Hello everyone. With our sabbatical complete, I am moving my blogging back to Runaway Pastor. I plan to post this afternoon.
If you are a follower here, I'd love for you to jump in as a follower at http://www.RunawayPastor.blogspot.com Thanks!
David
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Part 2: Reflecting on a Sabbatical
Sunday morning worship, December 19, 2010, preparation for prayer
Shelly and I had the opportunity to see many different faith expressions during our time away. While visiting Gvantsa, our former exchange student who lives in the Republic of Georgia, we were taken to many churches and cathedrals. Here we witnessed a different type of faith.
It seems that in the west, we have settled on a belief system which depends upon what we can see and touch, or on what we can reason or prove with science or philosophy. We want cold hard facts. We aren't interested much in angels or miracles--unless we need one.
The Eastern Orthodox, see miracles around every corner. They believe in things that we might struggle to imagine. Yet, I love lighting candles in their churches, and thinking of them as prayers that linger long after I've left the room. In their glorious and mysterious houses of worship, they breath-in the thick, rich incense, believing--as our Old Testament teaches--that their prayers and praises go mystically into the presence of God in the wafting, rising smoke.
Today, as we stand on the verge of Christmas, the miracle of a virgin birth seems far away. The idea of an angel visiting us at home, or in a dream, never even crosses our minds. And this puts us in a tough spot. "Without faith," the Hebrew writer tells us, "it is impossible to please God."
As we pray this morning, I ask you to invite the Spirit of God to open the eyes of your soul to his miraculous ways. To quit insisting upon everything "making sense." Do you hear what that phrase means? Making "SENSE." In other words, provable to your senses...touch, smell, sight, sound or taste. But spiritual stuff does not always "make sense."
Are you willing to step outside the world of cold, concrete stuff; and experience God's life-giving presence this season? Let's tell him so.
Shelly and I had the opportunity to see many different faith expressions during our time away. While visiting Gvantsa, our former exchange student who lives in the Republic of Georgia, we were taken to many churches and cathedrals. Here we witnessed a different type of faith.
It seems that in the west, we have settled on a belief system which depends upon what we can see and touch, or on what we can reason or prove with science or philosophy. We want cold hard facts. We aren't interested much in angels or miracles--unless we need one.
The Eastern Orthodox, see miracles around every corner. They believe in things that we might struggle to imagine. Yet, I love lighting candles in their churches, and thinking of them as prayers that linger long after I've left the room. In their glorious and mysterious houses of worship, they breath-in the thick, rich incense, believing--as our Old Testament teaches--that their prayers and praises go mystically into the presence of God in the wafting, rising smoke.
Today, as we stand on the verge of Christmas, the miracle of a virgin birth seems far away. The idea of an angel visiting us at home, or in a dream, never even crosses our minds. And this puts us in a tough spot. "Without faith," the Hebrew writer tells us, "it is impossible to please God."
As we pray this morning, I ask you to invite the Spirit of God to open the eyes of your soul to his miraculous ways. To quit insisting upon everything "making sense." Do you hear what that phrase means? Making "SENSE." In other words, provable to your senses...touch, smell, sight, sound or taste. But spiritual stuff does not always "make sense."
Are you willing to step outside the world of cold, concrete stuff; and experience God's life-giving presence this season? Let's tell him so.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Reflecting on a Sabbatical: Part One
Journaled, Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Many have been asking me if I enjoyed my trip, or if we had a nice vacation. I can only answer with a "Yes." However, if I have time to speak with those who ask--I mean, if I have the time to sit down and look them in the eye long enough for each of us to see beyond the haze of cliche--then I can speak truth to them. The past three and one half months have been the most grueling and wonderfully transforming months I've ever lived.
I've never treated a journey with such reverence. I treasured each day of our recent sabbatical as a gift of life, not of place. So coming home has not seemed a desertion of pleasure, but a continuing of the sojourn. It has not been a disappointing return to the "same old." I have returned to a place I've never been. Same house, same job, same cars and dogs and bills. Different me.
I treasure the Italian apartment we called home for six weeks of our fourteen week, four-continent trip. But I don't long to be back there, in the way I have pined in times past for some surf-side beach chair. What Christ accomplished there, I am experiencing here, now, today--beside the fire in my home. And I benefitted from it earlier today as I encouraged a parishioner who is grieving, and yesterday in a nursing facility while ministering to a friend who has had yet another stroke.
The peace of Christ which is beyond understanding has worked in and through me. And that peace could not have been found on a three week vacation. It required entering daily into the mine of prayer. Daily, over the course of months. (This has not stopped). Finding peace required much confession and loving counsel. Peace was not gained like some loaf of bread to be picked up on aisle one. Peace emerged in tiny nuggets--minute, yet treasured fragments of authenticity and truth; extracted from massive boulder-sized frustration, selfish ambition, grief, and even some unknown resentment that I had been carefully and diligently sweeping under the rug of my psyche.
Spiritual work is not easy. And it cannot be hurried. The Lilly Endowment's Clergy Renewal Grant has provided me the time and the space to do the difficult work of sorting out my life and spirit. Fourteen weeks may seem a long time, but it was only after week thirteen, that I was ready for one more visit with my spiritual director. There I dropped my last anxieties of returning to ministry. I was ready: a new and centered man.
The global destinations we visited were spectacular. Some see them as the reason for the journey. They were not. They were only the setting of a journey of prayer and devotion. I traveled a far greater distance in my heart and head, than over land or sea.
