I had a great opportunity the other day. I went to Tucson with a friend of mine who works at Fuller Theological Seminary Southwest. I got to spend time with her and encourage others to go to seminary in general and Fuller in particular. Overall it was wonderful, but one part captured my nostalgia and reminded me of what a long journey becoming a pastor truly has been.

We spent Tuesday night with the Presbyterian Campus Ministry group at the University of Arizona.

Different School. Different decade. Different denomination.

Yet so many things were the same.

The enthusiasm, the passion, the talents and abilities that come out so strongly when young people are not only able to, not only encouraged to, but expected to lead.

Watching the girl who provided an amazing meal, the young woman who was so refreshingly childlike in her acceptance and ability to make people feel welcome and at home, the boys goofing around during dinner change into men as they set up for worship and sat down to lead the music, reminded me of my days at Lutheran Campus Ministry of Northern Arizona University.

Yet there was more than the personalities, activities, and actions that called out to me and my memory. There was an intangible feeling among the relationships that we witnessed. A sense of community, of mutual understanding, of love, that I instantly felt connected to. As if I belonged there. As if I had never left my campus ministry.

We can claim it is that sense of nostalgia. We can pass it off as a similar setting, situation, or climate. Some might even claim it is a desire to recapture a youth that I left behind upon graduating in 1997.

The truth however, is so much stronger than any of that. The truth is that it is the Spirit running through that group of people that I responded to. It was the familiarity of the Body of Christ that called out to me. It was that immediate recognition that these young men and woman are a small representation of the amazing potential, the shining future, and the undying HOPE that lies within any Christian community that shares the highs and lows of life together.

It was truly a privilege to watch so many young Christians gather as they embark on a life of serving God and each other, while they find a way to take that into the world.

So I have been mulling over this for months.

It will never reach the perfected humor that I would love to achieve, but oh well.

Here are my thoughts on life as a rural pastor.

You know you are a rural pastor when...

... you receive roasts as appreciation for the job you are doing. And yes, I mean the raw cuts of meat from an animal (in my case a lovely pork loin roast).

... the season's are marked as, planting, growing, harvesting, and hunting.

... worship services are planned around milking times.

... snowmobiles only strike you as an unusual mode of transportation to church when the morning kill is strapped to the back.

... service is canceled because the people can't get out of their driveways (whether or not it actually snowed during the night).

... you are encouraged to offer tractor blessings (and even exorcisms if needed ;).

.... you need a 4-wheel drive to make it to half your congregations homes if there is any ice, snow, rain, or mud (see entry from March 17, 2010).

... lunch

is any sort of sweet accompanied by coffee before, during, or after a meeting.

... pudding mixed with crushed cookies counts as a salad (much to the delight of children everywhere).

... the local convenience store/gas pump also has the spare keys to the church building.

... the mayor of the town plows your driveway every time it snows.

... the local newspaper will announce when you arrive, when you appear at events, when you have company, if you end up with a speeding ticket, and when you leave. (Note that I did NOT end up with a speeding ticket!)

... it is as likely to see a tractor parked in front of a store as any other vehicle.

... people welcome you into their hearts, homes, and lives with warmth and caring. (Okay, and with a little bit of a knowing smile waiting for the 'city pastor' to do something a little crazy.)

My time in southwest

Minnesota was truly fantastic. I enjoyed living in a rural setting, and getting to know some very wonderful people. I was blessed to be able to have an internship that was so encouraging.

Please comment if you have other instances to add!

Hello.

It has been a long time, I know.

I have missed writing and hearing from those of you who respond.

You might then ask, 'Well why have you not posted then?'

I could give you a lot of reasons, chief of which would of course be that I have been busy. True of course, but not the whole truth.

The whole truth goes beyond one concrete reason. It is a nebulous blur of semi-conscious reasons ranging from not knowing what to write, being apprehensive about the end of internship that was looming ever close, and being truly overwhelmed by the unknown future lying ahead.

Have you ever faced a time in life like that? Where certainty of anything lies just beyond your grasp.

For me that feeling began around June. The close of my time in Southwestern Minnesota was less than three months away, and any thoughts of the future seemed slightly debilitating. Something had to give. that something turned out to be the conscious processing of my time as an intern that writing this blog required.

Now as I look back on it, I plan on going back and reviewing that time with you.

It ended very much as it began. Full of warmth, support, and knowledge that God had surely placed me there for that time. It was a wonderful experience, and one that I will always be grateful for having.

I now look toward the future, slightly more than anxious to learn where God will place me for my first call. I invite you to join me on that journey as well.

And I ask that you forgive the lapse of communication!

