Almost

Between two worlds, I am right now.

Resting done, except for that which has been promised to my soul for better self care going forward.

Reading done, except for the two books I'm in the middle of and likely won't finish.

Beauty observed, except for what waits in regular life, always surprising.

Quiet received, except for that which will be eagerly pursued and can still be found in the normal noise of life.

I am here, fully, yet my heart is being pulled home. Ideas for a preferred future won't leave me alone - in a good way. People I've maintained contact with for eight weeks away are saying they miss me. The life God has called me away from these past weeks is still the life He's called me to. And in a clearest way I have heard Him say, You are MY servant and you are NOT done.

So I linger in these last hours by the water, weeping from the gratitude, breathing in the sweet Georgian Bay air, lavishing in His lavish love to me.

Thank you, everyone who did, for letting me go this long.

Thank you.
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A Swimming Lesson

Isaiah 49:3-5 He told me "...you are My servant. I will show my glory through you.". But I said, "I have worked hard for nothing; I have used all my power, but I did nothing useful.". But the LORD will decide what my work is worth; God will decide my reward.

Being away from what you do for a while is a good thing for everyone. It's good for mothers and caregivers. It's good for teachers and coaches. It's good for those who work hard with their hands and those who work hard with their brains. It's good for pastors, and it's good for their congregations.

One of the things a break is good for is taking stock. Evaluating your work and how and why you do what you do, and what you are or are not accomplishing. I've been doing a LOT of that these past two months during my LOA. I'm coming up to five years in my current ministry position, so the timing is right for it.

Like a lot of people, I work hard at what I do. I spend myself quite thoroughly most weeks, using up a lot of emotional and mental and physical energy. The spiritual component is there too, permeating everything. You know this. When you work hard you want to know that it's accomplished something.

Problem is, when your work is in the abstract arena of spiritual transformation, the results aren't always that obvious. Churches and the people in them don't follow a precise growth chart of tangibles. A lot of it is very private. Most of it you don't hear about. Sermons especially. They require hours of concentrated effort every single week. Do they make any difference in anyone's life? Hard to tell. How do you tell?

And of course, there are so many variables in the growing of souls that are entirely outside of your control. Hard work in itself gaurantees nothing.

Regardless of our profession, I think all of us, at times, can echo the sense of uselessness expressed by "the servant" in Isaiah's prophecy. Sometimes it's just really hard to see any fruits of your labour. Five years.

But an interesting thing happens in Isaiah's dialogue. It's as if God interrupts "the servant's" self evaluation with a holy "get over yourself". "I'm in charge of outcomes," He says. "I'll decide if your work has value or not. And I will reward you, not the growth charts."

This doesn't mean we don't consider the facts and carefully and prayerfully make changes where change is necessary. The Bible is full of effective strategy and growth-oriented goal setting.

But it does redirect my focus. Oh yeah. It's not about me.

I thought these thoughts while swimming back and forth to the channel marker 16 times, to make my kilometre for the day. The benefits to my mind, body and soul are unquestionable, but you wouldn't see any of that on me as I climbed out to towel off.

I'd just look wet and unglamorous and a little too chubby....and satisfied by that one swim.

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Holy Simplicities

Warm rocks on bare feet after the sun's gone down and the air is cooler.

Flat water and a quiet soul with a cup of tea on the deck in the morning.

Flat water and a communing soul with jujubes on the dock in the evening.

Baking cookies, just enough to send some home and ruin supper with the rest.

Blueberries the size of marbles hiding in the under side of a patch that's keeping me quietly occupied for a long, long time.

The loon, silent and majestic, or calling and majestic, aware of but unconcerned with my nearness in the canoe.

The hummingbird, who hovers over me for a brevity, just saying hi and maybe thank you for what we've put in the feeder.

Cross stitch.

Warm water and swimming in it and that overwhelming sense of wellbeing and gratitude that makes me cry as I towel off.

This shady spot on the deck with the lounge chair and a glass of pop with ice cubes in it and the sound of the ice chinking when the pop is finished.

Hanging laundry on a day so hot and breezy that the first load's dry by the time the second load's ready to hang.

