard at work proving the impossibility of a lake monster called Nessie. We stopped at the Loch Ness Center and heard the gospel truth about that local legend, finding that the nutrient level in the rocky lake isn’t sufficient to support a school of catfish, much less a prehistoric monster. In our disappointment, we sought the comfort of a friendly pub where each member of Parliament has their own bottle of Scotch on the shelves around the bar. We were all set to enjoy the outbreak of sun on the patio there when the clouds rushed in and dumped about an inch of rain on the unlucky lunchers. We stayed inside. Genius!

Our destination yesterday was Inverness, which is the largest city in the Highlands. It’s a seaport with a river running through it, so it’s very cosmopolitan. The river bank is grass and a walking path parallels it on both sides. It reminded us of Riverfront Park in Spokane. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the sun finally came out and made it feel like summer. The frosting on the cake was a fireworks display that night for which we had a front row seat from our hotel room on the top of the hill. It was a surprising ending to a day that began amid the dismal sound of raindrops falling our heads. We discovered that the fog-bound north has just as much allure as the south.

Cuillin Mountains where Robert Beattie has climbed (Above left) Caledonian Canal (Above Right)

July 31, 2010

Staffa and Stuffa

We took a one and a half hour boat trip to the Isle of Staffa on Thursday. It’s a volcanic island composed of extruded columns of lava like we see in the Palisades on the way up White Pass. Some of the columns were folded, and there cracks in a couple places where deep caves had formed over thousands of years. The sound of the sea in the largest one, Fingal’s Cave, inspired Felix Mendelshonn to write his Hebrides Overture. I climbed down in there to see if I was inspired to write a beautiful piece of music, but all I heard was the same thing you hear when you put a conch shell up to your ear. Some people have extrasensory hearing. Or maybe it was the sound of falling off the cliff into the water. The scariest part was climbing up the ladder to the table land on top. Definitely not OSHA approved. The skinny piece of pipe they called a handrail was no match for Bob’s death grip. I pitied the people who came back down after him.

The island is a summer home for puffins, those cute little black and white sea birds with the red feet and beaks. They come to the cliff-bound island to burrow nests just at the edge of the grassland. The interesting thing is that, unlike most birds, they aren’t afraid of humans. While people are there to scare the seagulls away, the puffins can safely fly into their nests and feed their young. It was kind of nice to know that the image of the Ugly American was banished from Staffa. Another little piece of trivia came out during that journey through whale- and dolphin-infested waters. We passed by the little village of Bunessan, where Mary MacDonald wrote the tune for Morning Has Broken. When the sun actually comes out, you can understand what inspired her.

That night I went down the hill to the Episcopal Retreat center where they have a beautiful little chapel with amazing etched glass windows and beautifully-stitched paraments. They serve the Eucharist on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, while the Abbey only has Communion on Sunday morning. The Gorbals Church doesn’t have the Lord’s Supper at all in the summer (another reason Catherine was so glad to share it with you in Sunnyside), so I joined the tiny group gathered there to get my fix. It soon became apparent that all 12 people were there to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of a couple in the church. The couple had chosen the hymns and the readings and they were included in the prayers. The staff at the retreat center had prepared a meal for the guests after the worship service. It was a wonderful way to acknowledge God’s role in bringing the couple to such a significant milestone in their life together. I have since discovered that the same thing happened in our church to mark the 50^th anniversary of Bruce and Peggy Romfo. We are not so much different, the Scots and the Americans.

July 29, 2010

Life on an Island

We’re getting used to the rhythm of island life, the quiet in the morning, worship at 9:00, then the arrival of the ferry and hoards of tourists (that was us on Monday) filling the lanes and Abbey, then the departure of the last ferry and a different kind of activity. By then the kids in the youth groups staying at the Abbey have free time and are chattering and roaming the village. You can have cream tea, which includes scones, jam and cream, out on the lawn overlooking the bay. Not too bad on a semi-sunny day. We’ve tried to take part in the community life as much as short-term immigrants can. Monday night, we attended the weekly ceiladh, which is a dance and amateur night rolled into one. Between each set of two dances (for which there’s instruction), there’s an opportunity for anyone to offer a talent. The acts ranged from story telling and singing to a rhythm duet and free form Frisbee flying. It was hilarious most of the time, because the songs were funny and the dancing was crazy, out of control. Most of the people dancing are either inept or ignorant, so the instruction goes out the window and it’s a great, energetic free-for-all.

