Uncategorized | Michael Valliant

Walk this Way

Jesus walked. A lot. Walking, praying, eating with friends, hanging with the unruly–these are some of the things he spent the most time doing. The pace and intentionality of Jesus’ life are among his key examples for us.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book “An Altar in the World,” talks about Jesus’ walking practice:

“Sometimes he had a destination and sometimes he didn’t. For many who followed him around, he was the destination. Whether he was going somewhere or nowhere at all, going with him was the point. Food tasted better at the pace he set. Stories lasted longer. Talk went deeper. While many of his present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it. Jesus was a walker, not a rider. He took his sweet time.”

[Aside: it makes it really hard to stomach when some bonehead says if Jesus lived today, he’d have a private jet to go around the world. You might want to go back and review the Sermon on the Mount, or say, anything he said in the Gospels…]

When I think about my best days, there is some part of each of them that have been spent walking, exploring, hiking, doing something at a slower, intentional pace, even if it’s around the yard. We’re in a hurry often enough, taking time to walk, to slow down, seems essential.

I like any chance I can get to drop some wisdom from Gary Snyder. In “Practice of the Wild,” he links walking with adventure and humility:

“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.”

I think that’s part of it, the slow pace of walking and the vastness of the planet, it is humbling and beautiful at the same time. It puts us in our bodies and lets our souls breathe.

If you’ve been around Oxford for any period of time, you’ve likely come across Bruce Mills. When I was growing up, Bruce lived down the street from us, and spent a lot of time in the park, playing electric guitar, spreading out black and white photographs he had taken and developed, laughing and philosophizing, later on doing Tai Chi. For the better part of a few decades, Bruce rides his bike from Trappe to Oxford to paint houses. The times that he’s had a car, he felt like he missed out.

“When I get into a car, I turn the key and I’m there,” he once said. “When I ride my bike, I can breathe, I can smell the earth, I can get my thoughts together, I take my time.”

I like so much about that. I think Jesus might have a bike if he lived bodily in today’s world. But it wouldn’t be a fancy, upscale bike, and I can’t see him decked out in spandex with a GPS and figuring out his pace and heart rate. Personally, I think Jesus would have a beach cruiser, letting go of the hurry, and smiling in the breeze.

A Sunday Prayer

God, Creator of the Universe, I thank you for this day.

Thank you for coffee, for sweet cream, for a quiet morning, and for speaking to me through books, words, and other people.

Thank you for Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, Blue Jays, and for small gray birds that fly away before I can get binoculars to get a better look.

Thank you for rivers, coves, and creeks, and for time to paddle out on them. Thank you for showing me beauty that I can’t get to by land. Thank you for for the warmth of the sun, for breezes, for currents and tides to battle, ride, and surf. Thank you for sand bars, beaches, and driftwood.

Thank you for showing me new things on waters where I’ve spent 46 years exploring. Thank you for hidden coves, fish jumping, families trotlining, and Great Blue and Green Herons, who must swear at my scaring them, but I love seeing them fly and settle again further down.

Thank you for allowing my mind to see my life reflected in a 6-mile paddle–for memories and mistakes, for joy and love and dreams, for connection to place and to You and Your creation. Thank you for not giving up on me when I was distant from you. Thank you for ears to hear your voice.

Help me remember this feeling of connection when loneliness comes. Help me find direction and purpose when I get lost.

Help me find the right words, the right actions, the right heart as a father, son, brother, friend, and whatever other names I wear.

Please be with the broken, the hurting, the confused, the lost. Give them peace, help them find their purpose, and know Your love. Thank you for the words of Bob Goff, who wrote, “It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.” Please take us in our brokenness and use us to help each other, to paint the picture, to make the world You would have us make.

Please give us rest. Help us find and know You in quiet, in down time, in play. Help us recharge and re-create ourselves, so that we can find, and know, and do the work You have given us to do.

Father God, I don’t have a map, a script, or a clue how You do things. And I probably wouldn’t do a great job with it if I did. There are so many things that I don’t understand.

But I know the greatest blessings and wisdom and love I have known, have come when I listen, when I’m open, when I show up, and say, “Here I am.”

More Subtle Than a Two by Four

God sometimes speaks with a two-by-four. That’s helpful for me because I’m frequently dense enough to miss something more subtle. I need to be knocked upside the head from time to time.

