Glaciers in Retreat

Dear Friends,

In the early afternoon I was standing aft on our small ship traveling east up a wide fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska. This moment of stunning beauty and spiritual stillness was worth the price of a trip to Alaska, I thought to myself. We had been cutting through the beautiful water dotted by jumping salmon for nearly an hour. Per the usual, we were told nothing by the staff of our destination. This voyage was all about surprises.

I saw our guide approaching on my right but continued to watch striking beauty pass by and enjoy my diet coke, cooled by glacial ice that we had harvested the previous afternoon near a glacier on the other side ofthe sound. Hugh began to speak quietly but passionately. "A decade ago when I first came to the sound, this fjord, from quite a few miles back, was filled with glacial ice. From the tops of the mountains on your right and on your left, nothing but ice. (The empty space he was describing was almost beyond imagination.) Now the glacier is in retreat and some people believe what I tell them about that retreat means and some people do not."

How often in our lives, and in how many situations, do we hear phrases like:

I don't believe that.
I can't believe that.
That is beyond belief.
That could never happen.
I refuse to believe that.

The truth is too painful to believe or too difficult to do anything about.
We chose to stay in a comfort zone of denial rather than enter the danger zone of awareness that requires passionate action.

Every moment of my travel up that fjord towards a glacier was through what only ten years ago was solid ice. Now there is only air. Multiplied by thousands of times, what does the melting of that much ice mean for the planet and its people? Does anyone have any interest in knowing such a truth?

The Days Have Rushed Past

(The photo above is there just to get your attention. No matter that it looks so much like a Polar Bear. It is a Sealion at home in Prince William Sound. You can see a few other Alaska Wildlife photos on my Facebook page.)

There was a time, around three months ago, when the days of my sabbatical passed slowly and it felt like I had an eternity ahead of me to travel and experience and write and read and ponder. Now it is Wednesday, August 10 and the last days of my sabbatical are passing like a train that I cannot board. Sunday I will preach at my church for the first time in over three months and a few important projects have already demanded my attention. Also, more friends in the church died during my absence--we lay Dorothy Taylor to rest on Saturday--than the church has ever lost in a similar amount of time. When I allow myself to touch my feelings I weep, simple as that.

I am very conscious of the debt I owe to some friends here for their committed and able performance of ministries that allowed me to experience such a dynamic sabbatical. Pastor Bill Salyers, a retired colleague, rose to the occasion in his usual compassionate way, to care for the people experiencing loss. Ali Vorhees, the young woman we called to serve the church during my absence, served with talents beyond her years and took maximum advantage of the opportunity to begin practicing her compelling call to ministry. My friend, and Church Moderator, Curtis Fett, led the church with grace and skill he did not know he had. No one could have cared more for our church and people than Curtis.

All that being said, I have been sorely tempted these past few days to come up with a concise and enthusiastic answer to the question, "How was your sabbatical?" But it just occurred to me that I prepared for months for the sabbatical. I organized and planned and read and prayed literally for almost a year. It is going to take an equally long period to integrate this vast experience into my life and ministry, though I hope that my church will notice from the beginning that I have learned and been inspired and grown and changed.

More reflection later. (It sure is helpful to write, to journal, to take time to consider. I need to do more of this relatively soon, though the pressure to attend to details is, as always, almost overwhelming.)

Yes, I Do Feel Fear

Do I often feel anxious when I am traveling away from home again? “Yes,” and “No.” The possibility that I will be overcome by unidentified fear in a new setting is always there. But most often, in my 62nd year, I can travel anywhere without worrying about what I will do with my fear when I get there.

This is a substantial, and welcome, change. In the past, when I went away for a continuing education conference or a convention or whatever I could count on being assaulted by anxiety for about the first day. I did not know where this foreboding came from and never could come up with an explanation for how the nervousness went away. But, away it went! Away the unease went when it wanted to go away.

I rarely have these feelings anymore. I did not have them when Kathy and I arrived in Instanbul, Turkey together five weeks ago. I did not feel any apprehension—quite the opposite, I was filled with excitement—when I arrived by myself in the Cappadocia region of Turkey nor when I drove alone to the Mediterranean Coast. Traveling to the Biennial Meeting of the American Baptist Churches, I recall no doubts or fears. But in the past, let’s say 1990, plus or minus ten year, I always had misgivings and a disquiet feeling that there was something to be afraid of.

