"The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night." Exodus 13.21

The magazines I subscribe to are mostly filled with pictures. My reading time is devoted to books and newspapers but I enjoy the luxury of sitting down with a nice cup of tea and lulling over photos in a magazine.Yesterday I opened the first of a new subscription to National Geographic Traveler. This is definitely going to be a keeper….lots of great places to dream about, to enter into, to spend time with as a way of taking a small vacation from the ordinary day.

This month had a special feature on Appalachia. I looked at the beautiful photographs one expects from National Geographic and I allowed myself the pleasure of reading one of the articles about the Appalachian Valley, a place I know well. I was reminded of something I knew about this area of the country that has always held great meaning to me. Writing about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s damming of the rivers in the 1930′ s in order to create electricity for the people of these mountains, James Conway tells of the many people who were displaced by the construction and flooding. Those people who had lived in the same place since their ancestors came to this country from Scotland, Wales, England and Germany had kept the original embers of the fire that had glowed in their hearth from the first days. These embers were the center of the fires that warmed their homes decades later. When they were forced out or willingly left, many were known to have carried the embers of that fire to the next place they would live. They might have left their original home but they carried the fire of their ancestors with them to begin their new life on different soil.

It is a fascinating and comforting image for me. It is also a great metaphor for the fire of all we carry with us each day. Many of us carry the fire of ancestors, grandparents, who continued to tell us the stories of those who sacrificed much so we can now live in the ways we do. Others carry the fire of their faith with them, warming and continuing to uphold them on their life’s journey. Still others carry a fire of challenge given to them by those they may never have met but whose very lives have etched their thumb print on hearts now beating for justice.

Reading this article caused me once again to reflect upon the embers of my home fire and those who carried them through time, from home to home, from heart to heart. I pray I will always have the courage to fan that flame and keep that fire alive to pass on to my children and my children’s children.

What embers do you carry with you? What fire is at the center of your life that warms the core of who you are? How does that fire get passed from place to place, from person to person? In this time of changing seasons, it is something to consider.

"Thank you Father for your free gift of fire. Because it is through fire that you draw near to us every day. It is with fire that you constantly bless us. Bless this fire today. Make this fire a worthy thing. Let it become a reminder of your love. A reminder of life without end. " Masai Prayer

"I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to
go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised
land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that
we as a people will get to the promised land."  Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.

To say that adolescence is a difficult time is such an understatement. As we find our way through the world, those early double digits are filled with challenge, rebellion, discovery, pain and incredible growth. Most of this realization, unfortunately, only comes with age. Learning to be our true selves is a tangled web that deserves to be held lovingly and gently until we find our place on the path of our life, in our place on the planet.

I’ve been forced to think about my own adolescence today while we, as a nation, look back on forty years ago to the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As I think about those times, the Viet Nam War, the assassinations of Dr. King, John and Robert Kennedy, all the turmoil that filled the world, I marvel at all we learned and yet all we failed to realize. I believe that if I could have projected ahead from my wide-eyed love of the world to this very day, my hopeful, faithful, optimistic self would have seen the world changed more perceptively than it is. Peace would have been at hand. We would never be involved in a war again the way we were in Viet Nam, without hope of an end in sight. People would have learned to talk things out, seen wisdom in the diversity of who we are, stopped killing each other. Adolescence carries its own set of rose colored glasses.

I believe it is those very lenses that allows those who work for peace and justice to continue to do so. Dr. King said: "Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase." Those I know who are doing the work of justice and peace in the world, get up every morning and do just that. They get out of bed, walk out the door, listen to people’s stories, help them find a safe home, a job, a lawyer, an advocate, food, a bus pass,schools for their children, an interpreter. They do this regardless of the color of the person’s skin, the language that first comes off their tongue,what their past has held. Someplace within each of these people who work long hours for very little money, lives the spirit of what I remember from those turbulent days, when our heroes were felled and our world seemed to be spinning out of control, a spirit that was inspired by the dream of the promised land. In this land all would dwell in peace and harmony, and humans would work and live together, recovering the Eden we had lost.

Like Moses before him, Dr. King did not get to see the promised land. He was only able to walk with the people toward it. And here we are today, forty years later, still walking. We have seen glimpses of hope, there have been baby steps toward understanding. And yet we keep on, inspired over and over again by his call, his commitment, his sacrifice. Across the years it is as if his voice continues: "Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better."

