Sacred Threshold ::

Broken :.

I have experienced two paths to brokenness....through pain and suffering or tenderness and mercy.

If I could choose, I choose the second way.

BRRRRR :.

The high today is predicted to get to a whooping 40 degrees with snow flurries. My son John's soccer team is scheduled to play in round two of the state tournament sectionals at 4:00. He doesn't think he will be cold. I think I will be watching him!

Visual Impact :.

Last night, dead tired from four straight days of intensive work, I turned on the television.

Stupid.

Being as exhausted as I was, my remote clicker finger was on stun mode as I watched mindlessly the last three minutes of some show I never have seen before.

Scene: Women and young girl on roller coaster.

I hate roller coasters.

What happens next is beyond awful, the stuff that nightmares are made out of and every mother's heart never, ever wants to think about.

The image stuck in my brain, disturbed my sleep, and is still haunting me enough this morning that I am actually blogging about it to get it out.

God help. Cleanse the mind. Clear the thoughts. Wash away the evil and replace it with the good. The image is yours Jesus.

I should know better not to turn on the TV when I am tired.

Real Close :.

Saturday evening a F2 tornado tore through a neighborhood a couple miles down the road from our home in the dark of night. Straight line winds ripped a garage off a house and roof off a another home a block away. Due east, across a small lake, siding is missing from houses less than a year old. Our house was spared any damage.

Over twenty years ago a tornado visited the neighborhood we lived in. With our young children home with a babysitter, we listened in horror to the play by play on the radio of the storm's location from a relative's home fifteen miles away. With phones dead and no way to make contact, I remember the eerie dark quiet of driving back home through unlit streets, wondering what we would find. Again our house and loved ones were unharmed with the tornado skipping over treetops through our neighborhood, touching ground only a half mile away.

Now five days later, gawker traffic still stills Interstate traffic which runs straight through the tornado's path. The dull beige two story vinyl siding houses only years old seen from the highway, scattered and shorn, look like any other suburban neighborhood. Maybe this is why people keep looking? A little of our suburban armor cracked this weekend. This one came real close.

Anniversary :.

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our twenty eighth anniversary of marriage. So we decided to drive up to St. John's and St. Ben's to spend a day. We met and dated some thirty years ago on those hallowed grounds. Funny how thirty years can change a person.

We prayed with monks, walked the grounds, gazed at the beautiful buildings and took a long bike ride on the Wobegon Trail which is located on the otherside of I-94 on the far edge of the campus. For our anniversary lunch we ate at Kay's Kitchen in St. Joe. It was pure heaven being up there again behind the pine curtain with my love. I can't think of better place to be together on our anniversary.

Note: A little known fact about the infamous pine curtain. It was planted by the monks 150 years ago in response to missing the pines of their Bavarian homeland. I always thought they just bought a beautiful piece of land, forested with atypical pine trees. Nope. They wanted them so they planted them, all 125 acres. Talk about a long term vision. I can't imagine watering all those conifers in the middle of a Minnesotan summer but am sure glad somebody did!

A Strange Yet Wonderful Life :.

A small sampling of what is going on in my world.

Our son John is 16, driving, working at the Dunn Brothers near our home, playing on Providence's high school soccer team, and is a delight to behold.

There is a new baby in our house. It is white, easily portable and I am typing on it right now. Yes, it is a MacBook. Finally!

Tomorrow I travel to church planter's school in Detroit. The last time I went away with the Covenant was to the Assessment Center in Tampa when hurricane Wilma was fast on the approach. As far as I know, Michigan is not hurricane prone so this time away should be uneventful. I look forward to meeting some wonderful people and learning all the things I should not have done so far. : )

My daughter and husband are coming into town next week for a family wedding. I can't wait to see them and spend some quality time together.

Abbey Way is about to launch--at least the first six month closed experience. I am nervous, excited, and expectant. It has been a long road and we are finally turning a significant corner on the way to somewhere. Today I talked to someone, who as a person committed to Abbey Way, was wondering what the worship gathering would be like. We laughed together about the question itself. How many people do you know commit to a church community without ever experiencing the "main event?'" I must be communicating something of worth if thirty five adults are willing to do some water walking together for the next six months. Crazy, we are all CRAZY!!