This afternoon, we were walking along a little lane by the sea and came across a carpenter unloading his van. Bob couldn’t help himself. He had to stop and talk to the guy about his tools – my tool’s better than your tool kind of talk. The fellow was a little ticked off that Makita and everyone else packages their cordless drills in these hard, pretty cases and jacks up the price $80, then charges another $80 for a battery when they wear out. That’s an opinion that’s shared by craftsmen, regardless of what side of the pond they live on. Then the conversation turned to the building industry and the housing situation in their area. Turns out the Californians coming north with their hands full of cash from an inflated housing market and buying all the available property in Washington and Idaho is just the same as the English folks coming up to Scotland flush with money from selling houses in London and inflating property values there. The further you get from home, the more it stays the same.

Another thing we did to take part in the local culture was to golf on the local course. It’s a half hour hike across the island, but well worth it. The sun had come out, so we bought our scorecard for one pound, borrowed balls and five ramshackle clubs from the hotel, and set out on our adventure. When we got to the course, we discovered how critical the score card was to our game. Without it, you’ll never know where the next hole is. Some of the flags had blown over in the wind from the beach and some are hidden by hills in front of the tee boxes. We saw how the whole sand trap idea got started – they just occur naturally on land near the sea. Then there are the creeks and gullies crossing the course at inopportune times plus cows and sheep grazing on the fairways and keep them nice and short. The course is laid out on the land next to the beach, so the view was amazing. Getting caught up in the view can distract you from the hazards lying between your ball and the pin, however. Nothing to scoff at when the hazard is brown and squishy, as seen in the photo above.

And so go our adventures in ‘blending in.’

July 27, 2010

A Wee Pilgrimage

We started our pilgrimage to Iona yesterday morning at 7:30, frighteningly early by Glaswegian standards. Where we got the fright was our drive along Loch Lomond where we took the high road and there was no low road, no place to go when a tour bus came from the other direction. The one lane sections actually have a traffic light at each end to signal when it’s safe for cars to go one way. The rest of the road was a tiny two lanes with a rock cliff going up one side and a stone fence on the other side and very windy besides. I admit I closed my eyes a lot. Fortunately we were following a big lorry (truck) which warned oncoming cars to move over. We got to Oban without too many scrapes and found the car park (parking lot) finally. We had to schlep our luggage downtown and around to the ferry terminal, past the fishing boats and the guy selling BLUE lobsters and brown crab. Ferry ride part one was about 45 minutes long. The vessel had long velveteen upholstered couches to lounge on, as well as a full restaurant and a cocktail lounge on the upper deck. Apparently, commuting to and from work is a grueling task, not to be undertaken without some strong libations (drinks).

The second frightening leg of our journey was the bus ride across the Isle of Mull. Wahoo! We were so glad we left the driving to someone else. The bus driver would drive like mad until there was a car coming on the one lane road. Whoever was closest to a turnout pulled over and the other vehicle poured on the gas. Even with a turnout, passing other buses was a tight squeeze. The terrain was a little like the alpine meadows of the North Cascades with wee burns (streams) cascading down the rocky, moss-covered slopes. There was little forestation, and what there was grew skinny and close together. After about an hour and fifteen minutes we came to a screeching halt at the next ferry landing and quickly walked on board. The passenger seats were on the same level as the car deck, but there wasn’t much point in sitting down, since the ride only took about ten minutes. The hotel was a 10 minute walk from the pier, through the spooky, fog-shrouded ruins of the nunnery. A seven hour pilgrimage to get to Iona.

Then I went on a second pilgrimage today. Every Tuesday they lead two pilgrimages around the island – one off-road and the other on the pavement. I chose the three hour experience instead of the five hour, since I didn’t have hiking boots to slog through the bogs. It was a sunny day for a change, perfect for a walkabout. We wandered through the nunnery, filled with flowers and not so scary in the sunlight, pondering the activities of the women from long ago who tended to health and education matters. We stopped at Martyr’s Bay and pondered the peaceful beach that was the site of the Viking massacre of 68 monks back in 803 A.D. We checked out the Erratic Rock, the seaweed labyrinth, the crossroads (only one on the island), and the Hill of the Angels. Each stop included some history of the site, a challenge to think or do something in our life and a prayer. It was a pilgrimage in miniature, modeled after the grand pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, but also reflecting the values of the Iona Community. Very thought provoking, sun on my soul and on my nose.

