"Then God said,"I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey." Exodus 3:7-8a

A land flowing with milk and honey…..what a wonderful image…that earthly place that is filled with what will sustain, bring joy, feed the spirit.I believe each person has within them that place, that land, perhaps the place they were born or the place of their ancestors. This land is the place where their soul rests and finds recognition in the soil that fed their bloodline. It is the place that is in their DNA whether they are aware of it or not. We are, after all, earthbound beings and this is our home.

Last week we sat and listened to a woman named Dorothy who told us about her people, the Gullah people. These people are the direct descendants of the slaves brought to our country who reside in the island areas of South Carolina. They have worked hard over the years to maintain their identity, culture,language,music,food and to keep their ties to the land that was forced upon them. She told us how the people had built their cemeteries on the shore, near the water, because they believed that when they died and were buried, their spirits would be able to cross the water and go home again, to Africa. I was mesmerized by this idea, by her story, by this deep longing for the land. Now with development and some complicated land ownership laws, these cemeteries are being removed to make way for beach houses and other buildings to support the local economy. How will their spirits find home again?

The scriptures are filled with stories of people who are displaced, in exile, enslaved, who are trying to make their way home  It is one of our common human stories even when we are unaware of it. We each carry the cell memory of our ancestors deep within us that calls us to prefer mountains over water, prairie over desert, the sand over stone. Some people have spent their lives searching for ‘something’ that is just outside their reach only to arrive in a place they have never been and feel completed.

Where is your land of milk and honey? Where does your spirit find its home? Th poet John Soos writes: "To be of the Earth is to know…the restlessness of being a seed, the darkness of being planted, the struggle toward the light, the pain of growth into the light, the joy of bursting and bearing fruit, the love of being food for someone, the scattering of your seeds, the decay of the seasons, the mystery of death, and the miracle of birth."

No matter the soil of our home, this is the miracle of who we are.

Have a blessed weekend………………………….

"Every long journey is made of small steps
Is made of the courage,the feeling you get
When you know it’s been waiting, been waiting for you
The journey’s the only thing you want to do.
We cannot know what you go through or see through
    your eyes
But we will surround you, the pride undisguised
In every direction whatever you view
You’re taking our love there with you."
                            – Ann Reed

At the beginning of Lent I began to create a file of songs about pilgrimage, being a pilgrim, and songs that spoke to being on a spiritual journey. The file is filled with hymns, camp songs, folks songs and other songs that fit our Lenten theme of ‘Passport for Pilgrims.’  Journey is a subject of countless songs no doubt because it is a theme we all recognize so fully in our lives. This song by Ann Reed was one of the favorites that I found.

I thought of it again this past Tuesday when one of my co-workers brought her new baby in for us to see. As we passed this beautiful little one, so new to the world, around our circle we each offered her an unspoken blessing by our exuberant welcome. As we ‘oohed and ahhed’ it would have been nearly impossible not to make note of this journey both she and her parents were beginning. "Every long journey is made of small steps….." The small steps she makes each day in her growth is a beautiful beginning to a yet uncharted journey.

This song could provide such a blessing for so many of life’s big moments..birth, baptism, first day of school, marriage, graduation, leaving home, so many moments of transitional joy. It could also provide a blessing for those life moments we don’t plan….illness, divorce, failure, despair, death, so many moments of equally transitional sorrow. In some way each of us awakes to an uncharted journey each and every day. The small steps continue to take us to places we have planned and those we would not have chosen. It is the way of life.

For me, the true beauty of this song is in the final few lines:"But we will surround you, the pride undisguised, in every direction whatever you view, You’re taking our love there with you." In the many times I’ve headed down a new path or been pushed there, what has given me the courage to continue when the going gets tough and when I feel discouraged, is the deep knowledge that I am held by this unconditional love and compassion. Even when I have not necessarily received it from those I expected to offer it, I have somehow known that the One who breathed me into being extended that blessing with an unimagined grace.

My prayer is that it may also be that way with you….in your small steps, in your big life, on your sacred journey.

Some time last year I heard Susan Werner being interviewed on public radio. She told of traveling to more than 20 churches across the country and then sitting down to write the songs that make up her CD "The Gospel Truth."At the time of the interview, I was running errands and actually sat and listened in the Target parking lot. I was so taken with her lilting voice, her hard questions that melted into beautiful lyrics, the longing and power in the timbre of her voice.

Words like: "Excuse me sir what did you say, when you shout so loud it’s hard to tell. You have that I must change my ways for I am surely bound to hell. Well I know you’d damn me if you could. But my friend, that’s simply not your call. If God is great and God is good, why is your heaven so small?"

