Taormina

The first 48 hours were a blur.  It was impossible to sleep on the plane so when we arrived in Rome, we were exhausted.  And then we had a bus ride to the ship, check in, tour group meeting, muster meeting and dinner.  I was asleep by 8:30 but Clif still had work to do to get ready for worship.  Sunday morning he asked me to get him 2 large coffees but I got him an Americano with 2 extra shots.  It did the trick!

Worship was great.  Adam taught about Paul and we sang Oceans as our theme song!  We shared communion and then quickly prepared for our first excursion.  We went to the ancient city of Taormina.  There is no evidence that Paul ever stopped here, but he did stop in Syracuse on his way to Rome so he likely sailed by Taormina

at least.  There is an ancient Greek theater on the hillside that existed in Paul's day so he might have seen it.  We also had great views of Mount Etna with smoke wisps coming out.

It's hard being a part of a tour of 650 people.  We have 16 tour buses taking our group to each site, and we make everything super crowded.  You add in a lack of sleep and lots of walking, and we have a few cranky participants.  But mostly we're glad to be here.

It's definitely not a sabbath.  I'm not sure it can even be called a vacation.  It is going to be an amazing trip to Rome and cruising around the Mediterranean, following the footsteps of the Apostle Paul.  But since Clif is on staff at Church of the Resurrection, he will be a bus captain and will be helping Adam Hamilton with all the AV stuff for the week.  Which means he'll be working - more a mission trip leader than a vacationer.  And I'll be his bus co-captain which means that I'll also sort of be a mission trip leader.  In other words, we won't have a whole lot of time to relax by the pool!  But since he gets the trip for free and I only pay half price, we really can't complain.

So we fly to Rome tomorrow and board the ship on Saturday.  Adventure awaits!

The End

This will probably be my last blog post here.  I have great ambitions of continuing to blog after I return from sabbatical, but my past behavior tells me that I probably won't.  So I'll try to wrap up my three months worth of experiences here by answering the question, "Did I sabbath well?"

Yes.  Yes, I did.  I blogged at great length about my experiences in Guadeloupe so you can read all about the things I saw and experienced and learned while I was there.  It was an amazing opportunity to live someplace else, someplace completely different from where I usually live.  I saw what life is like for a missionary, for a prison chaplain.  This is what helped me completely disengage from my usual life as a pastor in Kansas City.  Once I stopped being consumed by thoughts about the people in my congregation and how they were doing and whether everything was going ok without me, I could start to remember how to be Laura, not Pastor Laura.  This was crucial for the beginning of my sabbatical.

Then I enjoyed a little bit of time at home to try to get my own house in order - literally.  Purging my stuff was painful and exhilarating, but it too helped me wake up in the mornings with a different set of tasks for the day, things that I never seemed to get around to doing when I was always in ministry mode (because ministry never ends - there's always more you can do).

Our Alaska trip was much like a vacation except the constant traveling was brutal and exhausting.  We saw amazing things that we would never have seen otherwise, but I came back from that 3-week road trip with a couple loads of dirty laundry, over 1,000 photos and a desire to crawl into my bed and never get out again.

In the two weeks that I've been back, I took a quick trip to Des Moines to see my sister and visit the Iowa State Fair with my kids

and then another quick spiritual retreat at Tall Oaks Camp.

Today is my last Sunday off for a very long time.  Tuesday, I'll officially be back to work, starting my time by adding all my congregants back into my Facebook feed to see what has been going on in their lives the past three months.  I'm meeting with the summer pastor twice this week and the worship leader once and there will be other conversations and emails and a Turkish Festival I'll attend as well.  Just as I shed my identity as pastor for three months in order to rest and reflect and tend my own spiritual garden, soon I will take that identity back on.

And I'm ready.  I'm rested and refreshed.  I found a different rhythm for my life over the summer and it was joyous and relaxing and intriguing and educational. But I have also been disconnected from a church all summer, and that has been disorienting and lonely.  I have attended quite a few churches, but none where I felt at home, with people who knew me and cared about me.  I have missed that tremendously.  Three months is about as long as I can go without having a community where I can learn and share and worship and laugh and cry and sing and hug.

So yes, I think I sabbathed very well.  I am so very grateful to my church - Living Water Christian Church - for giving me the time and space to step away so that I can return and continue to serve as their pastor with joy and thanksgiving.  My two sabbaticals have both helped me hear God's call again, feel that flame of the Holy Spirit telling me that there is more to do, that God is not finished with Living Water Christian Church (in fact, has barely begun!) and that there is more that I can offer God and the church as the pastor.

Instead of sitting here on my last Sunday off feeling sad that I must return, I am antsy and so looking forward to next Sunday. It will be good to be home again!

Alaskan Adventure

I haven't blogged in a while because life has been busy lately.  My daughter Bethany returned from Guadeloupe and has temporarily moved home as she figures out what's next for her.