Sometimes though, we just get glimpses and it is up to us to take notice. In his book, “Tales of Wonder,” Huston Smith adapts the term grace notes to describe these glimpses or moments:

“I must have been under six that early morning I stumbled out barefoot into our backyard. The moist dew under my feet felt fresh, exciting between my toes. Its freshness penetrated every atom of my body. The day was just dawning, the sun was coming out, cool and warmth intermingled, and I knew that everything would be just right. I use the musical term grace notes to describe such moments, when our perspective shifts and we suddenly glimpse perfection beyond words.”

Those moments can happen anytime, as long as we are paying attention. I see them with sunrises and sunsets; I catch them while reading or running. I feel them when finding spinning pinwheels planted in front of the church after a Pentecost worship service. Or in taking the time to notice and help a dragonfly who needed a hand.

It means we have to redirect our focus off of where we are going or what we are doing next and take time to be in the present. I don’t think we can hear God speaking in the future, but we’ve got a chance to hear him in the here and now.

In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Barbara Brown Taylor goes back to the story of Moses and the burning bush, through which God speaks to Moses. Brown Taylor points out that the burning bush was not right in front of Moses–he had to stop what he was doing and turn aside to go see it. If he hadn’t, if he’d stayed on his task of tending sheep, he would have missed it and wouldn’t be the Moses we read about.

“What made him Moses was his willingness to turn aside. Wherever else he was supposed to be going and whatever else he was supposed to be doing, he decided it could wait for a minute.”

And that made all the difference. I wonder if we would? Or if I would? I try. I am pretty good about seeing the sky start to turn a sublime color and dropping lunch making or laundry folding and heading out to investigate.

Or having lunch outside and listening, breathing, and centering. But I used to be better about finding and helping create those moments with my daughters. If you posit God as a loving parent, then our own chances to be creative, loving, listening parents/shepherds/counselors/friends (I don’t think that is relegated to being parents) to others should and do provide countless opportunities for us to experience something of the love of God, by putting it out into the world ourselves. I have to sit with that more. I have to be that more often.

Sometimes in the frustration of parenting teenagers, which absolutely needs to be done–in the midst of grades and attitude and apathy–I lose sight of, and don’t make the opportunities to fill their (and my own) hearts and minds and days with the kind of creative joy and love that I want to. I have heard, felt, and experienced love through Anna and Ava in ways I will never be able to show enough gratitude for. I need to live into that more.

Brown Taylor cites a character in Alice Walker’s book, “The Color Purple,” who says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

We’ve all got our color purple moments. Our grace notes. Our burning bushes. Our chances to notice and to be differently in the world. To make time.

Note to self: notice purple; don’t walk by burning bushes; cultivate the smiles, the questions, the adventures, that begin from the inside and launch their way into the world. That way maybe God doesn’t have to break out the two-by-four so often.

Signs, Spirit, Connections

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Who wouldn’t want more of each of those in their lives? Those are the fruits of the Spirit as Paul describes them in his letter to the Galatians.

April 13-15, Christ Church Easton went to Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, Delaware, for an Alpha Weekend retreat. More than 40 people headed for the woods, the beach, cabins, bonfires, camaraderie, laughter, and discussions in small groups about our own journeys, struggles, questions, and where we are.

This is our third Alpha Retreat in the past year, running the Alpha Course in the spring and the fall, and I have been blown away each time with amazing and honest people and generous spirits. And the deep laughter that comes with spending a weekend with people in cool places, talking about stuff that matters.

When you ask questions like “How does God guide us?” and “How can I make the most out of the rest of my life?” and people get real with their stories and experiences, profound and unexpected things can happen.

It’s often the unscripted time that makes the weekend. Try showing up at a camp with cabins on the water on Friday the 13th and get ready for the Jason stories. Give people a beach, bonfire, marshmallows, hot dogs, and guitars, and you have an instant party. Break bread together on the beach and in the dining hall, gathered to talk and learn about faith, and in my experience, the Holy Spirit is present in those moments, with these people.

Some people think of worship as what happens at a church service. And it is. But worship is also much more than that. The entire weekend was a celebration, worship. Worship can connect us to God, to people, and to nature, creation. And Camp Arrowhead is a setting to allow all those things to happen. On Sunday morning, before breakfast, I wandered the camp, finding Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Cardinals, Blue Jays. I sat down to read and think about Galatians again after Saturday and read in Gary Snyder’s “Turtle Island,” which is a book I almost always carry.

the path is whatever passes–no
end in itself.

the end is,
grace–ease–

healing,
not saving.

singing
the proof

the proof of the power within.