For now, be blessed!

I've been growing things.

You wouldn't know it to look at my 'garden', which is momentarily home to a lone little cherry tomato plant still boldly growing next to the remains of three sadly departed cucumber plants and lying 15 feet away from three struggling strawberry plants.

But truly I have been growing things. They are all inside the house. Safe in little peat pots, hidden from the brutal wind and scorching sun.

I have been watching these things all grow from seeds into little plants. I am fascinated by the whole process. Particularly the way each seed (regardless of what it is, avocado, basil, pepper, chili, bean, broccoli, spinach, or carrot) sprout in the same way. For days there was nothing to see while roots spread out, and then suddenly, a hint of green, and by the next day two little leaves were poking out of the soil on a stem that seems to fragile to support even one leaf let alone two, yet there they are. Two little leaves branching out from the root to reach out to the world and gather the sunlight.

I'm too scared to plant all these little growing things in the garden. It's so safe in the house. Outside in the little patch of ground that I inevitably forget about, how will they survive? In the house, on my kitchen table, I can't help but remember them.

But everyday they grow more, and that growth allows them to lean even more to the outside world that waits, and the sun that lives there beckoning to these fragile little green things. They need to be planted. They need to spread roots and reach their leaves further up into the sky.

I'm encouraged by the fields I pass day after day. Watching dirt suddenly erupt into thousands of tiny little plants with two little leaves reaching out, facing the wind, the sun, the animals. It is what they are meant to do. The fields give me hope that my little plants will survive in my little garden. Despite me.

There is something else I have seen. Now maybe it is just the fact that I have been trying to think of a way to preach on the Trinity all week, but I am struck at how each plant begins in the same way. Roots, stem, and those two little leaves.

Now I am not one to try to find a metaphor for the Trinity in everything from water, to life roles, to plants be it apples, clovers, or newly sprouted seeds. However, what has struck me is how essential the idea of three parts really is in our world. Of course that is why so many of the natural worlds phenomena have lent themselves to be models in our attempt to explain this complex understanding of God. So many things in the world have three parts, or three states; peel, flesh, seed; core, mantle, crust; solid, liquid, vapor.

The natural world is not the only place we see this occur either. Think of how many of our relationships exist in this pattern. Father, mother, child. Student, teacher, parent(s). Wife, Husband, God.

There is something about three parts making up a whole that makes it so much stronger, so much more able to face adversity, strife, and difficulty. Like my little plants, the three parts help it be grounded, upright, and reaching out and up to the sky, without fear of the wind overcoming the whole of it.

None of these things is a perfect model of the Trinity of course. After all, if I would have to hazard a guess, I would say that our creator modeled this idea of three parts making up the whole, three beings forming one relationship, from the pre-existence of the Trinity and the communion that had always been.

"I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now." These are the words Jesus speaks in John 16:12. There is so much that we can not bear or understand now. Yet we struggle and grapple and fight with it all anyway. We try so hard to understand this idea of Trinity that I think we fail to recognize that anything we grasp hold of to illustrate it will always pale in comparison, because they are only reflections of the original. Human kind wants to know, to understand, to have the control over it by having the knowledge of it all. It is so hard to let it go of the need to put our heads around the knowledge and just accept what is.

Well my little plants have to be put into the ground. I have to trust that God created them in a way that will enable them to survive in the environment they were meant to live in.

As for preaching on the Trinity? I suppose my message is less one of trying to understand, and more one of living into the blessing we have in Gd who can relate to us in three such unique ways, and who cares enough about us to do so.

'Aren't you on a terminal.. uh, I mean a fourth year internship?"

I chuckled in my head when this question was asked of me a few weeks ago.

I had heard the term before. Terminal Internship. It is a phrase used for those of us who are doing internship last and not going back to seminary for a year prior to ordination.

It makes sense. This internship is terminal in the sense that it is the end of my time in seminary. I suppose the joke in it is that it is the end of life as I know it as well. Ok, who am I kidding, the joke is that it is the end of having any sort of life outside of the parish for which you work.

I get it. I do. Yet I have to confess that the reason I chuckled this time, was because I have always pictured something different when I hear this phrase.

I picture, not a hospital room or a sickness, or funeral, but rather an airport terminal. I see the business of travelers rushing to catch their flights to whatever destination they are going to.

For me that is exactly what this 'terminal' internship is. It is not a death, but a passing through. I am going through internship on my way to the next stop on my journey.

I love journeys, particularly the journey of life. (Hence the name of the blog!) Passing through an airport terminal is one of the highlights of any journey for me. The people, the excitement, the anticipation. Whether you are going or coming there is so much to look at, see, experience and anticipate.

