Today I am headed out of town for an island adventure. I will be traveling with several clergy who have, over the years, become friends, colleagues, wisdom, and God-with-skin-on to me. We are headed to the Pacific Northwest to the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island. It will be a time for leadership training, renewal, fun and retreat. We all feel greatly blessed to be making this trip especially in the presence of one another.

Whidbey Institute is described as:’"a place of deep inqiry and inspiration dedicated to the transformation of heart, mind, and culture for a more sustainable, just and fruitful future for all. We are committed to the emergence of a new and right relationship between the natural and social world through the development of vital communities and the formation of courageous,creative and competent leadership on behalf of the whole earth community. We ground our work in the ongoing development of a deep and spacious spiritual core and cultivate practices that inform and sustain learning and hope."

In the planning of this trip, the image of island has become important to me.I think many of us often feel like an island within the church, within the world. Have you? It is an often lonely place. Yet, what always brings me back from that loneliness is community and my experience of the Holy in the faces, the life stories, the challenges and the mountaintop experiences I have the privilege of being witness to in the life of others. And when that doesn’t work, it is the experience of God-with-leaves, God-with-blossom, God-with-wings, that pulls me back and into the Circle of Life.

And so it is right that as we travel to an island, we go in the presence of one another, carrying with us the prayers and blessing of those on larger land. It is indeed a gift to make this journey and I ask for your prayers for traveling mercies.

If there is internet service available, I will write from the island. If not, I will share the stories of our insights when I return.

"All
mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one
chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better
language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the
bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon
the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all:….No man is an
island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am
involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell
tolls; it tolls for thee."  John Donne