A Morning Like This

It's one of those mornings. 

Mist hangs wispy and low over the water. Our little bay is quiet in that breath-snatching way only the absence of human made noise can be. A very large turtle pokes his head through the glass-like surface and eyeballs me in long consideration before silently disappearing again.  A river otter swims into the marsh only to skirt across the rocks at water's edge moments later.   Birds and bullfrogs and the jenny wrens and a pair of cranky red squirrels add their voices as if to tell the forest that it's time to wake up. 

It's 5:30. 

I am often teased about my early rising.   People say that not even God is up at this "ungodly" hour.  But this chorus of quiet praise convinces me otherwise. 

Today is the last of four days alone.   Tonight Ken will arrive and I will come down to the dock to greet the man about whom I am increasingly in awe that I call my husband.   Two days later the first boat load of grandkids will arrive and a few days after that, another.   I am blessed and blessed beyond my imaginings. 

But it will be good in a different way  than these first alone days. 

The solitude grants me the great gift of self-observation.  The time not talking, of listening deeply, to my own heart through the reading of last year's journal, to His heart through the reading of His Word, and the meditations on both, just sitting quietly in a morning like this, provides me with an off to the side seat from which the daily interactions of my life can be more thoroughly inspected.

Free from the responsibilities of my life for just a little while, I can ponder the character defects and wounds and sins for which I am responsible.   And in the absence of human made noise, I can also hear more clearly the Voice of grace and love and encouragement that I find I need so badly. 

It also fills the depleted spaces of my soul.  I feel that physically.

So this holy morning invites me to be alert and patient and still in these last hours of solitude.  To revel in the morning sunshine, and celebrate the process of my becoming.  To drink in the energy.  To feed my chipmunk friends and drink my tea. 

Because it's one of those mornings. 

Sent from my Samsung device

No Place Like Homes

If "home " is a place where I feel utterly welcomed and unconditionally accepted, if it's where I can be myself in the mutuality of loving respect, if there is safety and joy and deep delight, then it ocurs to me that I am several times blessed. 

I have a home in Highview, the community of faith that has graciously allowed me to serve with them since the beginning.   I truly enjoy visiting other churches, large and small, but ultimately I know my home is with the beautiful, transforming souls I call family. 

I have a home halfway around the world!   Hot Springs, just east of Chiang Mai, is quite remarkably no longer strange to me.  Quite the opposite.   The heat, the food, the bugs (and sometimes bugs for food! ) the language, the faces - oh those faces! - all seem so familiar to me now that I step off the plane and relax into myself so deeply my heart knows without question that I'm home. 

I have a home with Ken.  This goes without saying.   I love the easy way of being together that only a long love knows.  Wherever Ken and I are together, that is home to me.  I love our empty nest, and how our kids have kids of their own and that for the most part I think they all like me! I love the home of being Gramma! 

I have a home here by the water.  It's a humble dwelling by real estate standards.  But it is a palace of blessing to me.  A refuge from the demands the world would place on me, and the demands I place on myself.  Here I am at home with loon and fox and turtle, with jenny wren and chipmunk and heron.  The quiet walls us round to shut out the insanity.  I am stilled by the water, sky and rock.  I am me. 

Yet there is one Ultimate Dwelling that makes possible this sense of so many homes. 

Psalm 91:1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High wiĺl rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 

Two summers ago when I was terrified and exhausted from dealing with what I perceived to be a threat to something highly treasured, this psalm became my home-mantra.  My mind and heart locked on to the concept of God-as-Home in a new and transformative way.   

Since then I have known a deeper experience of home, and it has less and less to do with space.   And while I will likely always connect to some form of sacredness of space, the truth is that my spirit is perpetually at Home. 

My time at this home, the one by the water, is just beginning.   I feel I am being invited to rest and just be, to cease striving and simply know that He is God.  

Sent from my Samsung device

Outside In

It's been a bit of an up and down thing, this past jet-laggy week before Easter.

Bit of a drag coming back to winter after three summer weeks in Thailand, all flip-floppy and sun-shiney and green.  Glad welcomes home, and lovely to be with beloveds.  But I also catch myself in those stuttering sighs of a good cry without having had one, from missing beloveds I left on the other side of the world.