I find that powerful stuff. There have certainly been times when I have been a visitor at a church and have felt something similar. And being someone who has given much of her life to the daily workings of the church, I pray that no one ever leaves a worship service with the same feeling. But I am sure it has happened and I feel the pain of that.

Werner’s words carry a deep longing for what I would call the kin-dom of God…..that gathering of people that lives in the Way of Jesus. A community that is loving, peaceful, accepting,non-judgmental, hopeful,compassionate and unconditional in its pursuit of goodness."I got plenty and then some, what do I do? I got plenty and then some, what do I do? I go out and help somebody get plenty and then some too, that’s what I do." The connections that gird the social action of the church runs through each song.

The pain of being rejected by people who profess belief in a God of Love also finds voice in her lyrics: "How do you love those who never will love you, who are happy to shove you out in front of the train? How do you not hate those who have loaded their Bibles and armed their disciples?  And I can’t find forgiveness for them anywhere in this, and with God as my witness, I really have tried." Those words break my heart because I know so many people who could sing those words with such conviction.

But perhaps the song that most touches me is Sunday Morning."Sunday morning there is someplace that I’m supposed to be. Keeps returning, the feeling keeps coming over me. Just like music, or like sunlight on a a distant memory. Sunday mornings.Sunday mornings." In this song she remembers what it was like to be a part of a family that attended church together, the rituals, warm feelings and sense of safety and belonging that brought to her. As she grew and felt more alienated by her view from the pew, she finally left. But the longing continues and led to the creation of these songs.

If you want to hear the beautiful music that accompanies these words, I invite you hear Susan at Hennepin Church on April 11th. If you cannot make it, I commend her CD to you. She is a minstrel with a heart of gold and a deep search for faith.

"You’re not going to see people like this again for a long time, he said & I said I always saw people like this & he looked at me for a moment & said, You’re not from around here, are you?" Brian Andreas, Traveling Light

Back now on Minnesota soil, surrounded by the blinding light of sun on snow, I have found myself daydreaming about last week’s trip to the beach. I have been caught staring longingly off into the distance, remembering the green grass, brilliant colors of flowers,warm temperatures, sumptuous food I didn’t cook and the slow pace that usually overtakes a person when they have the sound of surf as their background music.

I have also been thinking about the interesting people we met and those we only observed. One young woman in particular keeps coming to mind. Thursday afternoon we walked the sand on Hilton Head Island. People were running, riding bikes, flying kites, reading and just sitting, soaking up the sun. I was walking with my head turned toward the water. That’s when I saw the first fin move above the waves. Soon there was another and another and then people stopped to watch. Dolphins!

As we stood there staring, my eyes were diverted by a young woman in a bathing suit and tank shirt, camera in hand. She was walking in a way that was so determined I had to stop looking at the dolphins and watch her. Her long, lithe strides took her right into the icy, cold water, her arms now lifted high above her head to keep the camera dry. She was so focused, so intent on getting as close as humanly possible, I began to feel this affinity with her desire. Inside my head I was cheering her on. "Go, go, swim as near as you can….swim with the dolphins!"

The beautiful mammals moved down the beach, following the wind and waves. Someone called out to her, "Look, there they are!." She was now an extension of all who watched. But she was the brave one, moving through the waves, the water nearly up to her neck now. She was close to them now but they of course kept moving while she was pushed constantly back by the power of the waves, the force of the undertow.

Back on the land, a woman dressed in warmer clothes called her name. Her mother? Finally, she began to move back toward shore. Did she get the picture she wanted? Did she get close enough?  I don’t know. Somehow as I left that scene I was certain of one thing. I am sure that was not the first time the one who called her name had seen the determined, confident walk that led her into the sea. A smile began to form on my face…..and I stood a little taller.

"I hope it will be said we taught them to stand tall & proud, even in the face of history & the future was made new & whole for us all, one child at a time." Brian Andreas

"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious,
too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as
a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea".
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I have spent the last several days on beaches. Some were filled with retired folks walking leisurely with seemingly not a care in the world. On others college students played volleyball and Frisbee, full of the exuberance of spring break in a warm climate.Peppered among these people were families with young children building sand castles and trying to outrun the waves as they rolled onto shore. And there were plenty of us who fell in between all these descriptions.

The common bond of all these people? Shells. All along the beaches people of varying ages and stages of life periodically bent over and retrieved from the sand this treasure….a sea shell. What is the amazing appeal of these fragile things? Is it the tiny, unique and intricate beauty of each one? Is it that they were once home to something alive? Is it that they somehow connect us with the sea, that place from which humans most likely emerged to walk the Earth? No matter one’s view of the genesis of Creation, all humans came into the world through the water that held us…our mother’s womb . Our first home was water and the majority of our body is made up of water. So it only seems right that we should walk the sand and recover these little containers of life that was once held in the vastness of water.

