The Simplicity of a Perfect Day

Early swim.
Backyard swing.
Deuteronomic blessings, verse by verse.

Kitchen shines.
Laundry's done.
Bathroom cupboard purged, open spaces sigh.

Groceries and ironing and tidied drawers.
A nap and a chipmunk and a

chapter read.
Hugs from the littles.  Fresh jam to take home.

And all the way through I am untroubled.
And joyful.

Just simply having a perfect day.

And in that I see the Divine of it.
The Delight of it.
The Presence of the Perfect One.
Simply.

"You will be blessed when you come in, and when you go out."  Deuteronomy 28:2

Just that.
The comings and goings of a day unhurried and domestic.
The blessings of a Father who graces me with this untroubled, joyful, simple day.

Taking Shape

It's all just in the early stages but I'm liking how things are coming together so far.

For one, my quiet outside space welcomed some more greenery and colour today. That along with what I pulled together on Monday has begun a transformation that just has consecrated written all over it.

Well, to be honest, at the moment the summer students next door are playing their music way too loud, so the holy hush has skittered away to hide until it's safe to come out. Even so, I can't help being happy at how things are coming. It's a bit eclectic, but I have begun to feel the draw of it.

When my mind is brought back to this space with a sense of anticipation, then I know it's starting to be a place where my soul can rest.

But the backyard space isn't the only thing that's taking shape right here at the beginning of my season. Today I spent about five hours with my theological mentor and sermon prep consult Bill Webb. My head is full!

I first knew Bill as my seminary professor, granting me that odd and wonderful experience of being sad that class was over. He's come to speak at Highview a number of times over the years, providing us with depth and expertise on some of the Bible's thornier issues. Not that long ago he served as my advocate, successfully negotiating my transfer to Tyndale, for which I am so grateful. And now I have the enormous privilege of conferring with Bill as I map out each season's teaching scope and sequence.

Today's session was long and thorough but thoroughly invigorating. There's a lot of reading and digesting and sermonizing to do, but I think Highview is in for some good learnings together this season.

I am honoured to be invested in by someone so scary smart and yet so totally accessible and genuinely helpful as Bill. He is a good gift to me personally, and to Highview.

So, only day two. Still early into things, I know. Still, I'm thinking good thoughts about the season ahead, sitting out here in my space.

And the students just turned oof the radio :).
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Back Beside The Pond

First official day of the new ministry season for me. Here the cycle begins again, setting the tone and pace for the months of God's goodness to unfold in the life of this astonishing congregation I am honoured to serve.

The church building overlooks the pond. From my spot here on the other side, I catch the warmth of the rising sun on my face, and have a praying view of our property.

You can't see it from here but our new parking lot is complete. I never saw asphalt that was so beautiful. Of course the landscaping contributes (with thanks to John and Nick and all the people who have lent us their garden hose for watering).

Last year I sat in this very spot and heard God say, as clearly as we hear these things, The timing on this lot is exactly as I have wanted it. To spend yourselves in Haiti and Thailand instead of focusing on this project was the right thing to do."

Then last April when Suradet and Yupa were here, I told them our story. And he prayed for God's blessing. And by May 1 we were being told that our price had come down 50 grand, meaning we could go ahead.

Now it's done. A new season is here, in more than one way.

Last season was hard, no question. But it also brought much in terms of moving forward and digging deeper and expanding further into the call God has placed on us. I am humbled.

And so I step out into today confident that God goes with me, no matter what's waiting.
Grateful.


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Covenant of Place

Is green as good as blue?

I'm pondering that deep thought here on my back patio, missing the water very much but amazed at how lush our yard is this year.

In keeping with good rhythms and in the spirit of preserving as much of this restedness as I can, I am observing my Monday Sabbath and won't be back into the office until Tuesday. (Yes, even though I've just finished five weeks away. ;)

Part of that holy observation for me on this particular Monday is the reclaiming of some outdoor space. A big part of what connects me with myself and with my God at the cottage is being outdoors so much of the time. Only the rain or a persistently prevailing wind will keep me in.

When I get home, it's the being indoors all day that I feel the most. That and missing the water. So I have spent some of yesterday and part of today sweeping and setting and staging in an attempt to make a "Covenant of Place", as St. Benedict described. A place of focus where meditation and solitude can anchor me. A place of stability and constancy. A place for me to be me....outside.

Certainly the cottage is my place of dwelling IN God. A place that doesn't change and as such is deeply centering. There is stability and constancy for me there, year after year.

During the winter, I'm fond of the fireplace. My office corner with the little chair and a cup of tea beside me...that's a place of focus.

But right now, while the weather is still so good, I need to be outside. So that's what I've been working on.

It's not done yet. I need more inspiration, and I'm thinking this might be a slow and meditative process of itself. But it's a start.

