A little update...

It's been a wild few weeks.

The senior minister at the church where I work is taking a family leave of absence, which has vaulted me into worship and pastoral care roles at church. Here are some of the fruits of my labor:

"Our Determined Hope"
(June 17, 2010)

"Harvest Time"
(July 4, 2010)

You can listen to the sermons by clicking on the link on the left side of the page. 

We've also started chicken- and house-sitting for Rob and Lee while they are cavorting around the country on their Great American Road Trip.  It is a joy to mow the lawn and do the watering.  I'm not being facetious.  I really enjoy doing these things. 

AND, Megan and Brad spent an adventure-filled week with us that included things like...

... axing crabs on a chopping block.  This was after we went out on the Puget Sound in Kevin and Nancy's boat, the Frankie R. (namesake: Francis Regier/Horan, our great aunt and Grandma Donna's sister).  We pulled up the pots Kevin had set early that morning, coincidentally the opening day of crabbing season, Dungeness in case you're wondering.  Then we selected the biggest ones, took them home, killed and cleaned them, grilled them, and feasted on the succulent white meat. 

... visiting the cloud enshrouded Mount St. Helens.  It's prime Bigfoot country out there, and we think we may have seen traces of the elusive Sasquatch.  We never did see the top of the mountain, though. 

... a trip to the majestic and freezing cold Pacific Ocean.  It was Brad's first ever glimpse of salt water, and we experienced childhood once again, collecting pretty rocks and sand dollars on the beach. 

The trip also included obligatory trips into the kitschy tourist shops in Westport and the traditional purchase of saltwater taffy.









... and finally we had the pleasure of seeing the Kansas City Royals beat the lowly Seattle Mariners.  It was fun to be in Seattle and see Kansas fan gear, including a few folks in Jayhawks t-shirts. 







All photo credits to Megan, who no doubt will be adding some of her own blog updates about the Kohlman's adventure to the wild Pacific Northwest. 

In other news, it appears that summer sun is here to stay in Seattle.  Finally.  One squash is growing in my container garden, and the tomato plant is poised for summer abundance.  I have two containers filled with fallow land after the carrots and lettuce have been eaten and the vegetable waste plowed under to return some nutrients to the soil, maybe.  We're accepting all suggestions for summer grilling that doesn't involve meat (Jamie's a vegetarian), because it's simply not healthy to be using the oven or stove in this hot weather, living without air conditioning above a garage and all. 

Tomorrow we have more relatives coming out for a visit and in a week and a half, people will begin to converge here to celebrate Jamie's ordination as minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Then I'll be taking 16 youth on a mission trip to the Yakama Christian Mission, and THEN we'll be headed to Kansas and Arkansas for summer vacation the first week in August.  Good times. 

The Sacred Pilgrimage

My favorite day of the week is Monday.

Monday is the day in which I take my sacred pilgrimage to acquire food for the week.  I dream some day of balancing my consumption with production, of some day taking my sacred pilgrimage out to a large garden or down to a pantry stocked with foods grown by God and picked, prepared, and dried or canned by my own two hands.  For now I get to choose between Safeway, QFC, Lenny's Produce, and the new Grocery Outlet.

After my sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms with their convenient cafeteria fare and into my first apartment at 949 S. Kickapoo in Springfield, Missouri.  Those were the old days when Buzz and I rented a two bedroom apartment for $375 a month.  Those were also the days when I began to love shopping for groceries.  The options were fewer there, and I went up the road to the Dillons on National Avenue just a mile or so north of the university.  I'd start with the staples: cheese, yogurt, bread and then wind my way around the store in orderly fashion.

But come to think of it, perhaps I began loving the grocery store longer ago.  My brave mother used to take the four of us kids along with her into town.  We'd stock up, literally a grocery cart piled to the brim.  A family of six goes through a lot of food in a week, and from the farm we couldn't just walk over to get some more margarine like Jamie and I often do today.  Mom would deploy us on little missions through the store, the ever-moving cart being the home base.  Sometimes it was scary to go to the next aisle over.  I much preferred jumping over the tan tiles on the Dillons floor, staying within sight of mom.  