My spiritual Journey over the past 30 or so years has changed all that. Having grown closer to God I now find myself remembering, whenever and wherever I am, that I am protected by and loved by God. When apprehension apprehends me, I remember God and as soon as I remember God the fear fades. (Please note that the word “remember” is not a “head thing.” “Remember” is a spiritual event. We remember with all that we are, body, mind and spirit.)

However, this week, arriving at the Trappist Monestary in Gethsemani, Kentucky, I definitely felt fear and it did not go away quickly. I can identify a number of reasons that I may have felt this foreboding and I did not pass through it easily or quickly. One problem was that I could not use my usual defenses against fear. I was not supposed to talk and besides I had no friends to talk to. I arrived a day late and so did not experience the orientation meeting. And, the reason I was a day late was that I began on this past Monday, the first day of my retreat, to experience some unknown ache in my upper abdomen. An afternoon of tests and exams in the ER did not identify the cause and so I am in the middle of dealing with this worry. Also, in the midst of the silence of this retreat it also entered my consciousness that my sabbatical is almost 2/3rd over and that soon I will have to confront all the challenges of reentry.

I just took a few seconds to pray. I found myself reciting Psalm 121:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
Who made Heaven and Earth.

As I prayed I found my tears taking over, along with a feeling of being safe in the arms of God. That is what I need most to experience and remember no matter what the challenges of life are or will be.

More Bells, More Prayers, More Services

Do you recall an earlier post when I emphasized the significance of all of those loudspeakers atop the minarets in Turkey? Maybe you also recall the story I shared about helping to ring the church bell, when I was around seven years old, at the Federated Church of Busti, New York. I was trying to accent in that blog the value of these loud and undeniable calls to prayer and worship. Everyone who hears these reverberations knows they are being reminded, or in some cases warned, to create spiritual rhythms in their life.
This evening, from the window in my small but private room at Gethsemani Abbey, a Trappist Monestary in Kentucky, I can see the building where the Monks live, a parking lot and some of the grounds. And in fifteen minutes the church bells will ring calling us to put aside all work to attend the 7:30 service called Compline. The Monks will then retire to their quarters so they can wake up around 3:15 A.M. for the first service of the new day, called “Vigils.”

The offices of the day are:
Vigils 3:15 A.M.
Lauds 5:45 A.M.
MASS 7:00 A.M.
Terce 7:30 A.M.
Sext 12:15 P.M.
None 2:15 P.M.
Vespers 5:30 P.M.
Compline 7:30 P.M.

I probably will attend six of these services (between 15 and 30 minutes long) and you can probably guess the two that I will avoid. Still, the bells will ring to signal the opportunity that belongs equally to the Monks and the Guests, to organize our days around prayer and worship. What would it be like to organize our days around prayer and worship instead of around work or details or obligations or entertainment or chatter?
Well, that is what I’m here to find out, to spend five days experiencing what it is like to seek a life that centers on prayer and then to find a way, should I so choose, to elevate being in the presence of God to time commitment # 1 in my life.

By the way, Compline is my favorite office of the day. I discovered this during my first retreat at a Trappist Monestary, in 1984. Two other Baptist pastors and I went for five days to the Spencer Abbey in Massachusetts. I found the songs and prayers of Compline to be peaceful and reassuring. Here is one chanted song:

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray,
That with thy gracious favor thou wouldst be
Our guard and keeper now.

From fears and terrors of the night
Defend us, Lord, by thy great might,
And when we close our eyes in sleep
Let hearts, and Christ, their vigil keep.

Also, I’ve started thinking what I could do to have some kind of reminder announce to me each day when it is time to pray. Maybe there is a Trappist Monk somewhere in the world who could take it as his vocation to call me seven times a day? Would an alarm on my sort of smart phone accomplish this purpose? Could the alarm on my phone sound like Trappist bells or the bells of my childhood?