The longer I have thought about it, the more I like this application for the word terminal in general. A terminal anything is what we are passing through on the way to our next destination.

Life then is terminal. It is a terminal. It is what we are passing through on our way to a more complete relationship with God.

Thank you to all of you who join me on this journey. I love you all and I am so glad that you are part of this terminal life.

Okay call me crazy, but I like Synod Assemblies.

They wear me out; I am a tried and true introvert after all. Yet I like them.

It's kind of like the church's version of Gilligan's Island just, sadly, without the tropical locale.

After all Gilligan's Island was meant to be a social statement, or question really; "What happens when you take a microcosm of society and strand them together on an isolated island?' Synod Assemblies have the same affect. After all we are taking a small percentage of the church as a whole and putting them together in a closed room for 2-3 days with minimal contact to the outside world. Of course then we throw in extra fun bonuses like trying to talk about difficult and controversial issues, and even make decisions on those issues.

Comparing it to Gilligan's Island, of course only applies when everyone, with their varying views, thoughts, agendas, hopes, and dreams, can find a way to get along and really love and respect each other.

There are times when it turns in to Survivor and two differing camps try to vote each other off the island, or at least out of the denomination. We have all seen this happen (even in other groups and meetings if you have never had the joyous opportunity to be at a Synod Assembly). Factions form. Alliances are made with people you normally would not associate with. Harsh words are spoken. Emotions run high. Before anyone is aware of what has happened, the people we all once gathered with to make the world a better place, have become part of the problem in the world of the church. All the snarling and infighting has closed us in and made us seem unwelcoming, distant, and not at all Christ-like. All because we let the 'prize', the reward of being the one 'right' way to think and be, become our sole focus.

However, even though this has happened at the assemblies I have been to at points, most of the time it is the easier (not easy, but easier) camaraderie of people from all walks of life learning how to relate to each other. Learning that the 'professor' will take for ever to figure out and analyze a problem, but that the information and solutions he comes up with will be invaluable. Seeing that the 'Howell's' may seem removed and snotty, but that they have hearts of gold and when they see what they can do to help, they will be beyond generous. We find out that 'Ginger' is not merely shallow and fake, but that her energy and vibrancy will help things be accomplished AND be well done (dare I say attractive to outsiders?). We see that the 'Captain' has leadership, that nothing would be possible without 'Mary Ann's' willingness to take care of people, and we see that 'Gilligan' can befriend anyone with his laid back attitude and open compassion.

At Synod Assemblies, we see that people do not always have to get along. We do not always have to agree. The 'right' way to do church is to not focus on one way, because that will ever be 'right' for all. We find the strengths of all cover the weaknesses of others. We find that voting people off the island only hurts the people who stay on the island.

Yes, I like Synod Assemblies. They give us a chance to see in detail and concentration, the colorful beauty of the whole church.

Balance

Recently I heard someone talking about balance. I have always been all about balance. I like balance. Balance between the far left and the far right. Balance between work and play. Balance between thinking you are good for nothing and thinking that you are the best at everything. These things are what we call being well-adjusted and healthy people. Balance is what I strive for everyday.

Yet this person, and I honestly can not remember who it was that was saying this or where it was that I was talking to this person, was saying that when it comes to a relationship with God we are automatically unbalanced. When it comes to a life lived as a disciple we will never be able to achieve balance. This is because God is so much greater than we are. We are receiving so much more in this relationship than God is. By the very nature of what we are and who God is, the entire thing is out of balance. So we should seek a middle ground in life, a center place between extremes, but we should embrace the imbalance that comes from a life lived as a child of God.

I have been pondering this this morning because I am feeling so out of balance today. Shaky, insecure, and a little frightened. Therefore the balance that I seek for in my life on a daily basis, seems to be gone.

Yet in this shaky world that I am wondering around in today, I recognize that it is the unbalanced relationship that I have with God that is still keeping me centered. I may be out of balance. I may be leaning more heavily on God than on myself today. (Let's face it even though I love and trust God I still like to rely on me to get through life. Stubborn pride apparently has not been something I have been able to loose in my quest for balance.) I may even be a little lost in my own thoughts. However, because God is so much more than I am, it is He that keeps me upright, that keeps me able to find the center.

Today I am resting on the unbalanced relationship that I have with God to keep me grounded. Silly me for ever thinking that I was the one finding balance. Really, when will I learn that all things are indeed possible through God but it is because God gives the strength to do them, and that I have really no control over it.

Well, like I said, stubborn pride.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through God who strengthens me.