I didn't realize it back then, but getting to know a grocery store is like getting to know a person.  It happens over time, and there are many layers, high and low, front to back.  I've learned to reach behind the front row of milk to the fresher stuff because there's no way I can drink half a gallon in just three or four days.  I've learned there were some things I just have to ask about, though often that has involved my shy self calling mom or one of my grandmas before talking to a store employee.  In fact, I still remember Grandma Lu directing me to the hominy that was to later star in that week's white chicken chili.

Getting to know a grocery store is like getting to know a place too.  You weave in and out of the aisles, tying yourself to the shelves and the walls and the tiles on the floor.  A store has a certain smell and plays a certain kind of generic music, even when the music is completely ill-fitted to the culture of the neighborhood.  Some stores, usually in lower income neighborhoods, have bruised produce that you have to sort through and that remind you of your participation in systems of domination and oppression. 


It's disorienting to be in a new grocery store, but after a while you get to know the place.  You learn to buy things on sale.  You learn when the store brand is just fine and when you need to pay the fifty cents extra for the name brand.  You learn the people who work there, for sure by face and if you're not shy, perhaps by name and other things.  They recognize you too, at least if you're like me and wear the same pair of sweats and baseball cap every Monday morning. 


A new favorite singer/songwriter of mine is Carrie Newcomer.  She's a Midwestern folksinger, a Quaker with deep spiritual roots, a strong sense of place, and a gift for expressing the profound.  She has a song called "Holy As A Day is Spent."  It doesn't mention buying food, but it might as well for the sacredness it finds in our pilgrimages through the ordinary. 

Another Sewing Project

Memorial Day weekend has dawned in Seattle and as can be expected, the skies are gray, the temperature is in the 50s, and it's been raining/drizzling off and on all day. Lately I've had to face the fact that I am a fair weather outdoors person. This means today was an indoor day, despite the mild and manageable weather and despite the many things happening around the city.

So I sewed Jamie a skirt. This project turned out much better than my last sewing project, the ill-fated shirt. It took only 4-5 hours and would take much less time if I were ever to try the pattern again, seeing as how this is the first time I've installed a zipper since the old grade school 4-H days (thank you Harvey County East Lakers).

There are only two shaky parts of the project - my poor tailoring skills that led to cutting out the completely wrong size and having to adjust mid-project and the hem, which should not be examined closely though the fullness of the skirt hides my shoddy work-womanship.  The length may be a little awkward too, depending on who you ask.  Nevertheless, I think there's a good chance Jamie might even wear the product as a casual skirt.  Sewing success!

Here's a little look, the eye, hook and zipper and Jamie graciously modeling:

Nashville Flood

Last week Middle Tennessee flooded.  The city of Nashville shut down.  Vanderbilt postponed its final exams.  It was bad deal.  It is a bad, bad deal.  Jamie's been out in Tennessee the last few days on a trip that was planned a long time ago.  She's seen first hand some of the damage and spent an afternoon of her vacation working.  Today she's in Clarksville and says its bad there too as we've heard it is around the entire region. 

In case you haven't been to Nashville, here's the lay of the land.  The Cumberland River flows right through the city, separating East Nashville from downtown and the west side.  It runs right by L.P. Field where the Tennessee Titans play football and downtown basically sits in the river valley.  Last Monday, the river crested at 51 odd feet, 12 feet above flood stage.  The surrounding creeks and rivers also overflowed their banks after the region received 13-17 inches of rain in two days.  The damage is widespread.  Entire neighborhoods were soaked including the West Nashville neighborhood where Jamie and I lived last year.  The house we rented will have to be gutted and restored in order to be livable again.  Our church, Hobson United Methodist, was also hit and is having their first big work effort this Thursday through Sunday. 


The waters have receded this week, but clean-up will take a long, long time and a lot of money and effort.


The national news is providing some coverage, though I can't help but wonder why Middle Tennessee has been virtually absent from the Seattle Times this past week.  The Tennessean is a better place to look for info, including non-professional coverage and some remarkable stories about the cooperation and camaraderie that Nashvillians have shown throughout the disaster.  Volunteers are already pouring forth as well; it is the Volunteer State, after all. 