July 25, 2010

Becoming Glaswegians

Glaswegian is the term for a person from Glasgow, something we are on the road to becoming by virtue of our nearly one month stay here. We drive on the left side of the road, know the way to the supermarket blindfolded and even use the word ‘lovely’ in ordinary conversation. We have even managed to dry two loads of clothes on the line and successfully put out the garbage last week. Oops – there’s the watering of flower baskets. I’ll be right back…Now then, where were we. Getting accustomed to another culture is hard work, but so worth it in terms of enlarging our world view and building bridges of understanding. We visited Stirling yesterday, where William Wallace (aka Braveheart) and Robert the Bruce defeated the British way back in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. The Church of the Holy Rood (rood means cross) is a magnificent church which was completed in 1555. King George VI was crowned King of Scotland in the church at the advanced age of 13 months. It was a Protestant service and John Knox preached the coronation sermon. Only seven months earlier, the prince had been baptized a Catholic in Stirling Castle. Talk about a religious revolving door. Of course, his mother wasn’t there to protest, being locked up in the Tower of London.

A hundred years later, the two pastors of the church got into a major conflict, with the result of a wall being built down the center of the huge cathedral, dividing the space and the town into two congregations – the East Kirk and the West Kirk. It took 290 years before the wall was removed and the congregations reunited. The split between the North and South branches of the Presbyterian Church in America only lasted 130 years. It makes you wonder if there’s anything we can learn from each other about conflict resolution. The source of all this fascinating information about the Church of the Holy Rood was an elder who liked to entertain visitors. He and another woman who’d been in the church for sixty years talked to Bob and I about the struggles they were having to maintain such a lofty structure. Can you imagine the heating bill in the winter? They’ve been without an installed pastor for 3 ½ years, so their worship attendance has shrunk to 60. They were quite excited because the congregation just voted last Sunday to call a young fellow from a Church of Scotland in Paris (sounds like an oxymoron). Our conversation partners were quite eager to compare notes about our churches when they learned I was a pastor on an exchange. I warned them that this new fellow would probably come and try to change things and the elder said, “I hope so. We need some new ideas and visions if we’re going to survive.” There was great pride in their church, but at the same time a recognition that the old ways weren’t adequate in a new era. I assured them that the church in the U.S. is dealing with the same issues. It was good to take part in this sharing of common concerns with another branch of the Reformed tradition.

Friday, we had another experience of this cross-pollinating that comes from entering the life space of different people. A pastor from another disadvantaged area in Glasgow took us to a retreat center in Falkland, which is a beautiful little village in the kingdom of Fife. Muriel and I met with the woman who has run Key House for 17 years. They talked about the emerging thirst for the spiritual life in our congregations and the struggle to get pastors in Scotland to develop their own spiritual lives. Most of the visitors to Linda’s retreat center are lay people. I explained our study of Diana Butler-Bass’ book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, and Muriel said she had read it and was working on developing aspects of spirituality in her church. There is a growing connection between spiritual practices and an active outreach to the community in her parish. She had newspaper articles about a community garden that they have started, as well as a mural project involving the young people in the neighborhood. Their tiny congregation can’t afford their church building any longer, so a non-profit organization has purchased it and leases the sanctuary back to the church for Sunday services. The building has also become home to a subsidized café, a childcare center and numerous other social services. I have seen many examples here of creative adaptation to the social issues surrounding these churches, creativity that church leaders on both sides of the “pond” are sharing and building on. I feel fortunate to be part of the conversation, as part American and part Glaswegian.

July 22, 2010

There’s community and then there’s Community

Yesterday, I spent the day finding out about the Gorbals community where Catherine ministers. It’s a high poverty area and the place where the government sends asylum seekers while their cases are being adjudicated. It’s also the site of urban redevelopment, which means the old high-rise tenements are being torn down and replaced with modern apartment buildings. The character and identity of the community has been blotted out to a large extent. All these factors conspire to leave the residents without a sense of community. An organization called Bridging the Gap, founded by Ian Galloway, the senior pastor at the Gorbals Church, is working to draw the people together on several levels – generational, cultural and religious. The program first started with high school sophomores mentoring sixth graders. (I latched onto as much material as I could carry.) Then they began reaching out to asylum seekers, mothers of young children, and the list goes on. The photo is a sculpture in one of the housing blocks of Gorbals.