Joining Snyder’s words, the path, the weekend was grace, ease, healing, singing–the proof of the power within.

After breakfast, and our last small group gathering for the weekend, we gather for a worship service proper, a celebration and culmination of the our time together. Jerrett Hansen, our interim pastor who joined us for the weekend points out, “When the church is in its proper place, we don’t have to go through this thing called life alone.”

He talks about the power of simple signs that we can see throughout our lives if we aren’t too busy looking for the big signs.

“We have been given the great gift in our community to be signs to each other.”

This morning (Monday), I woke up thinking about the Saturday night bonfire on the beach; of everyone coming up with the best way to roast marshmallows or hot dogs; the laughter and conversations. And I got this in a daily e-mail of Frederick Buechner’s writing:

“In the pages of Scripture, fire is holiness, and perhaps never more hauntingly than in the little charcoal fire that Jesus of Nazareth, newly risen from the dead, kindles for cooking his friends’ breakfast on the beach at daybreak.”

And that’s maybe what a weekend like this is about, what a faith community, a church, is all about. During the Easter season, post-Resurrection: being signs to each other; helping one another along the way; staying connected to God, to the Holy Spirit, to each other, through Jesus Christ.

On Being Born

The last five years have been off the map. If you’d sat down with me on this day in 2013 and told me what the view in 2018 would look like, I’d have backed away slowly. And yet, they are some of the most important and beautiful years in shaping who I am, for better or worse.

One thing I remember clearly, when summer came and the Coast Guard contract we were working on ended, I was out of a job and searching for a direction. And I remember reading Frederick Buechner and having this overwhelming feeling that I should go to seminary; that there was something about a journey of faith that was key. I look back at Buechner’s words that I found again recently:

“Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you because it is through what happens to you that God speaks… It’s in language that’s not always easy to decipher, but it’s there powerfully, memorably, unforgettably.”

I talked to a long-time friend and mentor who is an Episcopal priest and looked into things and sat and prayed on it, and then let it go when another Washington, DC, job working for the Coast Guard presented itself. I simply couldn’t imagine what life would look like or what would have to happen to end up working for a church.

There is no way I can do justice to the events that have taken place or the unexpected cast of characters who have been a part of what has happened since. There have been so many unexpected and undeserved blessings, even while there has been confusion, frustration, and letting go. Looking with hindsight doesn’t show the heartbreak, missteps and mistakes, letting people down, the questions, or being lost in the woods for stretches. We each have to own our scars and those we cause others. And we each have to get up each day and ask and answer, “Now what?”

In his book, “The Heart of Christianity,” Marcus Borg talks about being what resurrection means in our lives:

“…the process of personal transformation at the center of the Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being, dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity–a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in spirit, in Christ, in God.”

There is so much there. So much to live into, live up to, and I don’t always to the best job of it. But trying to focus and center and find each day, something of a new life, centered in God and the sacred. That feels like what I have been trying to get to since I was a teenager and started uncovering pieces of life and the world that I love.

There is something new and at the same time, there are the parts and passions and wonders and curiosities that abide and make us who we are, each of us a piece of a larger puzzle. And how we see things and how we see ourselves, they are and we are. I have been reading John O’Donohue’s “Anam Cara,” which goes on my very short list of books I’d take with me anywhere.

“There is such an intimate connection between the way we look at things and what we actually discover. If you learn to look at yourself and your life in a gentle, creative, and adventurous way, you will be eternally surprised at what you find… Each of us needs to learn the unique language of our own soul. In that distinctive language, we will discover a lens of thought to brighten and illuminate our inner world.”

“Anam Cara” shows how creatively and actively our inner world, our bodies, and the landscapes around us are all sacred and interconnected.

Each of the last five or six years, I have picked myself up a pair of shoes and a book for my birthday. Sometimes they have been trail running shoes, sometimes running shoes, Sanuks, or Vans. The books are more varied and tangential than I could even account for. The purpose is to invite in new adventures for the year: physical adventures on foot as well as intellectual adventures. Both make for adventures of the soul. This year it is trail shoes and Huston Smith’s autobiography, “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine.”

Who knows what adventures year number 46 holds? I’ve learned I don’t know much. But I’m trying to get better as I go on about listening to my life and to hearing God speak. I am trying to use life up to this point, scars and all, to invite transformation and embrace new life ahead, centered in the sacred, centered in Christ, centered in God.