Clean and pretty feet.

After swim showers and the time to lavish my skin with coconut oil, including my feet.

Beavers that swim so close to your canoe that you can tell he's looking at you.

Reading and reading and reading and reading.

Waking up to a nap and the screen door is open and the sun and wind and leaves are mingling in the joy of a summer afternoon that has naps in it.

Nothing urgent and no tryanny of it.

The chance to remember who I am separated from what I do.

Father of simple holiness, teach me in all of this. Teach me to see You more in it. Call my heart with Your songs of holy simplicities.

I have ceased my strivings to know that You are God.


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Happy Birthday David!

It's not hard to celebrate this day. It's the day you were delivered to the planet and the party started.

For some astounding reason, God saw fit to let your Dad and I be the ones entrusted to the raising and releasing of your personhood. Lucky us, poor you on many levels, but then again lucky all of us to be the family that got to ring the bells and blow the whistles and dance the dance that was life with our boy.

Remember how you were always inventing new superheroes that were saving the world from certain disaster? More often than not, those adventures caused their own disasters, and anxiety-producing, loud crashing noises from various and sundry places around the house. There'd be a pause, and then to reassure me, you'd call, "I'ne okaaaaay!"

I see you now, my man son, past the crashing noises of an adventurous adolesence, loving on his gentle partner and the baby she carries. And it occurs to me that you are very okay.

You live by your values even when it costs you something, which is a sign of moral maturity. You give yourself fully to others in conversation and engagement, paying attention to the whole person, which is a sign of relational maturity. You hold to and articulate strong opinions in politics and ecology and how those two entities interact, and you do so with well reasoned thought and respect for differing opinions, and that is a sign of intellectual maturity. And you give of yourself to those who need you with gentleness and respect. This is a sign of a strong and honest human being.

Which brings me back to the surprise of being given the Mom-assignment for the person who turned out to be you. Thank you for growing up to be you in spite of me. Thank you for being strong enough to do that, and still love me on the other side of it.

I can't wait to hold and know the child you and Lauren are making. A new party is about to begin. I am just so grateful that I get to dance with you still.

My son, I love you so much.



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Blueberry Therapy

It started with a smattering of blue on green last weekend, but today it was all out blueness on the bushes. The blueberries are here, and there's LOTS!

With the welcome addition of a slight breeze to the sudden summer weather, it was a perfect day today to get out there for some pickings. Warm, sunny, ripe. I had just finished a particularly moving and intimate conversation with God on the deck, and looked up to see that it was just before lunch. "I think I'll go get me some blueberries", I said as sort of the last part of my prayer.

Takes a bit to get ready to go blueberry picking. A hat to keep off those tenacious deer flies. Insect repellent to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Long pants, socks and shoes (the only time I wear them up here) to avoid juniper, or the odd nest of red ants. Shoes also gives a better layer of protection against the rattlesnakes. Let's see what else? Right. The air horn just in case I meet up with the bear. Got my berry bucket, and off I go.

I guess you really have to love blueberries to put up with all that. And I do enjoy eating them. In fact we plan on having blueberry pancakes this weekend when friends are up for a visit, and I can hardly wait.

But when it comes to blueberries, there's more than just the taste factor for me. Truth is, inspite of the annoyances and cautions, I do love the therapy of actually being out there picking them. Yes, I've been driven to near madness by dear flies, eaten alive by mosquitoes, pricked by junipers and startled by rattlesnakes. Not every time and not all in one venture. Oh, and I forgot to mention the spiders. But that's not the point.

There is something very therapeutic for me to have my little bucket, find the safe dry space to plonk my behind, and gather with joy this goodness that has come from the earth free of charge. I'm outside and the air is fresh. The simplicity of the action. The simplicity of the concept. The repeated little motions reaching for the fruit, and the slow, unhurried movement from one choice spot to another, gradually filling to a deep blue mound of goodness and grace.