Today, I had an initiation into the Iona Community, which is actually headquartered in Glasgow. Sounds weird, huh. The island of Iona is the place where people go for conferences and workshops, but the actual “community” is a network of people who are held together by adherence to a “rule,” like the rule of St. Benedict in the book you all are reading, “Monk Habits for Everyday People.” People who are members of the Iona Community spend two years practicing the rule and being on probation. They are interviewed and if they are admitted to the community, they re-apply for membership every year. The application is a tool of accountability in which each member describes how they have followed the rule during the past year – things like the disciplines of prayer, study, worship, good stewardship of financial resources, social justice. They meet regularly throughout the year in geographical small groups to receive support and encouragement in their life of discipleship. The Community began as an outgrowth of a program started in 1938 by George McLeod who wanted to change the way churches related to the poor in their parishes. He decided that first call pastors would be easier to shape than more experienced pastors. So he had them spend three summer months two years in a row working side by side with common laborers and stone masons to reconstruct the convent at the Iona Abbey. By working together on a common goal, the seminary students gained an insight into the lives of people living on the edge, a sensitivity which they carried into their parishes. The experience was so transformative for the participants they wanted to continue their Community and so the Iona Community was born. The Community has broadened to include lay and clergy members from all over the UK and Europe. They publish worship resources, write hymns (some of which are included in the Presbyterian hymnal), conduct conferences and advocate for the poor and disenfranchised. They also operate the Abbey on Iona and shepherd many pilgrims who come to that unique and liminal place for spiritual refreshment, as people have been doing for 1500 years. My turn is coming up on Monday. Meanwhile, we are making the most of one sunny day after two days of getting soaked.

July 20, 2010

Cathedrals, Churches and Chapels…

Worship at Gorbals is about as far away from St. Paul’s Cathedral as the stable in Bethlehem is from New York City. And yet I doubt you would find a more genuine worshiping congregation anywhere. Their hospitality extends to helping the worship leaders who are new to the church. Gorbals just lost their pianist, so they’ve had visiting musicians play for Sunday worship. This past Sunday, at the end of the service, one of the congregants spontaneously broke into the choral benediction from the back row, I think to help out the new pianist. The only trouble was, I still had to do the charge and benediction. We all had a good laugh and then everyone sang Ameni even more robustly than usual.

Today, we made our long awaited journey to Edinburgh, the seat of national and church government. It was a SUNNY day! And Edinburgh really is a beautiful city. We saw John Knox’s statue on the campus of the seminary and had lunch in the John Knox House where he spent his last years. We visited St. Giles Cathedral, the national church where John Knox preached from 1559-1572. His body is buried outside under the parking strip – you know how frugal those reformers were. We were there for the noon prayer service conducted by a pastor from Arkansas, followed by a concert by an orchestra from Germany. It’s pretty old – four of the pillars date from 1120 – but it has some modern touches, like the light fixtures that were recently custom made at the cost of 10,000 pounds. They look like space stations, but illuminate the interior in a magical way. Just down the street is the parish church for the queen, a sort of junior cathedral built because she didn’t like to worship at St. Giles. The clear glass windows and white walls make it seem light and airy, in spite of its soaring ceiling and massive pillars. And so the parade of cathedrals went on.

But there was time for a pint of Guinness and a stroll through the Royal Botannical Gardens. We have nothing to compare these gardens to in the states. They just go on and on, filled to the brim with exotic and fascinating species. Even the familiar plants like hostas and peonies are giant-sized and the hedge was a row of beech trees trimmed to 25 feet in height. I discovered that beech trees are well-suited for tall hedges because of their dense, narrow growth form and the fact that last year’s leaves stay on until the new ones bud out in the spring. That explains the strange form of the beech tree in our church courtyard. No matter how much we prune the tree, it will never have an umbrella shape. And I had to travel half way round the planet to find that out. Sometimes you just need a different perspective on a familiar faith.

July 16, 2010

Cathedrals I Have Seen

Yesterday, we dashed to St Paul’s Cathedral before taking the train to York, which is two hours away. St. Paul’s is England’s national church and the fourth largest cathedral in Europe. It’s 515 feet long and 365 feet tall, a foot for every day of the year. Lots of famous people are buried here, but it’s best known to Americans as the site of Diana and Prince Charles’ wedding. It’s a beautiful place – light and airy, even in the basement. Lots of small chapels make it worship friendly. It’s also a marvel that the church didn’t suffer more damage during the incessant bombing and fires of World War II. It was an icon to the people of Great Britain and the emergency personnel were commanded to save St. Paul’s at all costs. I was trying to think of a church in America that might be viewed in that way. For all our professing to be a Christian nation, there doesn’t seem to be one church that has that iconic status.

