The Puffy Places

 I'm no weather expert.  Let's start there.

What I am is an avid weather-watcher.  Especially in the summer.  Especially when it comes to timing out a trip across the water to the cottage.  Boaters know this.  Island cottagers know this.  Anyone dealing with any sort of open water whatsoever knows this.  

Weather matters, and you don't want to be caught out in a storm.

The repeated weather pattern of the days ending last week and on into the weekend were, to quote the weather guy on our local station, "Cut and paste."  Clear and cool in the morning.  Building heat with a wide circle of pressure and upper level wind throughout the day.  Risk of localized thunderstorm by afternoon.  Cut and paste, on repeat for about four days in a row.  

Sunday wasn't really supposed to be one of those days.  In fact the radar indicated it would just outright rain all day, throwing in the odd thunderstorm at random, for good measure.  And also the radar indicated there might be a break around noonish or so.  

That's not really what happened.  

Almost, but not quite.

That's how we missed getting rained on, but also missed worship.  

Believing the radar, and really needing to be back to the cottage by at least Sunday evening, we left too early to be with our peeps at Highview, but arrived too late to be with our peeps in Cognashene, at the service that in fact did NOT get called off due to rain.  Beautiful day.  All the way up.  Beautiful ride out under a bright sky.  But just not quite in time for service.  

By now, even to me, this is all sounding like an over-apology for missing church.  Maybe it is.  But I actually want to get to the clouds.

Once unpacked and settled, things looked so NOT stormy, in fact quite calm out on the water, that I got myself into the kayak to mark my twenty-second time around the island this season.  Couldn't help myself.  Since I missed worship, my soul needed this.

And there were clouds.

The open sky is one of Georgian Bay's best features, so it's not like I haven't seen clouds on many if not most of my paddles.  Just, this day, with the cut and paste storm still being predicted for a few hours from now, they had a different texture to them.

There was just a hint of the storm to come.  But mostly they were brilliantly white and layered, with complex billows of cloudness (that's not a word, but I've already mentioned that I'm no weather expert, so).  

There are many ways to worship, many kinds of cathedrals, and I discovered this 'puffy place' to be one for me.  In the unhurried-but-something's-coming space, I found myself suddenly on the inhale, in one of those involuntary shudders usually reserved for after a good, hard cry.  Except I hadn't been, crying that is.  At least not physically.  Happened more than once, and both times in response to simply studying the intricacies of the clouds.

Maybe I was just tired from the drive and unpacking.  Maybe.  But.

I am still making my way through the marking of loss of five beloveds this summer, of course I am.  Every one of those beautiful senior souls left their mark on me, and it takes a while to say a proper goodbye.  

And I think I'm still unpacking some of the good things this spring also held, such as graduating and turning 65 and celebrating 25 years with Highview.  All that sort of flew by in the midst of some stunning difficulty (that I have previously and vaguely referred to on Facebook postings), and it's taken a lot of kayak worship to recover from it all.

Later that same afternoon it did rain, yes it did.  Like a deluge of tears perhaps.  It feels good to cry,

But before that, there's the puffy places of wonder.  

Like right now.  

These last two weeks I will be very much in that unhurried-but-something's-coming space, I think.

The Cascade Effect

Driving home I feel more alive somehow.

This does not surprise me, since it's a common afterglow kind of experience whenever I have lunch with John.

The overflow of joy at a Waterfall in Thailand. 

I call him John now, as if he was a peer.  But inside, in every way respect and admiration and deep appreciation and the wonder of being in the presence of someone 'greater than' vibrates in my heart, he is and always be my beloved "Pastor Bersche".

We were all so much more formal in those days.  I think my Dad would have had a fit if I'd ever dared be so cheeky to refer to him as simply John, or even Pastor John back then.  It was the suit and tie generation of church, where that was godly.  We showed respect.  Especially to those 20 years our senior.  Especially those those who held office in the church.

Being baptized by Pastor Bersche circa 1972, age 15

Except John was anything but formal.  Back then it was the early 70s and we were just figuring out that Jesus was fun.  At least in my neck of the denominational woods we were.  This new pastor brought life and energy and joy to Sundays, to our community of faith, like we'd never seen before, even though former pastors were revered and dearly loved.  But with John, Jesus was fun, the Word of God was fascinating, the Holy Spirit was a real interactive Person of the Godhead, and services were never the same.