I'm Thinking About Culture

The two signs in these attached photos point us in the direction of beautiful and healthful walks. We all need to be guided by more signs like these while, at the same time, being led away from aspects of our lives, like mind numbing and endless entertainment, that diminish vitality.

My first mission trip to Romania, in 1982, was the most transformational experience of my life. I experienced God there, many times and in many ways. Baptists survived under communist oppression by trusting God. I longed to experience such faith and the rest of my life, up to the present moment, has been lived in pursuit of this goal.

I observed this faith and hope and trust the first night in Romania in the city of Arad. Before the dinner and service at one of their churches we stood around outside our hotel and observed hundreds of Romanians walking past us. It was a gruesome sight!!! They walked like Zombies. Rigid. Emotionless. Saying nothing. Apparently frightened. Turning neither to the left or the right. It was a gruesome sight--walking was an expression of their barren emotional lives and their dead souls. However, later that night as we broke bread with our Christian brothers and sisters, and later as we worshiped in a standing room only church--with dozens more crowded outside near the windows--I began to understand how Christianity can transform culture, how faith can overwhelm despair, how life inside the Body of Christ can resurrect the death outside.

I wish you could have been with me ten years later when I returned to Arad, Romania to lead Evangelistic services at the Golgatha Baptist Church. The peaceful revolution and the overthrow of Communism had also overthrown many facets of Romanian culture. People walking by the river laughed and played. Even outside the church newly free Romanians we drinking deep from the fountain of liberty.

I tell you that story, and posted the two photos of trail signs at the beginning of this blog, in order to make a point about culture. CULTURE CAN CHANGE. People can change. People can learn to walk with joy in their hearts and appreciation for the creation in their souls. We can learn to walk and talk again, even after years of sitting around seeking entertainment. In fact, the church, in its responsibility for discipling believers, is exactly the place people can be taught such transformations. Worship can teach how to live in the world without being dominated by the world.

All in all, it seems to me that there is plenty of time for all of us to learn how to be in the world without being of the world. Just reduce the time we dedicate to entertainment and assign that time to building community.

What aspect of your life is lived too much "of the world?" Are you interested in transformation? Maybe we should keep in mind those gruesome Romanian walkers from 1982. Maybe we should ask where in our lives we look like that.

Turkish Tea or Time for TV?

The third photo I have posted with this blog entry has my guide,Gokhan Yaramis, and his friend hanging out and about to share a cup of tea. Gokhan was a "guide's guide" and other guides often called him or stepped up to him seeking information or insight for the tourists they were leading. Every time we visited a new sight our visit would include tea and time with friends. One evening, when I was staying at Gokhan's house, we got back from a dinner theater event about 11:30. I was totally exhausted but he politely asked me if it would be OK for him to go next door to spend some time with friends. Gokhan returned two hours later.

Six nights of my last two weeks in Turkey were spent staying in the homes of friends. Hospitality was extraordinary. Often the evenings were spent in the town with groups of Gokhan's friends, talking about everything. A national election was coming up and everyone was taking seriously their responsibility to think about politics and to vote. In other words, these conversations over tea or Turkish coffee--and sometimes the national alcoholic beverage, Rakhi--meant something. They meant friendship and they meant dialog about decisions that counted.

On the other hand, no one in any of the homes I visited, ever turned on the TV. Rarely were Turks too busy for each other and rarely were they too busy for tea. Even long trips in the car were punctuated by tea breaks. I myself took a couple of these breaks while driving across the mountains to the Mediteranean Sea. Everyone has time for Tea but within present day Turkish culture, few people have time for endless and meaningless entertainment.

What does this cultural difference between the USA and Turkey suggest to you about your life? To me about my life? I've been wondering if I could declare Fridays, for example, to be Teadays by setting time aside just to be with the tea, and with you. What do you think?

This photograph was taken on Kathy's camera so I just found it and thought you might like to see us eating ice cream on what felt like the top of the world; actually the top of the cliff on which the village of Santorini is built. This is one of the Greek Islands we visited while on a three day cruise on the Agean Sea.

Beautiful places discovered when they are not expected are one of the reasons Kathy and I love to travel.

Soon,
Ken