We arrived in York in time to see another great cathedral, the York Minster (minster meaning important church). Until now, we have been a day late for the concerts and events wherever we’re visiting. Yesterday, we were in the right place at the right time. There was a concert in the huge gothic cathedral by a world-renowned choral group and the sound that filled the church was just incredible. The sanctuary seats 1000 people on a Sunday and the place was standing room only, even with chairs in the side aisles. This morning, I went back at 7:30 for a communion service. There were seven of us, plus the two pastors and an acolyte. Quite a contrast. The small chapel in which we worshipped was quite cozy and all of you would have been able to say the familiar responses in the communion prayer. It was just the communion wafer and the common cup of sherry that was different. The Church of England and the Church of Scotland may be next-door-neighbors, but they might as well be half a world apart. Stay tuned for more church news (and maybe a brewery or two for good measure).

July 14, 2010

Trains, Tubes and Taxicabs

We went to London today, which isn’t so far away, but by the time we took a taxi, three different trains, a tube ride and a five block walk, it was eight hours later. The great thing is that we were able to go from a house in the suburbs of one country to a hotel in another country (sort of) without relying on our own car. Now we have to cram all the sights of a 1500 year old city with a population of 2.5 million people into a day and a half. We cast our net deep and wide, walking next to Buckingham Palace by way of St. James Park and the swan pond, taking the slow boat down the Thames to Greenwich to “see” the Prime Meridian, experiencing firsthand the morning rush in the underground stations – a mass of humanity that seemed staggering at first sight but which was whisked away in a matter of minutes by a very efficient transit system.

I began research on my book, “Cathedrals I Have Seen,” with Bob supplying a minority viewpoint. Everywhere you turn, there’s another huge cathedral, even in very small towns. Apparently there were some territory issues among the early bishops. I started with Westminster Abbey, the grandest of the London cathedrals. Instead of taking the tour, I arrived just in time for evensong – a vesper service at 5:00 in the evening. A visiting choir sang much of the liturgy and the sound just echoed off the stone like angels’ voices. Because us latecomers to the service were seated in the nave, we couldn’t see the choir or worshippers seated in the sanctuary. When the liturgist read from Job 38 with his English accent, it sounded like God’s voice coming down from on high, since the reader was invisible to us. Very spooky!

The most moving church for me was a tiny chapel in the Tower of London, just off the large room exhibiting all the weapons of war. When the royal family occupied these quarters, they were able to worship here in privacy. There were pillars around the edge and the whitewashed walls curved up into a domed ceiling that was a bit like a giant cocoon with soft light warming the stone interior. It was plain and elegant at the same time. I had the feeling I should take off my shoes because I was in a holy place. See what you think.

July 13, 2010

Utopia right here in Scotland

Today, Daniel, the seminary intern at Gorbals, and his family took us to a place called New Lanark. It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site because of its impact on the course of social reform. Back in 1820, a cotton mill owner named Robert Owen brought his sense of social righteousness (a very Presbyterian idea for an atheist) to the work place. His mill was situated on the Clyde River which powered the machinery turning cotton from the U.S. into yarn. He believed that everyone had a right to an education, regardless of gender, age, class, or race. He built above-standard apartment buildings at the mill site for his 2500 workers, so each family had their own home. He built a company store where the workers could buy high quality goods at below-market prices. He encouraged his employees to live within their means and the lower prices for food and other necessities helped them get out of debt. The profits from the store were used to create a health insurance fund and a pension fund. The workers didn’t have to pay for doctoring if there was an illness. This model of a worker’s cooperative was revolutionary in its time. Now there are cooperatives all over the world, even in the Yakima Valley. Owen also provided a nursery for children under the age of two who were too young to attend the company school. This was the first childcare offered in a workplace. Adults and children over the age of ten could attend classes after their 10 ½ hour work day, since children over ten were expected to work in the factory. In a day when common laborers were badly mistreated, there was no punishment for poor work or mistakes. There was just the knowledge that you had disappointed the boss and that was enough to keep you from making the same mistake twice. Owen was also a persuasive orator and often gave inspirational speeches to his workers about development of character and the ability each person had to make something of themselves. He was convinced that if everyone else treated their employees with the same justice and compassion, the world would be a better place. He was so passionate about his vision of a perfect society, founded on education, character development, honest labor and moral integrity, that he came to America and started a utopian community called New Harmony, Indiana. It was a bold venture but succumbed to the inevitable internal squabbles characteristic of the human condition. Owen’s three sons remained in the country and Robert Jr. became a U.S. Representative, eventually sponsoring the initiative to establish the Smithsonian Museum. Owen’s innovations in Scotland were the beginning of society’s care for factory workers in the industrial revolution. His legacy continues to be applied in sweat shops around the globe. It’s an amazing story set in an idyllic green river valley. Just another reason that people are proud to be Scottish. The picture of Bob and I was taken in the rooftop garden of one of the factory buildings at the site just as water started spouting from Bob’s head. Quite a sight to see!

