Lingering.

This is an interesting little journey, this 12-week sabbatical experience. It is, like so many chapters in life, one of those experiences where God works around the edges. Comes at us from a direction we didn't expect.

Last week we spent three and a half days at one of our favorite spots on the southwest coast of Michigan. South Haven is a town with a lovely marina, two beaches, some nice shops and simple restaurants, a river that divides the town, a section called North Beach that has many B & B's, and it all "works" as a getaway place. We soaked up the sun, enjoyed the water, watched some stunning sunsets, and walked out to a rather pedestrian lighthouse that sits at the end of the jetty/breakwater.

These last couple of days, though, I have been hanging out at home. Taking care of lots of small things. Phone calls, doing a little writing, running errands, and stopping at the grocery store a couple of times. Just ordinary, little stuff. Tuesday I worked out at the Y, headed to Mishawaka and visited a book store, bought a pair of good walking sandals at the mall, and had a late lunch at a BBQ joint. I've been "burning" CD's to synch with the new iPod player I bought three weeks ago.

Now here is the thing: I have noticed that I am lighter. Somehow, even though I keep moving, I am lighter. And I have noticed that I am lingering with people. Slowing down. For instance, I stopped at the barber shop this morning. (I know...it doesn't take long!) Instead of paying the bill and moving out the door, I lingered. I don't know whether the guys in the shop appreciated my hanging out for a few extra minutes, just chatting, but I have noticed that I am lingering more with people. Whether at the barber shop or talking with the woman standing behind me at the post office yesterday.

Something inside me is slowing down.

As I sorted through some things today, cleaning up my part of the house, I came across a devotional reading for Christmas someone had given me months ago. It's the story of a woman in an office who gives a man a couple of small gifts for Christmas. One is a very inexpensive calculator. There is another little thing to take camping. Finally, though, she gives him a wrapped present which he opens -only to find nothing inside.

There was nothing inside! The man held the empty box up. There was a long silence. Quietly, the woman said, "It's a pause. Use it anywhere. Anytime you need it. It will always be there." The woman smiled. "I know you've been busy," she said, "and I thought you could use a pause."

I like that story in Luke 10. Where Jesus shows up at the home of his friends, Mary and Martha. He lingers. And Mary lingers with him.

Somehow I think lingering is an important part of the art of life.

Opening the Window.

Opening the Window.

The flood kept coming, the words on the page tell us.

I have difficulty keeping track of the numbers.

Verse 12 says the water fell for forty days and forty nights.

Twelve verses later were told the water flooded the earth for a hundred

and fifty days.

The flood kept coming.

Which is what floods often do.

They keep coming until your ark is

Lifted high above the earth.

The rain stops falling and the water recedes.

Somehow a piece of rock, high up, catches the boat and holds it fast.

When the tops of the mountains can be seen

The old man opens a window and sends out a raven.

We open windows and send out birds,

don't we,

when we wonder what is ahead

and whether dry ground is to be found?

We open windows and send out words

like ravens and doves,

Whose wings beat against the air

Words looking down for an olive tree, green and growing.

The old man waits at his open window

For the birds to return with some evidence

That God has remembered

And the floodgates of heaven have been closed.

So we look out, looking for what we cannot see,

Wondering what is beyond the here and now,

The known flood,

Sending out words like doves to find a starting place.

As Sun Approaches Water.

Some places we keep going back to. One of those places for me is Warren Dunes. It's not Hawaii. It's not the perfect beach you might find in Bora-Bora. But it is close by. I've been going up there since I was in high school. The sunsets can be spectacular, the beach is okay, and if you wait long enough into the summer the water is great for swimming.

What we like to do is go up late in the afternoon. When the heat of the day has crested and the air is beginning to cool. We throw a blanket down as everyone else is beginning to think of heading towards the exits. We swim...read...nap...eat a sandwich...maybe get a soft-serve ice cream cone...watch the sun disappear over the horizon. Then, we head for home...and watch the lightning bugs out in the fields as we make our way east and south.

We were there this afternoon. And that time produced the following few verses.

Grace,
Mark

As Sun Approaches Water.

The Sandbar.

There is a sandbar fifty yards or so offshore.

No doubt the sand has shifted, moved in or out, north or south,

But the sandbar has been there since

I can remember.

The lake bottom slopes down

Until I am barely able to touch,

But toes keep contact with sand and as water laps at my chin

I feel the sandbar beneath my feet and I am half out of water.

There are days when the bottom slopes down

Until we are barely able to touch,

But we keep moving through water that seems too deep

Until there is something sold beneath our feet and we are half out of water.

Slipping deeper into the water

I think of life,

Touching the sandbar that seems solid enough

I think of God and faith as the promise of things unseen.

_________________________________

______________________________

Visible Love.

It seems preposterous.

Beyond belief.

Too silly.

Embarassing to admit.

I stood at the Dunes.

And kissed a girl.

A kiss whose sweetness still lingers.

And I thought our kiss was a private thing.

I was eager.

Not believing my good fortune.

That a girl so lovely

Would allow me to be so close.

Somehow I thought

That the sand and wild grass

Would shelter us from other eyes

A sanctuary within a sanctuary, if you will.

Now I look around

And realize how open and public

Our moment of tenderness and timid passion

Actually was.

Modest piles of sand and wispy

Grass did not afford us the protection

We assumed God had provided

But our reaching out to one another was too visible.

Love is something we often think

Is easily hidden from the eyes of others,

But the truth is love is visible to all

Despite our belief in the sheltering power of sand and grass.

Reclaiming Holy Ground.