And I find life is generally better when I remember to get outside, with the dog 🙂

Matthew and the Rock Face

If you’d told me 15 years ago that I would find laughter, joy, friendships, tears, questions, answers, life, sorrow, challenges, confusion, exhaustion, and exhilaration, all in a Bible study, I am sure I would have dismissed it.

At the beginning of October 2017, two groups at Christ Church Easton started a journey through Matthew’s gospel, using N.T. Wright’s “Matthew for Everyone” as a touchstone. We weren’t sure whether to end at Christmas, part-way down the path, but both groups wanted to see it through. With three weeks left to go, Jesus has been arrested, and we know what’s coming.

Wright looks at where we are in the story and compares it to standing at the bottom of a huge rock face.

“That is how we should feel as we stand at the foot of the final ascent of St. Matthew’s gospel. We have walked at a steady pace through the hills and the valleys of the story. We have sat down to hear Jesus deliver another parable or discourse. We have marched with him along the road, enjoying the sunshine of the early days in Galilee, and the remarkable views as the disciples gradually realized more of what the kingdom was about. We have arrived in Jerusalem at watched dramatic events unfold. But we are now standing in front of a sheer wall of rock, and if we don’t find it both compelling and terrifying, we haven’t got the right spectacles on.”

I feel that. I feel it in my life and I feel it as we read and work through Matthew. I feel it as we approach both spring and Easter. With all the beauty and questions, there is death ahead. There is rebirth and renewal after, but it only comes after and because of a death. I think that is also true of our lives. It is of mine–some of the most beautiful and meaningful times come after loss, come after the low, come after the crap. And sometimes they only happen because of the painful experience that preceded it.

Wright goes on:

“The theories about why Jesus died–theories of the ‘atonement,’ as they are called–are like maps or old photographs, taken from a distance. They may be accurate in their way, and the’re helpful particularly when it’s cloudy and you can’t see too much for the moment. But they’re not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, getting there on a clear day when you can see the view. When that happens, you will find you quickly run out of words to describe what you are looking at.”

It’s not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself. What we find in Scripture is a lot like what we find in life–we get out of it what we invest in it, what we live into it. And if we are going to understand Scripture, or life, it is going to help to have guides, and friends to share the journey with, and the views. We are going to stumble and we are going to need help.

We’ve got three classes left, finishing this ascent during Holy Week as we head into Easter. Our two groups of pilgrims are at the rock face. A journey that started together five months ago. When I look back, when I look around, and when I look forward, I “quickly run out of words to describe” it.

Distractions and Renewal

Stuff gets in the way. Stuff gets in the way of life happening the way it is supposed to. We get distracted, we lose focus, and before we know it, our lives have veered from where we thought they were supposed to go.

Maybe that’s where Lent comes in. As a season, it asks us to let go of some of those distractions. To let go of those things that keep us from living life as we were meant to live it. When people pick a trivial thing, even a happy thing, to give up for Lent, I think maybe it misses the mark.

I like the notion of Lent as a time for renewal and refocusing. Last week at Christ Church Easton, the Gospel reading was Mark’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. Interim pastor Jerrett Hansen, reflecting on this mountaintop experience, asked, “How are we connected to the story?”

He posited we need to live into the mystery of the story, the mystery of God and Christ, rather than try to intellectually analyze it.

“Jesus and God are to be experienced. We need to be open to these experiences… Experiencing God is essential to our journey.”

I think that is what life’s distractions prevent us from doing. They get in the way of our wonder; they get in the way of loving more fully; they get in the way of opening ourselves to possibilities and to each other. Distractions keep us from knowing ourselves more fully and from knowing God more fully.

Maybe instead of giving something up just to give something up, for Lent we can think about getting ourselves into spiritual shape. Building better habits to peel back the distractions. Jerrett introduced a notion that a friend of his, Michael Foss, spelled out as marks of discipleship:

1. Pray daily
2. Worship weekly
3. Read the Bible daily
4. Build spiritual friendships
5. Serve in the community
6. Be generous in all things

We’ll be spending time over the next weeks working through what some of those look like and what they mean. If you are up for it, maybe think of Lent as time to take on a discipline, or a devotional habit, to help get into shape a bit.

We all need help in our lives in some form or fashion. We can all be better people, for ourselves, our family, our friends, our community, our world.