July 12, 2010

The Ordinary – laundry and other quotidian delights

Laundry – can you believe it! No one has offered to do our laundry on this glorious sabbatical, so we were forced to do it ourselves Saturday. I have gained a new appreciation for American washers and dryers. And laundry rooms! Every Scottish kitchen we’ve seen has a front-loading washing machine built in under the counter, which reduces cupboard space and makes for interesting cooking if you’re also washing clothes. You think you’re getting the clothes clean and they end up spattered with spaghetti sauce. The preferred method of drying is on a line outside, but when it rains for a week straight, drying clothes outside becomes an oxymoron. There is a toy dryer in the garage, which is not accessible from the house. You have to work hard not to be Green in this country. Not all the clothes from the washer will fit in the tiny dryer, so you have to do them in shifts, carrying armloads of laundry from the kitchen, down the steps, down the hall, out the front door, into the garage and into the dryer. Back and forth, back and forth, making sure the doors are all open for each transfer. Maybe doing four loads in one day wasn’t such a good idea. And miniature dryers don’t nurture wrinkle-freeness, so out comes the iron.

Another interesting thing about Scotland home life – the shower has this contraption attached to the wall that controls the water. You just push a button and the water comes on. There’s a dial for the temperature and another dial for the amount of water. When you’re done, you push the button and it stops. Theoretically, you leave the dials at the same setting and you get the same temperature and pressure every day. Quite intriguing from an engineering point of view. Apparently the Glaswegian inventor of the steam engine, James Watts, has some modern day disciples.

These Scots are very serious about the environment – curbside recycling is standard and they raise the price of gas to discourage people from using their cars. (Okay, maybe that’s more of a market thing, but it’s effective.) The grocery stores charge for plastic bags if you don’t bring your own. And of course, we keep forgetting to bring our own, so we have accumulated an embarrassing hoard of plastic bags. Don’t tell the Beatties we’re such rotten earth stewards.

Here’s another curious thing. This afternoon we had lunch on an outdoor balcony in a little cobblestone alley near the University. When I went inside the restaurant to use the restroom, I discovered it was a huge two-story nightclub with spotlights, a gigantic circular bar in the middle, and a mezzanine level for dining. The décor was like a Greek amphitheatre or a grand ballroom from ages past – very posh for a university hangout. I knew it was a hot spot when I saw the rows of stalls in the bathroom. As I left the loo, I noticed a coin-operated curling iron on the wall. Really! Apparently, even if things get wild and you get doused with beer, a girl needs to look her best.

And then…we visited another museum, checked out the suits of armor and got on the bus to another attraction. We should have taken the armor with us. Our bus got sideswiped by a city maintenance truck and their mirror hit our window so hard it shattered all over the guy behind us. We didn’t realize we were in a demolition derby in the streets of Glasgow. Walking now seems to be a safer choice, in spite of the local free-for-all approach to crossing streets. Lights don’t seem to mean a thing to pedestrians, as near as I can tell. “Step lively,” they say, and I guess drivers are used to pedestrians appearing out of nowhere. So far, we’ve only come close to a front bumper twice. Another one of the local sports, along with golf, cricket and football.

July 9, 2010

Pilgrims

After a day of castle-exploring in the sunshine yesterday, we set out today, in the rain and mist, for a retreat center called The Bield (which means shelter). We were the guests of one of the church members, whose husband was the moderator of the Church of Scotland General Assembly two years ago. Bob tagged along to check out the “small holding,” a volunteer-run farm similar to Campbell Farm. The volunteers are developmentally disabled and autistic people from nearby Perth. The usual farm livestock assortment is being added to with two male alpacas at a cost of $500 each. Llamas like The Campbell Farm has price out at $10,000 each, so they are sticking with alpacas. The retreat was entitled, “A Time to Bless” based on the work of John O’Donohue, who wrote, “to believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing.” Maggie and I spent the day in an inward and outward journey, first allowing ourselves the luxury of experiencing God’s loving acceptance and blessing of who we are and second, thinking about how we can bless others and then writing a blessing for someone. We finished our retreat on this beautiful estate by walking the grass labyrinth in our bare feet just after the rain. The center of the labyrinth is an arbor of willow saplings woven together to form a shelter (bield), symbolic of our resting in God’s sheltering arms. That’s where we began our labyrinth walk, ready to go out into the world filled with blessings from God. As I was received into the company of fellow pilgrims at the retreat and shared their stories, I began to feel less like a tourist and outsider.