Here's a music video complete with pictures.  It's heartbreaking, especially for those of us who lived there but can't be there now.  If you want to help, check out what the Disciples of Christ's Week of Compassion is doing there.  Tennessee is well populated with Disciples, and this is an organization that is an excellent steward of its resources and money.  Mennonite Disaster Service is exploring the area to see what kind of response it will provide. 

Writing Retreat

Last week I spent two days over on the "east side" as Washingtonians call the other side of the Cascade Mountains.  I had signed up for a writing retreat after receiving a serendipitous invitation from Dave Bell who is one of the pastors at the mission where the Richmond Beach UCC youth are going this summer.  Dave is a Disciples of Christ pastor, and runs, along with his wife Belinda, a 40 acre farm where they hosted the retreat. 

My time there fit seamlessly with my new dedication to Wendell Berry, with the loss I feel in this lush, green, mountainous landscape, and with my rural upbringing.  Out there near White Swan, in the Yakima Valley, fields are everywhere: fruit trees, vineyards, hops, alfalfa, hay.  The protected hills are barren of trees, and only the extensive system of irrigation ditches allows the valley to be as fruitful as it is.  During the retreat itself, we considered some of these themes, in conversations and in our intentional writing on "place."  I felt entirely home with the few other pastor-types who were there, who also had stories of displacement and love of rural places, who know that this city may never be truly home.  Here is the most cohesive piece I wrote while retreating to the farm:

Thinking of place reminds me of home, which reminds me of the sky.

What day was it that God made the sky?  I can never remember these things - something about a dome, something poetic and holy.  Something worthy of our praise, and I can see why God made it after all, and who else could pull off something like this? 

Growing up the sky was our source for all things.  The sky brought our weather, the rain that nourished the winter wheat and quenched the spring corn, giving it enough moisture to make it through the three weeks of consecutive triple digit days in July.  The sky withheld the rain too, in the drought of 2002 and others every few years since before my time or anyone else's.  The sky giveth and the sky taketh away.  Blessed be the name.

In 1990, the sky brought its usual green to compliment the bright vibrant blue.  The year was particularly one for tornadoes, especially the Kansas part of tornado alley, and the same wind storm that knocked down branches in Whitewater produced a funnel cloud that knocked down one barn and several grain bins on the Klaassen farm.  It blew out the screened-in porch, Dad's study, and a whole bunch of glass right before taking a couple of cows for a wild and fatal ride.

By the time the county sheriff showed up that evening, the sky was gray and innocent, and by the time the church folk arrived later that week to pick up dime-sized fragments of glass the sky was back to its vibrant blue self.  The rubble from a tornado is nasty - twisted and shredded and splintered into thousands of pieces, any of which could carry tetanus or other infections.  Clean-up takes many hands and many hours.  Praise God that the sky provides a dome to work under. 

When I was twenty-three, not so long ago really, I took a trip to a pastor's cluster meeting out in Western Kansas.  The two pastors who invited me out were full of good humor, but the thing I'll always remember from that trip was an off-handed comment with serious connotations for my future.  We'd stopped near a wind farm to check out the roadside informational marker there on U.S. Highway 50.  When we stepped out of the car and looked around, Lou Gomez said this: "The sky is bigger in Dodge."  Dodge City, Kansas, along the path of many Old Western cattle drives and current home of slaughterhouses.  The sky is bigger in Dodge, 180 degrees in fact, horizon to horizon, uninterrupted by hills or mountains. 

Some people say it makes them dizzy or that it frightens them or makes them anxious.  For me it just feels like home, opening the spirit and body and abruptly placing back into perspective the stresses of those places that are not so broad nor so immanent nor so imminent as the sky.

Now I live in Seattle and the sky still gives life.  It makes things green - everything green, it seems like.  They sky gives and gives in consistent but small portions.  No downpours and none of that tense, life-giving violence from thunder and lightning.  In the summers it is vibrant blue and in the summers it is settled and gray but almost nothing in between.  I miss the contrast of the cloud shadows scattered across the land.  Here the sky takes from me something more than my house or a few cattle.  It takes my freedom and my openness.  It shoves me into the ground, cowering in that ever smaller place between mountain and clouds. 

I wish I could see it differently, but then again I don't, because for me so far, there's only one home. 

Just Living Farm

White Swan, WA