I’m stoked to be helping lead groups this Lent and spring, which will be looking at Mark’s Gospel; which will be looking at how and why to pray and read the Bible. And the Alpha Course.

I love Mother Teresa’s notion that through prayer God guides us to do the things that need to be done in the world, that “prayer changes us and we change things.”

God invites us to come as we are, just as we are. But He also knows we are capable of being so much more. We can be better. We can do better. Maybe we can start now.

I’ll leave with a final though from Jerrett’s sermon this past Saturrday:

“God loves you the way you are, but He knows how much more you can be.”

Ava

Ava is a rock. She takes things in stride where her sister is all over the map. If she is upset, it means something is up.

Over the last couple years, I’ve had too many reasons to write about Ava and what she’s been through with her seizures. Yet, seizures are the furthest thing from defining her.

This is a year of parenting milestones. Anna turned 16 and now Ava turns 13, and we are head first into the teenage years.

Ava is the smart kid without much common sense. She’ll pick up on something five minutes after the conversation because she’s been thinking about her own thing. She makes honor roll effortlessly and organizes herself in ways her sister (and her father) may never figure out.

This year the younger sister by three years grew taller than the older. They like to stand next to each other and have people guess who is older. The guess is usually Ava.

She endures and carries on. Ava has taken more pills over the past two and a half years than I have taken in 45. She’s had to worry about things she can’t understand or control. And yet, while in the hospital for a month, her biggest complaint during that stretch was not being allowed to have a soda while she was in intensive care.

Ava finds humor in simple things. She laughs easily and often. She isn’t that worried about what other people think and doesn’t seem to need to be surrounded by friends all the time. She is nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning or off the couch.

I love remembering her packing the 96-pack of Crayola crayons in her backpack so she was sure to have the right color to draw with. I love that when doctors said she probably wouldn’t be ready to play field hockey after getting out of the hospital, that Ava was named the team MVP for the season and was a force on the field. I love that she already knows the key things she wants to do when she visits Ocean City this summer, including her annual tradition of getting hair wraps.

Ava surprises me frequently. Her thoughts come out of left field. She has taught me more about taking life as it comes and about perseverance than I could have imagined. She taught me about prayer and about gratitude and about carpe’ing the diem.

When Ava was born, I remember thinking she and her sister will be 13 and 16 at the same time. Formidable parenting patience required.

I look at her attitude. I look at her humor and personality. I look at her quirkiness and kindness. And I know that she will live life on her own terms and at her own pace. But she’ll probably need someone to wake her up in the mornings 🙂

Sixteen

You are the ringleader. When I look up, you have cousins, kids, your sister, watching and following you around. You always make me laugh with what goofiness you come up with to run them through. From costumes to choreography, I don’t have a clue where you come up with it.

You are the curious one. Watching, listening atop the stairs, paying attention when no one realizes it. You leash the dog and set out on foot. You are the sea glass explorer and the finder of odd things.

I rarely ever cried before you were born. Now I can’t watch movies with fathers and daughters in them; I am pretty well worthless in church if a sermon, song, or prayer hits the right note. That comes from being a father, which started with you. I guess the yelling comes from that too 🙂

I’m not sure how a father is supposed to feel about his oldest child turning 16. And I’m not sure how I feel about it, so I guess that’s about right. I feel like I remember turning 16 too well for you to be there already. My teenage years were full of bad decisions, adventures, opportunities, and dumb luck. You’ve avoided a lot of the bad decisions so far, for which I thank you.

My father knew a lot more about being a dad to a 16 year old than I do, or he didn’t let on otherwise. It’s a privileged place to look at my parents and how they did it and at my daughter and how she does it. I have a lot to learn.

I want to strangle you a fair amount of the time, but I recently learned it’s your amygdala I have to take it up with. I realize you are part of God’s way of teaching me patience at the same time you are teaching me about love and gratitude.

You care about people in ways that make me both humble and proud and make me worry, which is part of what parents do, especially with 16 year olds.

When you forget yourself, you do amazing things. I’ve seen it on the field hockey field, or stepping up to play goalie in lacrosse, or in a hospital with your sister. I hope you learn to trust that more.

Paddleboarding this past summer, just the two of us, brought out the kind of conversations, questions, laughter, that no one could have told me existed before I knew you.