July 7, 2010

Tourists

We just finished our two-day tour bus jaunt around Glasgow. We just barely scraped the surface of the cultural and social sights in this cosmopolitan 1500-year old city. There’s the largest gothic building in Europe situated on the campus of the University of Glasgow and a 40 year old arched bridge across the River Clyde that has the highest concentration of traffic in Europe. Some of the architecture is achingly beautiful, while many of the exteriors are heartbreakingly black from the centuries of coal smoke. We saw the huge cemetery where the industry titans of sixteenth century Glasgow are buried and the monument to John Knox and his colleagues who brought the Reformation to Scotland. The inscription includes a list of the martyrs who were burned at the stake in pursuit of their cause. The sky was dark gray, a melancholy backdrop to the memory of this chapter in our history. The cathedral at the bottom of the hill is the only cathedral that survived intact after the Reformers’ destruction of all things papal. I tried to tag along on a guided tour to overhear what the docent was describing, but listening to a Scottish accent out of one ear is a little tricky. Bottom line, it’s a church that had three congregations worshipping there at the same time. Pretty economical use of the space, really, especially for a cathedral. The photo of white arches is the ceiling of one of the chapels in the “basement.” It was a strange location for something so “heavenly.” We are still busy being tourists, marveling at the similarities and differences of our two cultures. Becoming pilgrims is yet to come. Maybe tomorrow…

July 5, 2010

Misleading appearances

We had dinner Sunday night at a quaint pub called The Osprey. Bob stuck with Fish and Chips, but I went British – Beef, mushroom & Guinness pie. When the “pie” came, it looked like a very tall loaf of bread still in the pan. I was sure I could never eat the whole thing in two sittings, much less one. Alas, the beautiful, golden crust turned out to be hollow. Far below the dome of crust, in the bottom of the loaf pan was a soupy beef and mushroom stew that was gone in a dozen spoonfuls, tasty but much less substantial than the first impression. Have you had that experience before?

Worship at Gorbals is just the opposite – understated, but powerful. The old church building was condemned and torn down a year and a half ago, and the new church building is being delayed by problems with city planning. (Things are the same the world around!) In this interim time, Sunday worship takes place in a training academy for the building trades – a little like Perry Tech for carpenters. A big open room with a cement floor makes no pretensions. The members of the church have to come early to move aside all the carpenter benches, set up the chairs and put out the hymnals and bulletins. The communion table is a carpenter’s bench covered by a table cloth. How appropriate! The service is a lot like ours, only the welcome and announcements were in Scottish. The members put on a reception for us after worship in the lunch room, which was very nice of them considering they had to bring everything in – real china coffee and tea cups, serving plates, scones, Scottish pancakes, SHORTBREAD, tea pots, coffee pots, dish detergent, etc. Gives new meaning to the practice of hospitality. The initial appearance of Gorbals Church was misleading – an austere environment was the setting for a warm and welcoming congregation. Praise God!

July 4, 2010

Laws

We have arrived in Glasgow and had our first taste of driving in the UK. We got delivered at the Beatties’ home around 8:00 a.m. and had plenty of time to shower and breakfast before taking to the streets for church at 11:00 a.m. We left at 10:00 just to be on the safe side, thank heavens. The laws about driving on the left side of the road were complicated by roundabouts that work differently than ours, as well as two lanes that narrow to one lane without notice and one-way streets that are never going the way you need them to. Add to that trying to shift a stick with your left hand, try to figure out the windshield wipers in a downpour and notice that lights turn from green to red to yellow to green. Bob was a trooper and never ended up going the wrong way – just missed a few red lights. And after driving back and forth across the Clyde River several times, we got to church just in the knick of time. I started thinking how hard it must have been for the people of Israel to obey the law of Moses when he brought it down from Mt. Sinai. Leviticus catalogues hundreds and hundreds of rules for them, so no wonder they faltered more than a few time. Just trying to obey the traffic laws in Scotland was taxing enough. We’ve been told that people are tolerant of idiot foreign drivers and we are promised that God is also willing to forgive our transgressions. We’ll let you know about the next adventure!