I've said this before, but blueberries remind me of God's grace. I have not done one thing to earn or deserve these berries, or the joy of their gathering. I did not plant these bushes or prune them or weed around them. I did not water or fertilize. I didn't even purchase the land on which these berries grow. I only go out to get them on beautiful summer mornings. Undeserved. Yet I am rich in blueberries!!

Likewise, I am rich in being forgiven and accepted. The intimacy I can experience with the King of the Universe comes through grace. I don't earn it. I did nothing to deserve it. I only reach out to take it; in the blueberry patch, on the deck, in my soul.

Okay, because I know you're wondering. My only encounter with a bear was me inside and him outside. I saw him through the window, and not out alone in a blueberry patch. He was easy to scare away, a good indication that he is not an agressive bear, or so says that nice lady from the Bear Wise hotline.

Still, my berry picking will be rather restricted this year. Only our shoreline patches will be visited. And closer to the middle of the day rather than early in the morning or any time after supper. But no matter.

The abundance of berries doesn't require foraging any deeper.

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My Daughter The Hero

Kristyn, it's your birthday today.

Joan Rivers has been quoted as saying that the best thing about having a daughter is that one day you look up and realize that you've given birth to your own best friend.

For me it goes one step further. I had no idea, that summer morning 28 years ago, that I was delivering to the world a human being so spectacular that I would one day regard her as one of my heroes.

This has come with such a price, I know. We don't get to be heroes without doing something heroic. This requires something more than the average person is not willing or perhaps able to give. But you have. You have risen up and out of what would have crushed and destroyed so many others.

More astonishing still is that you have not done this by drawing from reserves of anger and hatred. To have done so would have been completely understandable. Instead, your strength has come from a clear consistency between what you say you believe and who you actually are.

You have chosen love and goodness, even toward those who have wounded you. You have refused to be defined by the outside forces beyond your control, and have instead determined what IS in your control, and then marked out a path for you and your family based on hope and beauty and strength. How remarkable!!

So, my Hero Warrior Daughter, I celebrate the day God gave you to us! He is already mightily using you for His plans and purposes, for there is no more noble calling than to show the world how God loves.
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Half Way Day

It's as if God has lavished on me a perfect cottage day to mark the half way point.

Today is exactly the middle of my eight weeks off. And it was everything a day on Georgian Bay is meant to be.

Summer has most certainly arrived. You can tell from the first sense of it as you wake up. I took advantage of the sun and breeze and got two loads of laundry on the line, which were fresh and dry by lunch.

Blueberries are coming! I ventured out not far from the cottage, given our bear visit earlier. Even though it's more likely we'll see him around 9 pm, I still had my air horn with me.

After the blueberries I got to work on cleaning the boat. It had collected a growth of moss in the carpet over the winter, but it honestly hasn't been dry and hot enough for enough days in a row, until now. Only got half done before the sun came up over the trees. It was hot work already.

The rest of the day I read and napped. And around 7:30 pm or so, I went out for a canoe on flat water into the gathering gold of the sunset. Perfect. And then, just for added enhancement, our loon joined me, swimming quietly off to the side of the canoe. Just the two of us, floating silently on the peace together.

Now the sun is setting with a fierce beauty on breathless water. My soul is still, like the water.

He leads me here, to restore my soul.

Half way. With such a gift of time, I find myself in that anomally of not being able to tell if it feels like months or days. How long is four weeks in the absence of life's normal measurements and markers? How long is four weeks, when you're not looking at a watch but at a stack of books you've read so far? How long is four weeks when the only meetings you've been at, have been on the end of a dock, with God, and He seems to have no pressing agenda for you but to delight in sitting with you, watching the sun go down?

At this point of turning I feel as though I am only just now evened out from the deficit with which I arrived. I have come up to zero. Now I can start to get filled.

What a gentle God we have. One of the major themes of my journalling this summer has been yet again the willingness to let go of everything I try to lay claim to and open up my hands in total surrender. I am being challenged again to recklessly follow God into a bold future. To take the risks to do whatever it takes to be all He's called me to be. He is far from finished with me, He says. There is much more to do and be and become.

I am undone with amazement. That I get to do what I get to do is more than I ever would have envisioned for myself. How could there be more?