I have officially begun the licensing/ordination process with the Covenant Church. I have been busy writing a revised statement of faith Covenant style. It is taking much longer than expected but well worth the energy. I really like this denomination. It feels so much like home.

Well speaking of papers, I better get cracking.

Peace to you all.

Good-bye Pool :.

As a child one of my favorite outings was to the Minneapolis downtown Dayton's store. Our shopping destination was the fifth floor children's area. Surrounded by racks of brightly colored garments, A-lined shift dresses, floral shorts and striped tops, stood the children's playground area. This was no typical playground area but one that housed fiberglass dinosaurs which small nimble bodies could easily circumnavigate. If we were good, we could visit this childhood wonderland.

I remember the combined feelings of safety and adventure as I crawled through the twisting and turning spaces within, emerging on a slide or molded steps only to quickly submerge myself into the dark inner chamber. Scampering up and over orange and blue prehistoric creatures, every edge and corner became familiar friends.

Then it happened, my physical body no longer fit easily into the caverns below or on the creatures themselves. Such horror! In my interaction with a favorite place, I became aware of something more mysterious happening, I was growing up. It was not the same anymore.

A week ago I frolicked in our neighborhood pool with a friend and her three children. When it was time to go, my friend instructed her children to say "good-bye to the pool." Right on cue they all turned towards the glittering waters.

"Good-bye pool," they all said with hands waving.

Even at their early ages they had already learned something about healthy transition and saying good-bye.

"Good-bye playground," I now say as an adult. "You were a great friend while it lasted."

I am older and hopefully a little wiser but the memories of this place are still right there under the surface, ready to be accessed at moments notice. They attract me, holding my attention of a long ago time of play and wonder. Growing up is sometimes hard. It means saying "good-bye" to one thing to say "hello" to another. May we all learn how to say "good-bye" well.

Weather Watching :.

Sunday's heat is to top 100 degrees.

All day, everyday, at least these days, weather is the leading story on the local newscasts. I flip on our local TPT computer voiced weather station to see if there is any change coming soon. Trying my best as the untrained scientist that I am, I study the weather maps, doing my own evaluating and predicting of when the heat will diminish and the cooling rain will come.

Silly you think?

"Kind of," I reply.

People of earlier centuries, who had no Doppler radar scanning the horizon or high tech satellites flying above their heads tracking every movement of the jet stream far below, watched the sky. Not tuned in to their favorite five o'clock weather person but the clouds above and the wind around them, they were connected to the earth. It was to the earth's heartbeat they lived their lives, with the rising and the setting of the sun and the change of the seasons, heat or cold, rain or snow.

I think it is to this connection I am longing for when I flip on the television just in time to hear the same monotonous report of what is and what is not happening in the atmosphere. I desire to understand and know more about the earth I live on and its life giving (or taking) conditions. I want to be connected to something bigger and more mysterious than myself.

You get all this from a weather forecast? Yes, all this from a weather forecast.

Meanwhile I stand outside in the heat, dripping, but delighting in its absolute physical otherness.

HEAT :.

The summer temperatures in Minnesota have been cranked up to 'sizzle' this past week. As a result, my brain seems to be in a perpetual fog with my body's thermostat working over time to compensate.

As I uttered this morning's prayer, I laughed to myself.

Open my lips, O Lord,* and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice,*
but you take no delight in burnt offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;*
and a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.                                                     (Psalm 51:16–18)

I don't think the psalmist was thinking of a 100 degree plus heat index when this prayer was written but I sure did. Oh the things that come to mind when you pray.

Blog Break :.

Life is getting too full these days to devote much time to blogging. I have books scattered about my floor in various positions of readiness for the next notation to be written. The last time this happened it was finals week or I was doing sermon preparation. I guess it is a little of both right now.

It feels like there is a forced time away from blogging coming. So if you come for a visit, I am still at the computer but occupied in other ways.

Peace.