Stopping on a Snowy Evening (apologies to Robert Frost)

It snowed all through Nevada as I drove south, heading for Saint Andrew's Abbey for a few days before finally coming home from the month-long road trip. I had scheduled a meeting with my spiritual director long before leaving for Oregon at the end of December, and had to rearrange it to the end of my trip when I decided to take the time to meet a prospective congregation that was a bit out of my way before heading for home. The extra trip added a week to my time away, but it was well spent.


I was a bit nervous about a long day of driving in bad weather. Growing up in Southern California does not prepare you for snow, hail, serious rain....well, anything but sunshine. But I managed quite well, staying on the main highways, and being sure I could reach my destination before dark. I would arrive at the monastery after two days of driving past snowy peaks and stretches of desert elegantly clothed in white. Then I would have a day and a half of quiet and singing and praying with the monks before my meeting with my director. Then I would drive another few hours to Santa Barbara. My longing to unpack was at war with my longing for the quiet of the Abbey and the conversation with my director to pull a month's worth of conversations about vocation into focus. Where was God at work in all that talking, meeting new people who held the ability to place me in a congregation? How to put my hopes on hold again, and wait. How to continue my vigil-keeping without losing engagement in the world around me.



It was cold at the Abbey, 4000 feet up in the San Gabriel Mountains, and there was thick snow on the higher peaks. I was still wearing silk long-johns under my jeans when I dressed for walks in the morning, and I added all the extra blankets to the bed. It began to snow in the afternoon, covering sagebrush and joshua trees with white and speckling my hair and jacket with flakes as I walked to Vespers. New retreatants came and brought marshmallows and chocolate for making S'mores in the huge fireplace, It snowed all night and into the morning of my meeting, the silence magnified by the white which frosted every surface. I worried that I would be snow-bound and have to spend the weekend, but as it turned out, the roads were open and when I came down the mountain, the storm that would have snowed me in poured torrential rain on all the highways that took me home. I had worried that the extra time away from home would just make me tired and impatient. But the beauty of the snow, the blessing of the quiet, the welcome of the Divine Hours instead sent me home composed and collected and ready for God's next surprises.

The Artist Returns

When I stopped by church on Friday, my first day home from my road trip, friend Ellie was hanging her watercolors on the Gallery walls in the hall. My pictures had been there since October, and had been taken down for this new display. It was wonderful to see her work; she is quite accomplished, and I already own several of her paintings. But it was sad to see my own work removed from the hallway which connects the sanctuary and the socializing parts of the building. That I had a body of recent work large enough to fill the display wall continues to amaze and delight me.

Taking printmaking, book art and collage classes in the past year has been a source of integration and motivation for me. I have been an artist all my life. The visual world has always been the beginning of understanding the world for me, and my parents always gave me a ream of paper and a new box of pencils for Christmas. I studied art in high school and college, worked as a commercial artist when my children were teenagers. But I got diverted when I went into sales, which was always a satisfying creative enterprise for me. The last ten years have been dedicated to completing an undergraduate degree in psychology and my Master's of Divinity degree. My time was completely taken up with work and school, or school and work. In this time, every day was scripted from the beginning of the semester to it's end, and there was never even time for phone calls to friends, movies, or road trips. This last year of being without work, without a schedule, and with few demands on my time has often felt like I was a balloon, floating out there, ungrounded. Making art has been been an important anchor for me. Carving relief blocks, folding paper, making covers, assembling collage and creating handmade books has reintroduced me to the artist in myself who was buried in reading for information, writing papers, and doing fieldwork.

A friend suggested that my free-floating time was really time for recovery, to take a deep breath and let a less-directed part of myself re-emerge. Perhaps she is right, because I am suddenly full of ideas; a line of cards with block-print designs, new book and journal ideas, liturgical environments for worship in Lent, plus the fiber art and knitting that has filled my life with color for the last years. I collected meditations I had written over the years and bound them into a book of block prints of the coffee cups I use during my morning meditations and coffee cups I have shared with friends over the last few months. There are other "theological" works in my collection, an expression, I believe of the integration of the artist who has always been there with the pastoral theologian who is the newest part of me. As frustrating as this time of waiting for a place in a congregational community has been, I have come to understand it as a time of recovery and integration - a chance for the artist and the theologian to come together to enjoy a new view of the world. I am so grateful for a church home with a gallery wall that let me display this new view, to see and share this integration in my community. I am grateful, as well as for the constant evidence of God's Spirit at work to bring the new to life, and for this new blooming from old stock. Hallelujah!

Road Trip Report

What is wrong with me? I have been on the road since December 28, and have only posted once at the beginning of this road trip. Part of my excuse involves not having internet access most of the time - I never realized what a hardship this has become - and part of my excuse involves having such a good time that I have not stopped long enough to reflect. So I'll try to summarize the last few weeks:

• New Year's Eve in Salem Oregon with brother John and sister-in-law Judy. Pretty quiet evening with single malt scotch to toast out the Auld and toast in the New.




• Meeting the new Bishop of the Oregon Synod and his assistant at the Bishop's Convocation at the beach. The weekend included wonderful visits with pastor friends, lots of laughs and some shopping (of course) at the Pendleton store (a fabulous blanket with Iriquois turtles).




• A week in Portland, visiting old friends and church buddies, walking in the Irvington neighborhood, scoping out shops to sell scarves, visiting the Portland Museum of Art. Lots of good meals, good wine and good conversation. Lots of cold and rain.




• A week at PLTS in a class to teach pastors how to counsel couples preparing for their wedding. Beautiful clear nights with spectacular views across the Bay, good conversations with friends, several good meals and shopping for yarn at my favorite yarn store.

Tonight finds me in Northeastern Nevada preparing to meet the call committee of a congregation looking for a new pastor. It was a 500 mile drive from Berkeley, but I am eager to meet them and happy that our first contact will be a face-to-face meeting. I wanted to check out the area before I made a committment to them, and I wanted them to meet me in person in order to answer the "age question" from the beginning of the relationship. There is snow on the ground here - we are at 5,ooo feet, I understand. At least it's not raining or snowing. Oregon gave me enough of that to last awhile.

Am I becoming addicted to road trips? In spite of my longing for a home of my own, it will be sad to give them up.