Blue is better than green, but green is also full of life and growth and lavish goodness from the Creator.

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Coming Home

The bay is quiet now, although the sky's still moody, following a brief but ripping storm that took out the power at 2:31 this afternoon. That's what the stove clock reads right now, even though the sun has begun its late afternoon descent, angling in the front windows, when it gets the chance, through the lingering clouds.

Surprisingly it's still warm.

True summer. That's what we've had this entire last week, as if God was saving the best for last.

Maybe it was this last (for me) blast of perfect cottage weather. Maybe it was the crazy, best in 40 years blueberries. Or the arrival on Monday of a small and charming chipmunk who graced me with her trust and came got her peanuts off my lap by Tuesday.

Maybe it was just some quiet turning of my soul when I wasn't really paying attention.

Whatever it was, whenever it was, I'm ready to come home. Ready.

Not that I want to leave. Please understand. This place is so fresh and quiet and warm and safe and away and abundant and deep and sweet and everything my soul was created to long for, that I never want to leave. Ever. Doesn't matter who or what I have waiting for me that I will thoroughly enjoy when I get back, while I'm here, I am fully here. Fully. I miss the water the most.

But somewhere in the moments of receiving, I received what I needed to remember that no matter where I am, where I actually live is in God. Not just WITH Him but IN Him.

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High....if you make the Most High your dwelling...". Psalm 91:1,10

God is my home, my house. Where I live

And if that's the case, a deep security is mine for the having. Freedom and peace can be mine, even when all chaos is breaking loose around me - arrows by day and pestilence by night, as the psalmist describes.

I knew this already before I got here. But I love that my gentle Father (Prabada, in Thai) took me aside for a while to remind me. And restore me, here by the still waters. But that's another psalm.

This is my 40th year coming to this place. Not a surprise, perhaps, since God often counts in 40s, that this was a year that I needed it this much.

We leave tomorrow after supper, provided the power comes back on. Otherwise we might leave sooner, heeding the call of a nice hot shower.

Sunday at Highview will be sweet.
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The Freedom of God

"There is a great and subtle temptation to suggest to myself or others where God is working and where not, when he is present and when not, but nobody, no Christian, no priest, no mink, has any "special" knowledge about God. God cannot be limited by any human concept or prediction. He is greater than our mind and heart and perfectly free to reveal himself where and when he wants.". Henry Nouwen in The Genesee Diary

----

I have now joined the ranks of those who frequently quote Henry Nouwen :). Part of the required reading for a course I am taking in the fall is his complete and unabridged journal, kept while sequestered away at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky for seven months in 1974. I am finding his reflections and ruminations both quieting and disturbing.

I'm not sure exactly which of those this particular quote does for me.

It is arrogance-shattering (as is most of his experience at the monastery) and therefore shakes me some. I realize just how much I can begin to believe that I understand God well enough to figure out where and when He's working. It's an occupational hazard, perhaps, as it seems important to be able to tell this. How else can I form my strategies, lay out plans, determine the next set of priorities, if not by discerning where God is working and joining Him there? And while, in this particular period of his life, Nouwen espouses a different style of service to God than that to which I am currently called, I don't think he'd suggest abandoning any sense of watchfulness for the movement of the Holy Spirit in the spiritual responsibility of pastoring a church.

Still, I agree. No one can claim that "special" knowlege of God, not even my charismatic friends who call themselves prophets, not even someone who is called pastor by their community. It is wise to step back and remember this. The arrogance of presuming which sermon "worked" and which didn't, what experience of worship is effective and which isn't, what leadership structure or decision-making process is "godly" and which is "of the flesh". God isn't bound by any of it.

He's free, perfectly free to reveal Himself at any time to any person by any means.

That's liberating. Doesn't mean I don't keep watching and asking and seeking out the ways God is touching the lives of the people I love and lead. But it does mean that I keep my mind open to ALL the ways God might be moving and revealing Himself.

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Another spectacular sunrise this morning. I love how the lilies open themselves up to the potential of each new day.
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In The Shade

"She who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." Psalm 91:1

I have chosen Psalm 91 as my next slow meditation.

For the past several months I have done something new (for me) with my first in the morning reflective time. I am writing out Scripture, verse by verse, first in Hebrew, then in Thai, then in English. This, in part, keeps my mind working on both of the "other" languages that I am so love-motivated to learn. But what I am also finding is a certain beauty in how long this takes, each morning in turn, but also how long I end up meditating on just one passage.

There's something calming and centering about taking the time.

The effect has been true since I started this practice in January, but is enhanced of course by the opportunity now to be here, in the safe and healing place that the cottage provides me. In fact, without anything pressing to follow - no meetings or sermon prep or strategy or agendas or difficult conversations or desperate, surprising situations - the slowness factor comes all the more into play. Just. Writing. And. Meditating. Beside still waters. That is all, right now.