Then right away, before I was really ready for it, there was Easter; some parts over the top amazing, some parts disappointing in sad and worrisome ways.  I cherish Easter, expect a lot of it, feel very protective of it.  And I finished the weekend feeling that in some ways I failed my Risen Jesus on a day meant to highlight His exceptional awesomeness.

So today, having two grand-littles keep me company since there was no school, we opened the windows.

Literally.  The afternoon sun edged the thermometer's red line up enough to prompt my first airing out of the season.  Window's wide, especially the bedrooms.  Let the spring air in to blow out the stagnant winter.  Let's be outside for a bit, picking up branches strewn by layers of storm, now exposed on still brown grass laying flat from where the snow was.  And we dug a little hole and said a little prayer for a very little bird found dead.  And we accepted with gratitude our first free gift of Vitamin D and the glory of an early spring afternoon. 

And now, in the quiet of their departure, I feel like my soul-windows were pushed open as well.  Fresh reminders of the mountainous abundance of my life; warm mercy from a Risen Jesus who rose to set me free from self-tyranny, blowing newer thoughts through my moody mind to bring direction to the week ahead, and grace to forgive myself and keep doing this thing I do, however imperfectly.

Photo by Kristyn

Sonrise Song

Oh morning breaking mourning

fill with light all places deep and dark.

Declare despair banished

in the rising of the Son.

Set us free.

Oh, for freedom we shout our song

loud and long!

And weeping with believing disbelief

now we live,

really live,

in the joy and the wonder of evil's unraveling, 

in death's undoing,

in Love's big win.

RAB15

 

Just Here

Here I am again.  Eleventh trip.  Never gets old.

I'm here in Thailand with a Team of seven from Highview, having arrived March 8 to visit our Hot Springs family and be the English speakers for Pastor Suradet's ESL Day Camp.  We hit the ground running, with Day Camp starting March 10 and ending on the Friday, a lucky 13th.   For more on that exciting component of this trip, check out the link at Highview To Thailand.

Now, in these post camp days, we have settled in to a more relaxed way of being together with the kids.  And I'm loving every unproductive moment of it.  The Team is gelling so well that there's virtually no work in leading them, except for the work leadership just is.  But in terms of output of energy, it's happening so beautifully between all of us, and we are taking care of each other in the easy ways community should be.

There will be work enough later in the week.  I've been invited to team teach with Suradet at a youth conference this coming Friday in Chiang Mai.  Highview will do the service here at the church on Sunday.  Then a youth camp of about 300 students will descend upon this property next week, and I've been invited to 'encourage' them for about an hour and a half (yes Highviewers, they actually want me to talk for an hour and a half! ;).   I'm working on those things a little at a time.  But by and large, these are days of being 'just here'.

It's in the 'just here' suspension of time that most of the love happens, I think.

The laughing at inside jokes, now possible simply because we have collected enough shared memories, AND because our language learning keeps improving little by enough.

The quiet that breathes between silent 'artists' drawing scenes and cartoons and cards for Sponsors.

The ping pong tournaments and soccer games and badminton volleys.

The gathering of tamarind 'pitters' or vegetable choppers, chatting and laughing and sometimes singing.

It's in the unexpected snuggle with a little one who's no longer shy, but full of things to tell Ahjahn Ruth while pulled close in a hug.  I'm warm, she tells me, and pulls closer on a 'chilly' morning (21C).

Someone's always singing.  Someone's always laughing.  Someone's always working.  Someone's always playing.  All of us always loving.

And I breath it in, in slow, gentle breaths, deep and quiet and just being.

Someone in Canada, a critic, once said, "I think this Thailand thing you do is just all about you."  That stung.  I want to live my life poured out for Jesus, spending it all on the things that matter.  I want to be here because He wants me to be here, being hands and feet and compassion and love and service, partnering with quality people of strength and compassion.  Not for me.  Not for me.

But the truth is, it's turned out to be, not so much 'about' me, but in many ways 'for' me.  God's breath-snatching gift to a little girl of 11 who said she'd go, and that same 51 year old woman who came undone, but was allowed to come back again.  And again. And again.

And it never gets old.

Empty House, Full Heart

I arrived home from the airport on Thursday, and the house just felt so cold and empty.  I'll adjust.  Ken and I enjoy our simple, quiet evenings of these empty nesting years very much.

But in these days immediately following three weeks of three extra people, laughing, talking, singing, cooking, praying, marveling and being family together, there's that sense of something missing.  I feel it in my throat. 