It's impossible to overstate the influence all of this had on my own spiritual formation and ministry calling; how this inspired me and modeled for me who I would become as a pastor myself.  Not that this was on the radar back then.  Back then we were breaking the rules by having his gifted wife, Jan, speak on Mother's Day.  That was really pushing the envelope.  But I remember it.  I remember being emboldened by it, just 11 years old and seeing for the first time that a woman had something to say about God.

And it took seed in me then, I am sure of it now.

We remember this together at lunch today.  It is something of a needful remembering, since both of us, at this point in our ministry lives, are looking back on full time pastoring, as if it was something from our past, which is it.  And we lament this for a while.

It gets in your blood, this calling.  It stays with you.  When you've loved a congregation at a molecular level and for any length of time, you don't just 'fall out of love' on the day they say goodbye.  You don't just stop being a pastor just because people stop calling you that.   So we grieve together a little today, the way two people suffering the same kind of loss tend to do. And we acknowledge together that sense of disorientation of having a pastor's heart beating in your chest, but with no congregation to incorrectly (because they never belong to us) call your own.

But then there was this.  The realization, almost at the same time for both of us, of the Cascade Effect.  It was when he said he was so proud of who I had grown into.  Of how awesome and life-giving it was for him to have seen Ken and I (he officiated our wedding) turn our life together into an enduring ministry.  Of how exciting it was to realize how the kingdom had been nourished and become un-bordered on both sides of the planet; of the lives being impacted.

But I just had to turn us both backwards to see where this Cascade between us had first come.  And I thanked him again (because I've said it so many times) for showing me that Jesus was fun and that the Word of God was so incredibly fascinating and that the Holy Spirit was a real interactive Person of the Godhead and that Worship could be such an intimate, hilarious experience, and that a woman might have something to say about God.

Then we turned around together and looked forward, a little dimly because who knows, to where the Cascade would go.  And just prayed to be worthy of it the rest of our days, however long God chose to leave us here to pour it out on His behalf.

And the Cascade of it gave me life again, on a day following a deep low in this journey towards the new things, the new ways of pouring out God's life for future generations to revel in.

Once again I am poured into by my beloved Pastor,
whom I now call John,
as if he was a peer.

Father's Day Without Dad

This is the first.

When someone dies, the firsts are hard. and this is the first Father's Day without my Dad. He left us gently and mercifully on February 27th this year.

I think of him at odd times. Like when I went to fetch Mom for my birthday supper at our house, earlier this month. There was a small poster in the elevator for a fund raiser selling Pies for Father's Day. And I looked over all the different choices, wondering which one I would get for Dad. He loves pie! And then I remembered. Oh. Right.

Or when I'm looking at the loon, lonely and lingering long in our bay, just last night. And I think, I'll tell Dad about our loon. He'd loved to hear about our loon. He is fascinated by their elusive beauty. It' s something he really misses about being at his own cottage. And then I think, oh. Right.

It's good that he's gone. Eleven years in a stroke-broken body is more than enough for an active doer like Dad. And he did that so well, with dignity and love, being broken like that. Not everyone can. It's an excruciatingly hard thing to do. Abby is still convinced Great Grandad is playing hide and seek with Jesus, because now he could run to find all the good spaces, where before he just had to sit a lot. And if he does sit now, I imagine it's to eat pie and look out over the water to watch a loon be beautiful. So it's good he got to go Home.

But Father's Day this year.....a first.

Dad, I am so glad we got to finish well, you and I. There were so many things, so many times when I was growing up that went bad on us. I wasn't sure our story could have such a strong and noble final chapter. But it did.

And it's because you took something meant to destroy you, and you let it make you more of who God created you to be. Your body was crumpled but your spirit stood strong. As each year of those last eleven crawled us through them, you did not cave in to resentment or self pity. You refused to entertain grumblings or demandingness. Instead you kept smiling. You encouraged and blessed others endlessly. You lavished praise on me and prayed for me and my family and my ministry. You showed a fearless faith to anyone you came into contact with. No one could spend 10 minutes with you, without knowing you loved Jesus. Dad, you let that ending decade make you more and more the godly man your heart so wanted to be.

Thank you Dad.
You fulfilled your purpose and beyond.
I am humbled to be called your daughter. I am honoured to call you Dad.

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