At each beach, I started out telling myself that I will only pick up the ‘very unusual one’. But before I know it there I am, pockets full, hands full, no more room….until the next walk. On this outing the only thing missing was the occasional addition of the shell that one of my sons knew I couldn’t live without. Off on their own adventures now, I missed their contributions to my obsession.

At baptism we often use shells to remind us of the vast bodies of water that nurture us, nourish us, connect us,cleanse us, give us life. This Earth on which we travel is mostly water, a shell of sorts on which we ride, tucked into its curves and crannies, we listen for the whoosh of its water within our ears, within our heart.  We grow and outgrow, abandon our shell homes and take on new ones. Yet this Earth home remains constant,true. Perhaps that is what draws us to these jewels we find when the tides deliver them at our feet. Bending down, we reach out and pick up and we remember. Young ones new to this earth tuck an oyster shell in a pocket and remember. Those full of the promise of what is yet to be press a scallop shell into the hand of another young one and remember. Reaching down and saving a conch shell from being drawn back into the tide, those who have walked the beach many years, remember.

And so it goes……………..on and on and on.

The last several days we have been traveling in the islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. We have witnessed amazing wild life, some unusual to our Midwestern eyes, and some birds that may also spend the summer days in our Minnesota backyard. Seeing them gave new meaning to the term ‘snowbird’.

This Low Country, as it is called, is the home of the loggerhead turtles, those amazing creatures that come ashore to lay their eggs on the beaches surrounded by marshes and salt water. They live a precarious life. Signs in a nature preserve stated:Loggerhead turtles find their way to the nest by the light of the moon. No artificial light please! I am imagining that in late May and early June many eager tourists line the beaches to see the loggerheads make their way onto the beach. Those same people probably carry flashlights to get a better look at this miraculous phenomenon and can throw the turtles off their natural course.

I thought of the many times I had been thrown off by ‘artificial’ light. Those times when I have been lured by the glow of material possessions, fancy this or that, the fleeting words of recognition and affirmation. Following that artificial light almost always leads away from the internal, natural path. If the loggerheads are thrown off by the artificial light, they will not return to their rightful home. So it is with we humans.

Last night we walked the beach and stood looking up at the night sky. There is very little artificial light from tall buildings or large cities. The constellations, those guiding stars of our ancestors blinked brightly, as they have since the beginning of time. Staring heavenward, the natural lights of our Universe told us exactly where we stood in the scheme of things. Without artificial light to throw you off, it is easy to remember who you are and whose you are…….and the way home.

Walking along the river in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday, I saw a man selling lovely pieces of slate with wicks that burned brightly. The thin pieces of gray and brown slate had some kind of oil container inserted that allowed the rocks to appear to be burning. As I looked over the varying shapes and sizes of these rock and fire creations, my eyes fell upon his aqua t-shirt: Love Your Life! it said in bold white letters. That morning, in addition to preparing his goods to sell, he had also decided to send people an important message.

In one of Savannah’s green squares not too far from where this man was working there is a bronze statue of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley and his brother Charles are famous in this city. John lived here from February 1736 to December 1737. It was a short, troubled, but significant stay on the shores of this new land. John preached on street corners, befriended the Native Americans here, and began the Sunday School in America. Through the weekly gatherings at his simple wooden parsonage, twenty to thirty people studied scripture, prayed for one another, shared their faith and created community….still the backbone of what it means to be the church.

On the base of the statue of Wesley are these words: "I felt my heart strangely warmed. While we live, let us live in earnest. I look upon all the world as my parish. The best of all God is with us." Each of these sentences were spoken by Wesley in different situations but they make a nice synopsis of his message.

As he witnessed a group of Moravians in prayer,Wesley had been moved by their faith and how he saw the Spirit moving in their lives. He wanted what they had. Through his interaction with them, his faith moved from head to heart and that connection carried him through the ups and downs of his ministry of which there were many. His intention was never to start a church but to continue a movement of renewal in the church he loved,the Church of England. His desire to help people connect their faith with their real, everyday lives, to lift the poor and troubled out of despair and to give them inspiration for a new and better life, called him to name the world his parish. And that passionate belief that God is in the messiness of it all led him to live that faith every day.

In this city known for ghosts and spirits, the presence of John Wesley lives on in the bells that sing out familiar hymns on the hour and the beauty of church steeples. But on Saturday I also found another reminder of that presence.Though separated by centuries,Wesley and the artist who had taken cold, hard slate and given it warmth and the life of a flickering flame had much in common. Both carried a similar, earnest message: Love Your Life!