You and others know this story, but it’s on my mind now: we were on our way into the Annapolis Mall, you were three and sitting backwards on Ava’s stroller looking at us, and out of nowhere, unprompted, you asked, “Why did God make us?” I didn’t know what to say. You caught me off guard. And then you answered, “Know why I think? I think because He was lonely.”

There is no amount of theology or learning that has ever said it better. And if we can know the love God felt and feels and how His loneliness disappeared, maybe you show me that.

Until it’s time to get ready for school in the morning 😉

When I look at you, turning 16, I see a lot of myself. But I see so much more, and someone totally different.

For your sixteenth birthday, I want things for you that I can’t possibly give you: happiness, love, friendship, wisdom, health, success, grace, hope, and laughter, to name a very few. I hope we can point you in the right direction to help you find those things and what they mean to you.

I have no idea where you will go in life or how you will decide to get there. That’s one of the coolest, most frightening, and beautiful things I have ever seen. You are growing up. And we get to be a part of it.

Nostalgia and Home

It’s the green house that I think about the most. It was off the back of my grandparents’ house in Towson. It was full of flowers and plants and my grandmother would go around watering and studying things out there.

Nostalgia grabs us in strange ways. It can be a smell, a song, or a feeling. When I walk into the sun room in my house and see plants inside for the winter, my mind goes immediately to my grandmother’s green house. It makes me smile. To get to the green house, you would have to walk by my grandfather sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee, and reading The Baltimore Sun sports section.

Lately I’ve been thinking that nostalgia isn’t longing for the past, it’s touching something missing. In his book, “Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth,” Hugh Halter goes with nostalgia meaning “to return or go back home:”

We all have nostalgia and memories of going back home. Some of us remember our fathers through old cars; some of us keep Christmas ornaments our mothers passed down. Maybe it’s old guns; maybe just a photo. But whatever the point of reference, we all know emotions of looking back to times that brought us great joy. Nostalgia is the answer to the why.

A question I love to ask people is, “Where/what do you picture when you hear or say the word ‘home?'” I think it’s something that gets to the core of us. For one person it could be a childhood home, or the house where they raised their kids, or where they’ve spent the most years. I don’t picture a house. For me, when I think of home, I think of the Eastern Shore, Oxford, the Tred Avon River, anywhere outside in nature. Christ Church Easton and the people there feel like home. Log cabins in the woods feel like home, though I’ve never lived in one.

Christmas is a heavy nostalgic time. In part because many of us have deep memories tied to Christmas growing up. As a holiday, it can stoke both joy and emptiness, missing time past. But there may be more to it than that. Personally, it can sometimes take hearing Linus explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about before I get it right in my head. Funny how maybe it takes Charles Schulz to get kids to connect to Luke’s Gospel.

Let’s appreciate the forum here for a second: this is a blog, where I work out half-baked thoughts that should probably stay in the oven a while longer, or at least until after another cup of coffee. I don’t generally edit and things tumble out free form. That’s my disclaimer.

My memories don’t go back to the beginning of creation. There is a time before I was born. I think nostalgia reaches back further than our lifetimes. Maybe it’s a longing for a return to something in us that came before us. A Garden of Eden time that we can feel in our bones and hearts. We know there is something there, something to this longing, but we can’t put our minds around it quite right.

Halter points out that with the Incarnation, God wasn’t/isn’t trying to give us a ticket to get back to that perfect time–He’s bringing it to us. Christ brings the kingdom here and now. But it’s a process we have to open ourselves to. Christ gives us clue after clue; He shows us how to live, how to love, how to be in the world to help bring the kingdom/home both to ourselves and others. Halter goes into ways we can do a better job with this in our lives.

David Bailey’s book “Journeywork” found me via Outside Magazine. And it’s been a slow, wondrous walk since. Bailey describes home and coming home in a different way:

There’s a part of us already home
from the journey, resting by
the eternal fireside, and with us now
through the dark age and renaissance, through
every resurrection and
the great breaking-opens that feel like
endings. Storm lantern holding course
through every misadventure. Evergreen growing
through all seasons. It shines a halo of worth around
even our most irredeemable trials.

Feel that place now.

Returning home. But not as a journey to somewhere out there, but bringing home to us. Followers of Christ call it the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s a gift we can’t buy, it’s given to us by grace. It’s been brought forward to us, but we have to open the door. And we help bring it about through love.

Maybe that’s the connection: nostalgia is a longing for home, to be reconnected to it and to each other by love.