Our extended family has had a cottage at Lake Webster for more than 70 years. I have memories of going to the beach there, on the grounds of the United Methodist camp site known as Epworth Forest, as a young boy. I learned how to row a boat at Lake Webster. I learned how to catch bluegill (and one spectacular bass) at Lake Webster. I remember spending evenings on the sternwheeler -the Dixie- that would circle the lake picking up passengers.

Since we were missionaries we moved all around the world, it seemed. We seemed to always be on the go. But we would always come back to the cottage at Lake Webster. Then, I grew up (okay...maybe I didn't grow up but I got to the point in life where people expect you to have a job!) and our family moved around. As the family of a United Methodist pastor does. But we always came back to the cottage at Lake Webster.

Ten years ago this past spring my Mom died of pancreatic cancer. Since then I haven't enjoyed going to Lake Webster because the cottage reminds me of her absence.

Now, though, our two granddaughters have decided they love going to Lake Webster. We've just spend three days with them. Ella walked with me on the pier, last night, after a sunset trip around the lake on the ski boat. Both Grandpa and her Mommy went skiing. Ella said to me, "I have had so much fun at the cottage!"

So now the cottage is a good place to go, for me. The girls and their presence have reclaimed this holy ground for me. Their love fills the place. My Mom's picture is still on the door of the fridge. I still sometimes stop, as I swing in the hammock in the front yard, and say, "Oh, Mom..." Bryan, our oldest son, reminded me today as we swam down at the beach how my Mom would wear a rubber swimming cap and swim laps back and forth across the swimming area.

I miss my Mom. But Ella and Olivia have reclaimed this holy ground for me. They have blessed it. They have sanctified it with their gracious -and sometimes very loud!- presence.

The Technological Treadmill.

So the new iPhone is coming out. Articles on business pages talk about the number of people lining up to order/buy this latest version of the hot selling phone with the all amazing applications.

The cycle of innovation keeps speeding up, and what was cutting edge technology six months ago is now outdated. Left high and dry. Shiny new phones, computers, electronic reading devices, MP3 units, are taken home...we just figure them out...they just start to "work" for us. Then, something new is rolled out. The shiny new thing is now old. We turn them in. Spend more money. Lose more hours trying to figure out a new operating system. And so it goes.

An article in a Christian news magazine the other day (or was it the New York Times?) raised the whole question about the environmental impact of all these devices being built and then discarded. Are they being recycled? What about all the metal and plastic that is put into each unit?

At what point do we say, "Enough?" That may be an odd statement for me to make the week after I bought my first iPod. But at what point do we say this: "Enough. The phone I have makes phone calls, allows me to text and take pictures, and I think that is just fine. I don't want to spend more money for something that does more stuff I can't even figure out."

It is an environmental concern: the world does not have endless resources.

It is a stewardship concern: have you ever thought about all the stress in your life, and the time wasted, as you try to figure out that new computer, that new phone, that new MP3, that new GPS unit?

It is a spiritual concern: is it just possible that we think the next new shiny thing will make the deep ache inside go away...when only a relationship with the living God can do that?

Maybe the Hebrews weren't bowing and scraping to a golden calf out there in the wilderness of Sinai. Maybe they were actually standing in line waiting for the next cool phone.

Space and Water.

A friend told me that going on a sabbatical was disorienting. The first week or so my friend said that he, after putting down his role as a pastor, had to work to discover again who he was -down deep. At a basic level. Apart from his role as pastor.

I'm not sure about that but it is going to take several days for my "motor" to slow down.

Honestly, I am curious about what God is going to do during the next three months. I already feel lighter. For the last three days I have been in a coastal town in southwest Michigan. It's one of our favorite places. A lovely beach, a simple bed & breakfast three blocks from North Beach, a picturesque marina with boats lined up along a river that divides the town, and water that has been stirred up by a steady west wind. I've been walking, reading, swimming, and stopping. I want to enjoy my new iPod but the music of the water keeps me from inserting those earbuds and shutting out the world with the music of Mariah Carey, Mark Knoffler, Vince Gill, Puccini, or Bering Strait. As good as the music may be I'd rather hear the waves meet the sand.

Tonight I twice walked out on the jetty that leads out to a navigation light. The waves were rolling along the steel plates along side the breakwater. I found myself thinking about all the times when, as a young boy in northwest Alaska, I would wander down to the shore of the Bering Sea. There was something about the water that drew me.

When I need to be renewed, when I need to step away, I often find myself either on or near water. Not sure why. So tonight I walked the beach -after taking the risk of swimming in water that was more than bracing. Here I am walking along, watching, and swimming in Lake Michigan. Later in this three month journey I'll be spending 8 days on the North Atlantic. And, near the end of the clergy leave, I'll be in Florida...walking those Gulf beaches. Swimming in those warmer waters. (Assuming swimming in the Gulf of Mexico is still something people are allowed to do!)

Maybe it has something to do with those words in Genesis when we are told that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God brought light out of darkness, form out of chaos, dry ground out of water. It's interesting that when people in 1st century Palestine people wanted a new start with God they went out to the Jordan River to be immersed in those tea-colored waters. Baptism in the waters of the river were a place where people began a new chapter. I even find myself thinking of the time in the Old Testament when a great Syrian general, who was suffering from an incurable skin disease, showed up and a Jewish prophet told the man -Naaman- to go bath in the waters of the Jordan River. Plain old water didn't seem like something God could use to heal something so serious, the great general thought.

But water can heal. Water seems to provide me with a space...and in that space God works.

God is.

It has been a good day. A beautiful day. A peace-full day.