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. 

United and Uniting

I've spent some of these writings in mostly transparent reflection about my place as a Kansas Mennonite both in the Pacific Northwest and the United Church of Christ.  The reflections haven't always been rosy, and no doubt the dissonance between these places and identities continues loud and clear.  But this weekend I occupied the perspective of the other side, as a youth minister in the Seattle area United Church of Christ.

I took four of my youth to our annual Senior High Mid-Winter Retreat at one of our conference's camps: Pilgrim Firs.  The location, activities, and friendships were important, but here I want to reflect on something else - something less tangible.  Our theme for the weekend was "Be a Hero," and the focus was on the gifts we all have and how we offer those gifts to the world.

Discipleship, faith identity, faithfulness to God, peace and social justice, even spirituality were grace notes to this theme.  They were not the center, not in the way the are for Mennonite faith formation.  Instead, this was a place of utter acceptance regardless of belief or unbelief, regardless of talent or lack thereof, regardless of name, history, race, orientation.  There is no orthodoxy and no orthopraxis, no rightness or belief or practice.  The "rules" if we can call them that are about unwavering tolerance and uncompromising respect for one another.  From time to time, the youth make small comments that capture this character: I love going to a church where when someone says throw me a Bible, the Bible actually flies across the room.  I love going to a camp where the kids who are dating might be two teenage boys, not always a boy and a girl.   

I have rarely if ever been so generously welcomed by a community and a place.  I have never seen youth who are so accepting of one another.  This is one picture of God's kingdom breaking into reality, one manifestation radical hospitality.  This is one way to do church that challenges most others.  There is no center and there are no boundaries of exclusion.  Really and truly, all one needs to do is simply come.   

The United Church of Christ is an approximately fifty year old denomination, created in the joining of several groups of churches.  As a diverse collection with mostly congregational polity, part of its covenantal promise is to be "united and uniting."  Inherent here is one transcendent expression of welcome.  I feel like a small microcosm for that sentiment - united and uniting the Mennonite and the UCC, united and uniting the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, united and uniting in one body and in the work (and play) of this one life.

Who Is the King?

Epiphany was yesterday.  If you're interested in celebrating one day late, feel free to check out my sermon from last Sunday here.

The Contrasts of Place

Today is a day of contrasts. 

This morning from 9-12 was my second shift of what promises to become a regular Thursday morning commitment: volunteering at God's Little Acre (GLA).  GLA is a house owned by Seattle Mennonite that the church converted into a drop-in center.  A year and a half ago when I was the pastoral intern there, the community ministers had just gotten the new building permit approved and God's Little Acre was up and running for the first time.  Now, eighteen months later, it is open at least five days a week for showers, laundry, food, hanging out, and Stop, Drop, and Roll, and it is staffed by a diverse team of volunteers.  It smells like bleach, coffee (Folgers, or whatever's cheap), and stale cigarette smoke, and one of the rooms is stocked from floor to ceiling with food and clothes.  I could rave about Seattle Mennonite's commitment to the homeless, about how they have responded to the need in their neighborhood, about how they have answered the call of God/justice/hope in their midst, but you can actually read about that here. 

What I will say is that this morning keeps me grounded.  First, it cuts back on the mindless television, Facebooking, etc. that threatens to consume my days off.  It gives me, instead, something purposeful to do: at GLA I am a pastoral presence, a companion, a listener, a provider of the morning paper, a server and cleaner, stable person, a de-escalator of conflict.  It also reminds me to look for and to see the people who slip through the cracks of society, the people who rarely make it down to Richmond Beach Congregational.  It reminds me of the poor and how we must constantly be striving for justice and constantly finding old and new ways to tell the truth.  I also am touched by the people I am with there.  Some of the GLA folks are incredibly honest and authentic - not inhibited by the trappings of class and wealth that choke the rest of us.  Others have an ornery streak - not all that different from the teens I work with, testing boundaries, manipulating with charm or insolence.  Here is humanity, stripped down past internet connections and ipods.

Today, when I left God's Little Acre, I headed for University Village.  U-Village is an upscale shopping and dining center not far from the University of Washington.  It features stores like Crate and Barrel, Tiffany & Co., Apple, and others that I've never heard of because where I come from, JC Penney is good enough.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here I met a wonderful group of UCC youth leaders to talk about the upcoming senior high mid-winter retreat.  We met at Starbucks.  They don't serve Folgers there.  There were people walking around in their brand name clothes with those skinny jeans that seem real popular these days.  I also saw many shopping bags, lot's of made up women, and high-class strollers.  Don't get me wrong - the meeting was great and the people I met are awesome.  The atmosphere, though was the wrong place for me after my morning.

I could try to bumble out some more of the major contrasts between my morning place and my afternoon place, but I fear I'd fall further into stereotypes.  Instead, I'll leave you with this thought:

The places we occupy are infused with morality.  The market that works to influence our decisions about where we go often obscures economic assumptions hidden within itself.  We consumers experience those assumptions as reality, as we are not equipped with the proper leverage to question those assumptions.  As a result, we experience the places we occupy as morally and ethically neutral despite the way that each place carries definitive markers of class.  Perhaps, as one great minister said to me several years ago, the first thing we need to do is to pay attention.