I have chosen Psalm 91 because I will need it to bridge me home. Fourteen verses. I have but nine days left.

This morning as I sit here on the deck I am so not ready to entertain the thought. The harshness of the season I have just left behind (a few days ago, it seems, not the three plus weeks it's actually been) will not have been resolved in my absence. The real-time emergencies, the relentless press against values and philosophies and paradigms, the challenges to so much that I realize have becomes sacred cows, the heavy-burdened need for wisdom and discernment for even what I thought was going to be a simple, casual, safe conversation....it will all be there, waiting for me.

The temptation to pre-emptively problem solve and attempt to get a leg up on it all exerts its own kind of pressure. I must stand firm against it, here, now. For I have clearly and ever-so-gently been invited to simply receive the peace of Christ while I'm here, this through the encouragement of my spiritually wise Elders at Highview, and affirmed in my own times of listening since being away.

So Psalm 91 will serve as a reminder and a bridge. A bridge to take me home.

The shadow of the Almighty. The picture here is of protection from the heat of the sun (cf Psalm 121:5). Dwelling. Resting. Receiving.

A brooding sky gives way to sunrise. Seems fitting.
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All Over Again

I'm very aware of the captured moments this year. Having the grandchildren with us, first everyone last weekend and for this week and next, just the two, gives me countless opportunities to marvel.

Time, it seems both stands still and charges by, all in the passing of a moment. How long ago was it that my own two stood in these same shallows, taking wonder at the whole other world of minnows and frogs and snakes? How long ago was there a line full of wet bathing suits, or a huge box of crayons on that same table when the morning gave way to showers?

Kristyn turns 31 today. Yet here she is, represented by her 7 year old future self, swimming for all she's worth out to the shoal. And earlier the son of my son stood in serious concentration, fishing like only an almost three year old can fish. His Dad did the same, and the memories are clear. But that was almost 30 years ago.

No matter. It's possible, I'm finding, to make it stop, just in that moment, simply by noticing. And praying whispers of wonder and gratitude. When I do that, when a smile or a snuggle or the simple act of climbing out of the boat catches my heart, and then when I worship in it and breathe joy into it, revel in it.....then the racing of time complies for that moment, and stops.

Right here. Right now.

Will I live to repeat the cycle again? I don't know. Depends on God's good plans, and if there's anyone willing to carry Great-Gramma up from the boat, I guess.

Happy Birthday, my baby girl. You changed my life forever. Now your children are doing it too, all over again.
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A Lifetime of Firsts

Big day on the fishing front yesterday. Both Abby (7) and Zachary (4) caught their very first fish, and it all happened within minutes of each other, right off our dock!

Squeals of joy as the floppy trophies were unhooked and put in the bucket for prolonged viewing and crowing over pleasure.

These are incredible moments. Marking 'firsts' in the new journeys of still-wonder-filled children.

Yet even as we take the pictures and write the news in the cottage log, I am conscious of a life-joy also worthy of note. It never ends. The firsts of life, all of them, the happy and not so wonderful, all of them are new and bring something of value, something important.

And it never ends. Firsts all the time. All through life. We get to keep doing things for the first time.

Each day, new. Each morning mercy, fresh. Every day another change to experience something for the first time.

I think this may be one of the happiest surprises of my over-fifty reality. And it flops around like a delightful catch on the dock with beautiful grandchildren discovering this sacred happy place for the first time.
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The Healing Silence

Heaven, I am convinced, is THIS quiet.

At least there must be parts of it that are, parts different than the worship party and/or megafeast described in the Revelation.

I'm certain that there are little corners where no human or even angelic-made noise interrupts the silent, wondrous anti-noises of the new earth, restored and perfected to its original intention and thereby inviting the soul to feed on peace.

Otherwise, why would there be all those texts that invite us to be still, and come away? Why would Jesus have been drawn to those solitary places?

If I'm right, I'm touching some of Heaven now.

I am remembering who I am.

Battle fatigue. Makes the contrasts between being in the midst of the deafening, chaotic noise and being silently away from it all somewhat startling. The relentless, randomness that characterized this ministry season just past has left deep wounds of exhaustion, wounds I did not even know I had sustained until I came away to this Heaven-space and, in the silence, began to heal.

Brutal season. One of the most draining and demanding I can remember.

And as the grand finale, I officiated at three funerals within eight days, just before getting here. So I've been thinking about the other-side stuff in the Bible more than usual. And if we understand correctly the parts about being "completed", being the best version of ourselves once we're there, then it makes sense that I might begin to feel the healing of being more me in the silence that is Heaven-on-earth to me.

So this morning I heal in the quiet of the bay, here beside still waters that remind my soul that eventually the chaos will be done, and that I am destined for beautiful things.

Like this.
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