God grant us courage………………..

Have a blessed weekend.

"That same day two of them were walking to the village of Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened." Luke 24:13

This Sunday’s scripture from the Gospel according to Luke is the story we have come to call "the Road to Emmaus" story. This is one of those accounts of the disciples walking along together on the road, talking as close friends do. You see it all the time as people here walk around the lakes. Two people, their heads bent toward one another, telling the truth of their lives as they walk along, avoiding a puddle here, a crack in the sidewalk there. While the world is alive around them, they have only attention for one another.

Along side them comes a supposed stranger who begins to walk and talk with them. They didn’t recognize the person as Jesus. Who knows why? They just didn’t. It was only later when they came to the end of their walk and invited this stranger to have dinner with them did they realize that it was Jesus who had been walking with them all along. They shared bread, they shared blessing, they looked into the eyes of one another, and they knew that the Holy was in their midst .After he had left them again they checked in with one another: "Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road?"

What a story!  These scriptures which we read in these days after Easter are account after account of Jesus showing up to those who loved him and walked through the world with him. While our rational minds can ask all kinds of questions about these stories, for me they point to one very important message. This Jesus, this Incarnation of God, still continued to show up in people’s lives, offering words of comfort and hope. "My peace I leave with you." he said over and over again.

As I reflect upon these words this week, here is my prayer. May every young man and woman serving in our military, far from home and what they hold dear, feel that Presence of Peace  walking with them. May everyone whose home is being threatened in these desperate times, know the assurance of a Love that will not shame them or let them go. May every child who lives in fear be able to reach out in the night and find a caring hand that is strong and sure. May every senior who waits in loneliness for a friendly visitor look down the long hall to see someone with the face of Jesus coming there way.

And when the Fire of the Holy burns within us, help us each to take notice and give thanks, deep, deep, thanks.

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" Isaiah 43:19

It started with a recipe for a hearty root vegetable soup.Sometime in January I had found the perfect soup for a winter day so I went to the grocery store and purchased all the ingredients. I came home and put everything away and one thing led to another and I never got around to making the soup. The sweet potatoes were used as a quick dinner one evening. The acorn squash was baked with butter and orange juice. The carrots were eaten as a snack. The onions found their way into a salad or as topping for a sandwich.

But the rutabaga languished under the sink in the dark.Several days ago I came downstairs to see it sitting on the kitchen table, found by my husband as he rooted(sorry about that) around under the sink for something. The rutabaga, perhaps one of the least lovely vegetables, had sprouted beautiful, frilly deep green leaves. While resting in the dark, this peasant vegetable had become a lovely sight. Right now it is sitting in our kitchen window continuing to amaze us with its foliage.

When I think of rutabagas I often think of the memoirs I have read about WW II. It seems this vegetable often made up the base of many soups that kept prisoners alive. The vegetable, for me, holds a certain sadness and stark quality for that very reason. And yet, here it is right now bringing such pleasure.

So many times in our lives we are confronted with people or situations that seem to be without beauty, without much hope for being more than a knobby, hopeless eyesore. Yet, I believe, that within each person, within each difficult situation there is the potential to bring forth new life, something unseen and yet to be realized. Isn’t that the core message of the resurrection story?

In this season of Eastertide, those days which hold the joy of Easter, we are called to look for signs that, indeed, Life is at the center of all. And so we walk through the world with eyes wide open, watching for the presence of the Sacred in our midst…..even, perhaps especially, in the lowly rutabaga. And let the people sing, "Alleluia!"

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Matthew 6:21

My father often said that if he ever became rich he would quit his job and open a restaurant. When he described the restaurant it was not a restaurant at all but a ‘soup kitchen’, a place where people who were hungry could come and have warm food,conversation and companionship. As someone who had been a cook in the Navy, he was famous for his chili….that lasted for days because he never seemed to get that idea of ‘quantity’, that the family of five didn’t need the potful that would feed a fleet. I loved thinking of him in a little diner someplace cooking up pots of comfort for anyone who would walk in the door.

It is always a lively and telling conversation when people dream and discuss what they would do if they came into a fortune. Lottery winners often say they will continue their jobs. Some do. Others begin a spiral of out of control wealth that leads to some very sad times. Most often people will first buy their ‘dream car’, pay off a mortgage, take that trip of a lifetime, or secure their children’s college educations.Still others, like my Dad, dream of healing the hurts of others, providing for unmet needs, giving away what has been given to them as gift.