But that's the way He works. Always completing the good work He began.

Which is what I expect will happen some more.....in the next four weeks until I'm home.
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Peace Be Choppy - On The Wild Side of the Water

It was supposed to stop blowing.

The local vernacular is to call it a "three day blow". The marine forcast said it was going to die down. But this morning was day FOUR and it was windier than it has been the last three.

Kristyn, Abby and Zachary were to arrive mid morning at the marina. And I was to bring the boat to fetch them.

I LOVE driving our boat! It's an adrenaline rush of fresh air and power mixed with the stark beauty of the 30,000 Islands, upon one of which sits our cottage. Hence the need for fetching.

Which I LOVE to do ---- IF it's not so blowy!

There's this one stretch in particular that's across the open, and you really have to know how to manage the waves on a day like today. Which I can do. But add the precious cargo of your grandchildren and suddenly I'm feeling rather nervous.

The ride into the marina was seriously rough enough for me to decide to use "the back way" home. It's not a route we use often because it's scattered with random shoals. As well, it opens up again on the other side with a narrow passage known menancingly as Hell's Gate, so named because the narrowness is enhanced by more but larger random shoals.

I love the marina reunions. Someone you love has made it to the dock. Happy hellos, and this morning, a non-stop smile from Abby, waving, as I got out of the boat and came up the ramp for a knock Gramma over hug.

We loaded the boat carefully, and I warned Kristyn to prepare for a rough ride. And prayed simply, "Lord, please take my babies safely to the cottage".

The back channels between the marina and the main channel were bad enough. Worse, I thought, than coming in, although it did help a bit to be going straight into the waves now. But the main channel was as rough as I've ever seen it. Large boats, less intimidated by the waves but still requiring some speed to out manouvre the wind, were adding to the churn. I had to make a tricky break for it, over the wake of one bigger boat in order to get into the channel that would take us into the back way.

As soon as we came around into it, the difference was immediate. While still blowy, there was way less buffet factor. I breathed in big, and settled myself for a slightly more relaxed ride.

That's when we ran out of gas.

It's okay. We had a second tank, and I knew how to switch connectors. We were on our way again in less than 5 minutes. But here's the thing. To have had to do that 30 seconds earlier when we were in the throes of the chop of the main channel would have been extremely precarious. As it was, we had a sheltered spot for the change over. Couldn't have been timed more perfectly.

On our way now through the back way. Do I recognize where I am? Think so. Yup. There's that set of shoals. Stay out and around until you get past them. Then cut into shore and stay close to avoid that other set. The wind is still strong in here. I can't imagine the waves out in the open stretch now!!!

Hell's Gate is right in front of us. To the right I see two fine young men on their dock. Good. If I hit a rock and am dead on the water, help is not far away. We proceed.

The trick to Hell's Gate is that you have to go through fast enough to keep you from being pushed against the rocks on your port side while all the time avoiding the hidden rocks on your starboard.

I didn't. Avoid the rocks on the right, that is. I heard the thud and waited for the motor to stop being able to move us forward, fully expecting the propellor to be toasted.

Kristyn looked at me. We were still going!!! I pushed the lever down and pressed us through the last stretch.

For those last few minutes of this wild ride I joked with God about wishing I could just say "Peace be still" and slide home on glass. And then I was reminded. "Peace is about the presence of God, not the absence of trouble."

Oh yeah. It's what I'm preaching on this coming Sunday morning at Cognashene Community Church. "And this will be a place of peace," God says through the prophet Haggai to a people facing a huge project with little resources and some neighbouring enemies ready to thwart their efforts. I'm going to talk about the powerful presence and fierce gentleness and wild love of the God Who's right there, even when waves are choppy.

I fully believe God was in our boat today. He pushed the gas through the lines until we were in a more sheltered spot. He held His hand between the rock and our propellor. He answered the prayer I uttered as I started up the boat to begin the wild adventure that was our ride back to the cottage.

It's peaceful now. Babies are asleep and Kristyn is relaxing in her cottage puzzle ritual. Tea is brewed.

And the wind has died down.

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