June 23, 2010

Freedom

Monday, I got back into Bob’s truck to drive from a lunch to the church and I couldn’t get the seat belt to come out. I had to drive those few blocks unrestrained, hoping not to get a ticket but having my excuse all ready, just in case. As I drove, it occurred to me that it had been years since I had driven without a seat belt. Back in the old days, everyone objected to the restraint, so I expected to feel a sense of freedom at not being belted in. But it was just the opposite. I was fearful as I crossed the Yakima Valley Highway, aware that I was vulnerable to injury, should some other driver not be paying attention to what was going on in front of them. I felt ill-at-ease and unsafe in my state of unrestraint, rather than free. It occurred to me that the same might be true of our life in Christ. Those who aren’t in a relationship with Christ see Christians as bound up by the guidelines for a godly life that are found in the Bible. Once you’re in a genuine relationship with Christ, you don’t feel like you’ve given up your freedom. Instead, you feel the security of being held in the grasp of the Holy Spirit. Rather than being adrift and vulnerable to assaults from every direction, you have a path to follow. The guidelines and laws that God gave his people provide handrails to grip and firm footing along the way. Buckle up for the journey of faith!

June 8, 2010

Unity

Last night I was listening to a sermon by one of my classmates in the Academy for Missional Preaching, which I’ll be attending at the end of the month. She was preaching the Pentecost and Tower of Babel texts on World Communion Sunday. She had a wonderful insight that God’s act of confusing the people’s language after they built the Tower of Babel wasn’t punishment after all. She said, “Maybe the diversity of Babel was God’s gift to make people look beyond themselves – that it was the beginning of redemption.” Because when you aren’t the same as the other person, when you speak different languages, it takes more effort to build a relationship. She said, “unity is only possible when people fully enter into the foreign experience of the other.” Her message reminded me of our mission statement, “Building and nurturing relationships with God, family and community.” Relationships require us to be intentional about learning the language of the other person’s experience and world view. It’s hard work, but it results in a communion with the other person that goes far deeper than the superficial and sometimes absent-minded chit-chat that’s possible when we speak the same language. Relating to someone with humility and genuine care is what makes World Communion a reality.

May 29, 2010

Beginnings

I just wanted to share a tidbit from Rick Steves, the travel guru. I’m starting to prepare for this journey Bob and I are taking through space and time to the roots of the Presbyterian Church. One step is reading the literature about the places we’ll visit. One place is St. Andrews. Some of you know St. Andrews for the event that happens once every five years. It’s the site of the British Open, which will be held July 15-18 this year. That’s a wild week when 100,000 golf pilgrims flood the town. St. Andrews is also the location of St. Andrews Castle, the place where the founder of the Presbyterian Church, John Knox was captured and sent to France to row on a galley ship. He eventually made his way to Geneva and studied under John Calvin. When he returned to Scotland, Knox preached in the churches around St. Andrews and got the people fired up enough to convert the country to Protestantism. Under Knox’s leadership, the Scottish Reformation created the Church of Scotland, with the same presbyteries we have in the U.S. Today, about 40 percent of Scots claim affiliation with the Church of Scotland, compared to 20% who are Catholic. I guess the other 40% are backsliders. Anyway, we will get to visit the beginning place of the Presbyterian Church, touch the walls and hear the stories. We’ll tell you all about it when we return.

May 20, 2010

Storms

Yesterday afternoon, the bell choir was practicing in the balcony when that terrible storm hit. We were very close to the ferocious wind and the pounding rain, yet we were protected by the vaulted roof over our head. We had a very real sense of “sanctuary” in the midst of the storm. That’s a bit of a metaphor of God’s protective presence that keeps us at least spiritually safe when a storm rages around us. Remember that when you read the newspaper about the latest political furor or arson fire. God is ultimately in control.

3∙18∙2010

Hospitality

Our study on hospitality this morning in our Lenten study broadened my horizons about the extent of hospitality. It’s about more than inviting our friends and family to dinner – “a series of grand gestures at controlled times” as Joan Chittister writes. Hospitality in the biblical sense is a spiritual act and a holy event. We are called by Jesus’ example to “bend some efforts to change things – to be a voice for the voiceless.” It’s a radical view of caring for the other. Chittister says hospitality doesn’t exist unless we go out of ourselves for someone else at least once a day.” That’s a tall order, but we never grow if we don’t push our boundaries. Think about how you might put that mandate into practice, bit by bit.