Few think of preserving the loon. But that’s just what Iva Weir did with her $1.8 million dollar bequest. Iva’s story made front page news today in Minnesota. Her schoolteacher’s salary fueled by frugal living allowed her, after her death, to leave this amazing amount of money to the Nature Conservancy in Minnesota for conserving the loon’s habitat. Her life long love of the Minnesota bird caused her to provide for its preservation upon her death. What an amazing act!

The loon is a fascinating bird. How many times we have sat on the dock at Papoose Lake watching them glide along the surface of the water, regal yet somehow down-to-earth. We have sat at a distance watching their nests in the reeds along water’s edge, hoping for signs of new life in the nest. I have wonderful memories of hot summer nights, lying awake listening to their mournful call echoing across the lake. Not to mention their wild and frenetic calls of love to one another in the wee hours of the morning. This sound, this bird is the pride of Minnesotans and yet our desire to be near the lakes we hold dear, to be near to these black, white and red-eyed wonders are actually threatening their survival.

And so the money given by a schoolteacher who shaped the lives of children will now provide for the on-going gift of safer nesting, more protected land, wilderness preserved. Iva’s love of loons has been a gift to our children’s children who will also lay awake, exhausted after a day of swimming, listening long and hard for that sound, that precious sound of the loon’s call. Iva’s treasure has been not only a gift to the loons but to us. My heart is full of gratitude.

On Saturday morning we were rushing about doing Saturday things…taking out the garbage, folding laundry, cleaning out drawers. One trip to the garage found my husband and I both outside at the same time. That’s when we heard it….the voices of snow geese returning from being real snowbirds, returning from their winter, most likely, in the Gulf Coast. We could hear them before we could see them. Our eyes scoured the blue morning sky until our ears finally led us to the undulating ribbon of white that was moving right over our house headed along the river’s path that will lead them home to northern Minnesota or Canada. We stood and watched silently naming the moment for what was:blessing.

Five months ago on Thanksgiving Day guests were arriving for a late afternoon feast. As we unloaded the bounty of autumn from cars and walked toward the house someone had said, "Listen!" We stopped, looked toward the sky and there were the snow geese saying goodbye, perhaps congratulating themselves that they had the power, the good sense, to go to warmer climes. The guests who had already made their way into the house came outside and so there we all stood, marking this moment of true Thanksgiving and connection with the miraculous rhythm of Creation, knowing we were saying goodbye to the snow geese and the fullness of the year.

And so now I can say I have had the amazing privilege of saying goodbye and hello to these graceful, soaring creatures who use the sky over our house as their interstate, taking with them the bliss of autumn and returning carrying the anticipation of spring. I am so thankful to have been in the right place at the right time to see their migration. It seems a gift beyond anything I deserve.

As I look out my window right now, there is no sign of spring. Snow falls wildly, re-covering what green grass had become visible. I have to admit its beauty, though I do so begrudgingly. By Thursday it will be gone, such is the fate of these early spring snows. While spring may not be visible to the human eye, the snow geese carry the truth within their sleek, feathered bodies. They fly because they can, and because they know.

The poet Mary Oliver puts it this way: "Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One fall day I heard above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was a flock of snow geese, winging it faster than the ones we usually see, and being the color of snow, catching the sun so they were, in part at least, golden. I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us as with a match which is lit, and bright, but does not hurt in the common way, but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt.The geese flew on. I have never seen them again. Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly."

Some people argue that our country is founded on the principles of individualism. We often speak about a person who is a self-made man or woman, meaning I guess, someone who climbed to success completely on his or her own power. Perhaps these people exist but I have yet to meet one. Those I know who are  ‘successful’, whatever that means, usually have a long list of folks who have mentored them, challenged them, encouraged them, and often prayed over them. In fact, I think that describes each of us, successful or not. We may walk the earth on our own two legs but there is a visible and invisible community that walks with us.

There are times when community pulls together more than others, times when you look around and realize that, like it or not, you are a part of something larger. One of those times is when tragedy strikes. I still have a vivid image of worshiping at the Cathedral of St. Paul in the days after September 11th. Thousands poured into the pews…professionals, day laborers, religious, those who hadn’t walked into a church in years. Within moments we had created a community of people held by tragedy and the longing for comfort and hope.

