Wo/andering in the Desert

I spent twenty years of my life intimately tuned to the liturgy of the academic calendar - the rhythm and rest of lengthy breaks interspersed between semesters that flowed from introductions and syllabus to final exam.  Progress in academic liturgy is measured in assignments completed and grades assigned.  The tools are books, pencils, words, and lately, computers.  The art, or music, or poetry comes in originality and articulation.   Often times I miss this rhythm, at least the graduate school version of beginning to end, unbearable intensity to crash.  The parameters are clear, and the center is well-defined by either teacher or topic, regardless of the pedagogy.  This liturgy is lush and abundant and measurable.  

And then there is the liturgy of the church.

It comes to me in a new way this year.  It's not woven in between academic priorities.  This year Christmas had no affiliation with finals and relief and rest.  This year Lent isn't leading to a three and a half day weekend with Maundy Thursday and Easter at its bookends, and ordinary time will be mostly ordinary, not mostly summer break.

I suppose it beats no liturgy at all, but the adjustment is difficult and the boundaries are unclear.  Here, in the liturgical year, I don't know how to measure success.  There are parishioners and parents to please but no professor to affirm my good work through the lens of expertise, and the job description hardly translates into an assignment.  Instead, it requires much more flexibility, a much looser time line, and increasingly  lowered (though I shouldn't call them that) expectations that flatten to encompass the astonishing breadth of the body.

There's part of me that has no use for this liturgy.  I want to flee back to what is known and what comforts me.  There, in that comfortable state of heightened anxiety due to exams, papers, challenging, elevating discourse, and the cerebral realm of infinite ideas.  Part of me prefers that familiar pressure to the unfamiliar lack thereof.

Then last night I talked to my friend, a Disciples of Christ minister back in Tennessee.  I told her some of these things and other things about my life - my great struggle with the UCC and with church; the desire to at least hold open the possibility of a career in pastoral ministry but the unwillingness to commit to here long enough to go through the two-plus year long ordination process required for such a thing; the way I miss the Mennonite church; the questions about home and place and how they will shape my lifetime.  I spare the specifics, partly because this is such a public space, though these things come out freely in phone conversations and coffee dates.

Amy must have sensed something of the deep loss and lost-ness that I'm drenched in, and as we closed the conversation, she blessed me with a new sense of my new old liturgy.  She somehow, with words and years long friendship all the way back to Missouri, invited me to attend to my desert.

Lent.
Forty days.
Jesus in the desert.
Israelites in the desert.
Wondering. 
And wandering. 

There it was, unveiled before me this season of life.  It may not be good or filled with joy and purpose - wandering rarely is, but it is true and real, an older story than me, and it's good company I keep here.  What more could I ask?

Ocean Shores

I was born to be frugal - to can my own jam and buy off brand groceries, to eat leftovers and wear clothes until they wear out, to wash and reuse ziploc bags.  Because of this, and other things, our little family doesn't get away much.  It costs money to travel, after all, and we need to be saving for the other things we want to do - like fly home for vacations and build up some down-payment seed money.  We have the privilege of being able to think about weekend getaways, but we mostly just don't have the will.  Mostly.  There was this evening when we thought we'd try to make it out to a cute little mountain town called Leavenworth.  We spent hours trying to plan and to find the cheapest hotel.  We ended up spending the weekend at home playing Ticket to Ride. 

Yet on Friday morning, all the fates aligned, and we set out for Ocean Shores, Washington.  It was a glorious 36 hours.  For one, nothing soothes me like the open road, but it's even better when the open road takes me to an open place.  Like the Flint Hills.  The Pacific Ocean is good too, though: goodbye tall evergreens and snow-capped mountains and hello empty horizon, big sky, wide space.

The surf breaks there, kind of like the wind in Kansas - the wind that makes it's own noise.  It's deeper - has more layers than the spirit of wind, and I think scarier too when it crashes onto the jetty, spraying water and then sucking back into itself revealing currents and patterns predictable only to its own body. 

I felt my spirit open with the landscape as I jogged along the beach and watched the sunset and conversed with one friendly local man about where and when to go beach combing.  In case you're ever there, try Damon Point about an hour before the tide begins to come in.  The local interpretive center (free, by the way), has fascinating information about shipwrecks and the timber industry and less information (as we might expect) about the profound loss of space and livelihood when the area was settled by white people.  Our room - winter rates really help on the hotel front - had a nice partial view of the ocean, grassy sand dunes and all.  Also for your personal travel guide, the shrimp basket at Mike's Seafood beats the one at Alec's By the Sea both in price, quantity, and taste.

We've been back a couple days now, back to the glorious lives of ministers.  I won't speak for Jamie, but for me, that means caring too much, struggling to celebrate the small successes, wrestling with questions about the future, wondering how/whether to fit in and/or challenge a church culture, looking for spaces of peace.  It's good in that challenging, growing pains way.  It's exhausting and confining too.

Is it too escapist to wish I were back in Ocean Shores?

Florida Like a Native

You may or may not know that Jamie grew up in Florida.  Not only did she grow up there, but she's at least a fourth or fifth generation native Floridian.

Now there are worse places to have in-laws than Florida. 

But when we visit, it's not all trips to the beach and Disney.  It's backyard grilling and eating out on the screened in porch; informal and impromptu family reunions that inspire even me to pick up a southern accent; trips to the interior with its dry prairies and palmettos and gators; church at Covenant Mennonite - that little welcoming oddity just twenty minutes away down in Sarasota; sandals and shorts and short sleeves and sun.  It's best just to share it in pictures.

The beach on the west coast (Gulf side) of Bradenton Beach, Florida. 

Me chasing the waves.  Note the bare feet and shorts in January!

Jamie on the boardwalk headed for the Longboat Key Beach. 

This is one of the lakes in Myakka River State Park, which is east of Sarasota.

This is one of half a dozen or so alligators we saw in the park.  I have a strange fascination and irrational fear when it comes to gators.  In fact, every time I go jogging, even in the tamest subdivision, I am a little on edge...

Florida dry prairie as seen through the palm trees.  The prairie used to cover about 300,000 acres of Florida's interior.  That, and cattle used to be a leading export.  Who knew?

Jamie with Weston and Macey, her cousin's children.  When I asked how old she was, Macey said, "I'm fixin' to turn five next month."

Jamie and her mom look around the graveyard where her mom's family members (Ballard, Hendry) are buried back for several generations.  The graveyard is off a state road next to New Zion Baptist Church, established in 1866 just after "the War of Northern Aggression" as they sometimes call it down South.

Jim and Terri posing under the oak tree draped in Spanish Moss (which is neither Spanish nor moss).  Interesting stuff about that Spanish Moss: it's a flowering plant related to the pineapple and it used to be harvested - Florida alone had 35 moss processing plants.  The last one closed in 1958 (Gainesville), but before that, the moss had been used stuff furniture, horse collars, and car cushions.  Anyhow, This graveyard was the first stop on our tour of the home places - the old Ballard homestead, the church where Jim and Terri were married, the three room building where Terri went to grade school, and a drive down Ballard road.

Mr. Armadillo as seen rooting around the ditch next to Ballard Road.  Jim actually spotted it from the driver's side and backed the truck up to get me a good look and a good picture.

Jim practicing his cast in the backyard.  Here's what I learned: this is a 10 foot mullet net, and casting is an art.

 

Citrus grove - they're abundant in Florida.  Our trip was just after that major January freeze, and so trucks were speeding down roads all week, filled to the top with oranges.  They were headed for the juice plants to try to get the crop in before it rotted.