Many have been asking me if I enjoyed my trip, or if we had a nice vacation. I can only answer with a "Yes." However, if I have time to speak with those who ask--I mean, if I have the time to sit down and look them in the eye long enough for each of us to see beyond the haze of cliche--then I can speak truth to them. The past three and one half months have been the most grueling and wonderfully transforming months I've ever lived.
I've never treated a journey with such reverence. I treasured each day of our recent sabbatical as a gift of life, not of place. So coming home has not seemed a desertion of pleasure, but a continuing of the sojourn. It has not been a disappointing return to the "same old." I have returned to a place I've never been. Same house, same job, same cars and dogs and bills. Different me.
I treasure the Italian apartment we called home for six weeks of our fourteen week, four-continent trip. But I don't long to be back there, in the way I have pined in times past for some surf-side beach chair. What Christ accomplished there, I am experiencing here, now, today--beside the fire in my home. And I benefitted from it earlier today as I encouraged a parishioner who is grieving, and yesterday in a nursing facility while ministering to a friend who has had yet another stroke.
The peace of Christ which is beyond understanding has worked in and through me. And that peace could not have been found on a three week vacation. It required entering daily into the mine of prayer. Daily, over the course of months. (This has not stopped). Finding peace required much confession and loving counsel. Peace was not gained like some loaf of bread to be picked up on aisle one. Peace emerged in tiny nuggets--minute, yet treasured fragments of authenticity and truth; extracted from massive boulder-sized frustration, selfish ambition, grief, and even some unknown resentment that I had been carefully and diligently sweeping under the rug of my psyche.
Spiritual work is not easy. And it cannot be hurried. The Lilly Endowment's Clergy Renewal Grant has provided me the time and the space to do the difficult work of sorting out my life and spirit. Fourteen weeks may seem a long time, but it was only after week thirteen, that I was ready for one more visit with my spiritual director. There I dropped my last anxieties of returning to ministry. I was ready: a new and centered man.
The global destinations we visited were spectacular. Some see them as the reason for the journey. They were not. They were only the setting of a journey of prayer and devotion. I traveled a far greater distance in my heart and head, than over land or sea.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Photographic Memories
SATURAY 20 NOVEMBER, 2010 ASSISI, ITALY
I marvel at the artistry some people have with photography. My son and I both can take a photograph of some scene, and his seems to live, while mine looks like...well, a picture. We have a mother and daughter in our church back home that seem to be able to photograph a child's thoughts, not only their image. And there was a young woman in our last congregation who posts her photos on a blog, and I still visit there just to enjoy the artistry she possesses. But some things a photograph cannot do.
We have reached again and again for our camera here, hoping to capture the grandeur of some mountain, or the stately castle atop this medieval city. We have taken pictures of dear friends, wanting to remember forever their touch and smile and presence. Yet, photography proves itself mostly futile. Even skilled photographers capture only a shadow of the reverenced moment. The moment itself, the chill-down-the-spine of it, somehow remains illusive. It can only be known to the ones who live it...while they live it. And then it is gone.
We have walked along breathtaking pathways, heard of miraculous happenings, and we've had the desire to somehow possess them--so that we can later share them. But there is no media which can capture and own these places. They are not, after all, photo-ops to be exploited. Here is a living and breathing world which will not be imprisoned in some scrapbook zoo, any more than those places and events happening around you--where you are--right now. They are "once in a lifetime." And we are only able to witness one scene in one place at one time; and that moment--we are only loaned, with no rights to ownership.
We have not simply visited a beautiful place. We have entered into its history--the living and dying and becoming of another place on this earth. Seasons have changed, tears have fallen for joy and in sorrow. And even though we've witnessed and contributed to these days and weeks here in this place so far away from our home, we can never in any true measure define them for any other person.
I pray for the grace of gratefulness. For the contentment one knows when receiving a precious gift. And for the wisdom to treasure these moments enough to show their shadows to others, while guarding their life within my soul.
I marvel at the artistry some people have with photography. My son and I both can take a photograph of some scene, and his seems to live, while mine looks like...well, a picture. We have a mother and daughter in our church back home that seem to be able to photograph a child's thoughts, not only their image. And there was a young woman in our last congregation who posts her photos on a blog, and I still visit there just to enjoy the artistry she possesses. But some things a photograph cannot do.
We have reached again and again for our camera here, hoping to capture the grandeur of some mountain, or the stately castle atop this medieval city. We have taken pictures of dear friends, wanting to remember forever their touch and smile and presence. Yet, photography proves itself mostly futile. Even skilled photographers capture only a shadow of the reverenced moment. The moment itself, the chill-down-the-spine of it, somehow remains illusive. It can only be known to the ones who live it...while they live it. And then it is gone.
We have walked along breathtaking pathways, heard of miraculous happenings, and we've had the desire to somehow possess them--so that we can later share them. But there is no media which can capture and own these places. They are not, after all, photo-ops to be exploited. Here is a living and breathing world which will not be imprisoned in some scrapbook zoo, any more than those places and events happening around you--where you are--right now. They are "once in a lifetime." And we are only able to witness one scene in one place at one time; and that moment--we are only loaned, with no rights to ownership.
We have not simply visited a beautiful place. We have entered into its history--the living and dying and becoming of another place on this earth. Seasons have changed, tears have fallen for joy and in sorrow. And even though we've witnessed and contributed to these days and weeks here in this place so far away from our home, we can never in any true measure define them for any other person.
I pray for the grace of gratefulness. For the contentment one knows when receiving a precious gift. And for the wisdom to treasure these moments enough to show their shadows to others, while guarding their life within my soul.
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