My heart is aching today for my hometown in southern Ohio. The entire county is reeling from a horrific murder of a beautiful, wonderful woman. What they knew as their sweet,simple life has been attacked with fear, confusion and immense grief. What they have found was not the power of being individuals, but the deep connection of community that will get them through these dark days. Through the strength of faith and one another they will survive.

While holding these beloved people in my prayers, I have also been swept up in another experience of community, the community that expresses itself in pride and joy. The high school in our district which celebrates its 150th anniversary this month, is for the first time in its history in the boy’s state basketball tournament. As I attended the game yesterday…how could I stay away?….my eyes scanned the crowd. Of course hundreds of students were there to provide school spirit and deafening cheers. But also sprinkled among them were teachers who have taken on the task of helping prepare these young men for lives far past this moment of glory. There were parents holding their collective breath while inwardly filled to overflowing with pride, plus grandparents, aunts, uncles, younger siblings. Throughout the crowd there were those folks like me who skipped out of a work day in their suits and ties because this is ‘our school’ and ‘our team’. By our presence we were staking a claim for community that individualism could never touch.

And so today with one arm I reach out toward the community that raised me and provided the connections I needed in my growing, saying a prayer of comfort. And with the other arm I reach out toward this community in which I have found home and the connections that have nurtured my children, offering gratitude for those experiences that hold us together and lift us above the mundane.

"We are all on a journey together…to the center of the universe…Look deep into yourself, into another. It is to a center which is everywhere that is the holy journey….First you need only look: Notice and honor the radiance of everything about you….Play in this universe. Then all these shining things around you: The smallest plant, the creatures and objects are in your care. Be gentle and nurture. Listen…as we experience and accept all that we really are…we grow in care. We begin to embrace others as ourselves, and learn to live as one among many….." Ann Hillman

Have a great weekend…………….

"Lately I’ve been thinking hard about what works to suggest to my children from the vast literary realm we call spiritual writing. This question has serious ramifications, for ideas are food and one becomes, to a greater extent than many realize, what one reads." Philip Zaleski, The Best American Spiritual Writing

I sat with my spiritual director yesterday and talked about a desire to be stimulated intellectually and spiritually. Perhaps it is the gray days of March or our emphasis on being pilgrims that has caused me to be nudged to learn something new. I want to read something that challenges me, something that causes me to see the world with new eyes.  Often this desire grips me in September when school begins again, having been so a part of that learning rhythm my whole life. But whatever the reason, this desire has taken up residence in me during these dreary days before spring’s awakening.

I have been blessed my whole life to be surrounded by life long learners. By mother is an avid reader. She mostly reads novels and through our conversations  I have learned that novels hold not only good stories but great lessons to be learned. I think of the many voracious readers in my circles of friends, those who often begin conversations with: "Have you read….?" or "The other day I was reading.….." I am blessed to be in two book clubs and those circles always bring great suggestions for the next best read. The words we have read together have built a rich soil for the growth of our friendships.

While I am not completely sure what I am searching for, I do know I want something that stimulates my intellect while deepening my spiritual journey. Yesterday while thinking about this quest I had the same sensation you have when you are hungry for a certain taste but just can’t quite come up with what it is.You open cabinets, then the refrigerator door, only to close each without finding what you wanted, needed. I have made similar trips to my bookshelves.

So, I am asking you for your suggestions. What are you reading these days that stimulates and inspires you? Is there a certain author that is challenging you to think new thoughts, ask new questions? Has a certain book grabbed you and caused you to find extra minutes of every day so you can steal away and read? What book is deepening your faith these days?

You may not have noticed but these musing now allow for your comments. And so I invite you to send along your book suggestions by clicking on "Comment on this" at the end of the daily writings. If the book isn’t the one I’m searching for perhaps it will be just the perfect one be for someone else. This process could yield a reading list that feeds us all.

Some people call them ‘ear worms’, those little bits of a song that get stuck in your head and plays itself over and over like a vinyl album that continues to go round and round on the turntable and never turns off. Many people enjoyed their Easter brunch with "Christ the Lord is Risen today" playing background music, heard only by an audience of one. Others had the Hallelujah Chorus providing the soundtrack for their Monday commute.