But before that?  Oh such fun!  A 'second Christmas' dinner with friends.  A flute recital.  Building the snowman and making snow angels.  The most enthusiastic snow-shovelers anywhere in Canada!  Skiing, thanks to the skillful generosity of Linda and family.  Skating thanks to Nick and Colin and friends.  A trip to the CN Tower.  A day with Dave just doing 'fun stuff' we do in winter.  A sweet and gentle visit with Mom.  Learning to place our Tim's order in English, and being understood and actually getting what you ordered!  Important meetings at Tyndale (in preparation for my three month education sabbatical where Suradet will be my supervisor).  Hot Springs Sponsors' appreciation dessert with sticky rice and mangoes (thanks Ian!).  Many meals to many welcoming homes, thanks so very much!  Movies and bus rides and tobogganing for Boy. 

So many memories.  I'll be processing this for some time, I think.

But mostly right now, here in these empty, tight-throated days, I am in danger of merely repeating what is anything but merely in my heart.  Futile attempts to try to describe my dizzying gratitude for this astonishing, and thoroughly surprising gift of loving and being loved, knowing and being known, of deep community that somehow, miraculously really, has come about between us.  Who could have orchestrated such a thing?  Who could have written such a story? 

Only a God Who's plans are this perfect, Who's timing is this impeccable, Who's love is this big.

 It's only five weeks until I am with them again.  I thought that would make this good bye easier.  It didn't.

[Many more pictures to follow.]

A Three-Month Educational Sabbatcal for 2015

It is with great excitement and not a small amount of gratitude that I would like to let you in on an adventure brewing for me in the coming year.

The Elders of Highview Community Church where I serve as senior pastor have granted me a three month educational sabbatical that will take place in Thailand in the fall of 2015. 

The idea is at least two years old already, beginning first with conversations with my husband Ken and moving from there to discussing the possibilities with my broader family, Highview's Elders and leaders, trusted friends and advisers, the people who make these things happen at my seminary Tyndale, and the folks who will host me in Thailand. 

In all this process I have been encouraged, supported and released to explore this kind of learning experience, and to see what God might want to do with it in the bigger pictures of my own life, and the ministry He is so clearly blessing, both at Highview and at Hot Springs. 

To fill out the picture just a little, let me explain how the pieces have been fitting together to make this a solid idea for this season of my life.

Academically, I have for a long time pursued my goals in and around the other responsibilities of my life.  There seems to be an open window right now to allow these next steps toward the completion of my MDiv to take priority.  To be clear, I will not be finished school as a result of this educational sabbatical.  However, my program requires a 'pastoral internship' that is supposed to stretch me beyond what I already know and do.  Three months 'shadow-pastoring' in another culture certainly fits that criteria.  I will also pursue a 'directed reading' credit while there, in order to make the most of this educational opportunity.

On the home front, Ken is beyond amazing in his ability to not only release me to this kind of adventure, but also grasp his own role in the bigger story God is writing in our lives as a couple and as followers of Jesus.  The almost 20 years and counting of elder-care we have carried together has moved into a somewhat lighter scenario that would easily sustain my absence for three months.  Same in regards to our children and grandchildren. 

And as for Highview, well.  It is my expectation, as well as the Elders' fundamental understanding, that this experience will send home a better pastor than is sent out.   Plus, Highview has deeply invested, highly capable leaders, both in our paid Staff and in our extraordinary Volunteers, who daily provide direction, care and support for all that we know to be the mission of our faith community.  Three months will go by so fast!

On a deeper note, this whole thing feels to me like it was 46 years in the making. And while I would not want to make more of this than what really is, I can't escape the fact that at the age of 11 I felt so strangely drawn to a part of the world so out of reach then and so deeply part of my soul now, one might almost be tempted to use the world 'calling'.  Make no mistake, I belong here, in Canada, with my husband and family and church.  We're only talking three months.  But it seems to me such an astonishing, full-circle gift to be able to do this, and I cannot pass it up.

There are still a few steps that need to be accomplished before all the plans are final.  My learning proposal, while verbally confirmed, needs to be officially submitted and approved.  A visa needs to be obtained.  Solid dates need to be set.  Tickets need to be purchased.  But for now, all systems are go and I am actively moving toward a September departure.

Meanwhile, 2015 has begun, and with it a whole slew of adventures for every one of us, as we set ourselves to the joy of living each day for all its worth.