It is the Wednesday after Easter and I still have an Ann Reed song from our sunrise service accompanying  me  every where I go.  As I drive on busy freeeways, when my mind wanders in a meeting, while I’m eating my breakfast, cleaning this morning’s frost off the windshield, these are the words playing in my head: "Oh, it is time,  I will live out loud and open my eyes to the great divide. I’m walking my path. Finding my way and every step’s a Leap of Faith". Given some of the ‘ear worms’ that have traveled with me before, this one is a blessing.

Leslie Ball led us on this song and as her smoky, rich voice provided the lead, I watched as people sat up straighter in their seats. Snow was falling outside the windows, not a particularly welcome sight on Easter Sunday. Those who were there had risen in the wee hours of the morning, maneuvered icy streets, braced against a cold wind to welcome the day. The song was a moment of transcendence, a time when usually static Minnesotans allowed their tired, bundled-up bodies to sway in their seats as they claimed these words for their own. Every step’s a Leap of Faith and along the way I will live out loud.

It might not have been a traditional message of resurrection but it worked for those who were there. In that gathered body of people there were those I knew who were struggling with great loss, unimaginable loss. There were those who were surrounded by their children and grandchildren together in one place, a great joy. There were those who have new found relationships in their lives and those who had just seen the end of something they thought would last. There were elders and children, young and middle aged. So many life stories singing together proclaiming their path as sacred…..step by precious step.

As I go out into the world today to do my daily tasks, I pray this musical mantra continues to accompany and remind me of its message…..and that moment when ordinary people were lifted to something higher and more beautiful than they could have imagined.

Well, here we are on Easter Monday. Lent is over, Holy Week is in the past and the alleluias of Easter still rings in my ears. I have admitted in this space that Lent and I weren’t in sync this year, blaming it on how early Easter was, how close it came to Christmas. That early part I ended up being very happy about in the end. I was happy because even people on the street-literally a news guy was out on the street asking people-had the opportunity to learn how the date of Easter is derived, a date that is based on so much more than any particular theology or doctrine. In case you didn’t get the word…..first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

My inability to connect with Lent this year could have been partially about the early date. But mostly I think it was because I was being a kind of spiritual brat. You see, I struggle with many of the atonement messages of Lent and Easter. The message doesn’t fit my experience, my own personal theology, my world view. And for what ever reason I always dig my heals in during Lent until by the time we get to Holy Week I have pretty much worked myself into a tizzy about it all. I was happy to read Garrison Keillor’s editorial in yesterday’s Star Tribune:"Oh, ye of faltering faith:It’s Easter" in which he expressed some similar sentiments.

But several things happened to me on the way to Easter this year that opened my eyes…actually my heart. On Maundy Thursday we followed the reading from the gospel of John in which Jesus washes the feet of the disciples as a way to explain to the disciples how it is they are to live their lives. At our service we offered people the option of having their hands or feet washed. As I washed hands gnarled by arthritis, beautifully manicured, smooth and soft, rough and hard, I came face to face with the scriptures."God bless you. And may you love yourself and others as God has loved you." Looking into the eyes of those I have known well and those who were strangers, the doctrines I want to argue with fell away and melted into the puddle of ‘not important’. In that moment, the presence of the Holy overwhelmed my stubbornness.

Then on Good Friday evening we were led in worship by our youth telling the story of Jesus on his final day. As these young people and some of their parents read the scriptures and slowly extinguished candle after candle, the darkness grew around us until all that was left was one candle representing the presence of Christ in our midst. That candle was carried out as we sat in the  lightless place listening to the thirty-three chimes representing the year’s of Jesus life. Slowly, in total silence the Christ candle was carried back into the sanctuary lighting the sweet, beautiful face of a young girl, her face glowing with the amber candlelight and the promise of her life.

That’s when it struck me. It takes all of us to tell this life drama, this story of hope, of promise, of mystery, of unimaginable love. It takes those who are skeptical, those who are certain. It takes those who hang their faith on the literal interpretations and those who live their questions with great passion and pain. It takes the simple faith and the intellectual curiosity, those well read and those uneducated. It takes each of us to keep this story alive and living. That’s what it means to be the church.

On Easter morning it was my role to carry the Christ candle in the Easter procession. While my face is not as young or beautiful as Audrey’s was on Friday night, I was blessed to do my part, to carry the light, to keep the story alive.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen in-deed!