And then last Friday, three members of my family loaded up our Toyota Highlander and began a road trip that can only be called epic.  My original sabbatical plans did not include driving 8100 miles in 3 weeks.  But my husband Clif and 24-year-old son Rob started planning this trip to Alaska and since I was available and I'd love to see Alaska I figured I'd tag along.

I had no idea what I had signed up for.  But neither did my two men who planned the trip.  They poured over maps and planned the route that would take us to the Alaska Highway, but it's one thing to have a trip written on paper and another to DO it.

The tough parts have been really tough - 10 or even 12-hour days in the car.  We stop regularly but it's still a LOT of sitting.  And no matter how much you move around in your seat, after 12 hours, all your lower body parts are either sore or numb.  We're listening to the audio book of Michener's "Alaska" to help pass the time, and we've learned a lot about the history of the place we're going.

So we kind of knew about the bad parts - long days in the car, different motel each night, eating out of the cooler - but we had no idea how gorgeous the drive through Canada would be. It started with bright yellow canola fields (or mustard - the plants are related).

Since we started on the Alaskan Highway at Dawson Creek, we have seen unending forests, mountains, creeks and rivers.  It is breathtaking in beauty and scope.

The last two days have been 22 hours of driving through scenes like those above - without end.  And most of the day yesterday we drove without seeing another car on the road.

We've also seen some great museums, including the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg-  the best museum I've ever seen.  But internet is spotty - and phone service is nonexistent- so I am once again posting from my phone and I'm trying to keep it short.  Today I'm in a hotel lobby in Dawson City, Yukon.  It's the only place with internet.  The sun never set so it feels like a surreal movie set.  I took this photo of our motel at 11 pm.

Today we will finally reached Alaska.  Can't wait to see what adventures await!

Purging

This post may seem a little scattered and random, but stay with me.  I do have a point about the current condition of our country, and maybe it's a point you need to consider.

One of my goals for this sabbatical time was to do some purging of "stuff" from my home.  I had read Marie Kondo's book on the "Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up" and I knew several people who had successfully de-cluttered their homes using her methods.  One of those people was my sister-in-law Jennifer.  Since she is a teacher and is out of school for the summer, she agreed to come over every day last week to help me start my de-cluttering process.

But it was hard.  I knew going into it that it would be hard.  I could already feel emotions starting to well up in me as I thought about going through every piece of clothing I owned and deciding whether it "sparked joy" in me or not.  It wasn't that I was emotionally attached to all my clothing; it was more that I knew I had lots of clothes that I bought for the wrong reasons - they were on sale or I was starting a new diet and I just knew I'd fit into them soon.  Many of those clothes still had the original tags, never worn.  Which created a lot of guilt in me - even some shame.  So as Jennifer helped me sort through the shirts and pants and dresses, she also helped me sort through the negative emotions I was feeling. 

"Do you want to keep this?"

"Yes."

"Do you wear it?"

"Well, no, but I spent a lot of money on it and I can't just give it away."

"Does it spark joy?"

"No, mostly it makes me feel guilty."

"Can you donate it to someone else so that they might enjoy it?"

(After a few moments) "Yes, I can."

This was repeated several times.  That's what purging is, whether it's purging stuff from your house or purging bad food from your body, it's hard to let go.  We fight it.  We hang on to things that don't serve us or help us or give us joy. We even hang on to things that strangle life from us.


This morning I woke up with many options for attending church.  I have many talented pastor friends in local churches and I knew that they would all be delivering passionate and powerful sermons in the wake of the violence and deaths of two more black men at the hands of police and five police officers by a lone gunman.  There are a lot of emotions running high in our country.  We clergy believe that God has something to say about this.  But as I sat wondering which friend I would go hear preach, I realized that I pretty much knew what all of them would say.  I had been reading their Facebook posts all week.  I knew where their hearts were.  I knew that they would be saying things very similar to what I would say if I were preaching this morning.  I wanted to hear a different voice.  Glennon Doyle Melton reminded me this morning:

"When someone says: I'm hurting.

Let's say: "Tell me more" instead of: "No, you're not."

I wanted to sit with the hurting voices of the African American community and say, "Tell me more."  So I decided to go to a predominantly African American church in my denomination, Swope Parkway United Christian Church.  The service had many lovely moments that spoke to my heart, but it was the message by Rev. Dr. Rodney E. Williams that really blew open my heart.  He began by expressing his grief at all the violence of the past week, noting that his own son, his namesake, is a police detective.  But he spent most of his time addressing what his community can do in the face of continuing deaths at the hands of police officers.  I wish I could just give you the manuscript of his sermon, but here are some points that struck me most deeply:

There is a difference between being enslaved and being a slave.  Being enslaved means that someone else has control over your body.  But being a slave means that you allow someone else control over your mind.  The ancestors of the black community may have been enslaved, but they were not slaves.  In their minds, they remained free.  Are our minds still free today to dream God's future plans?

He recounted that, upon seeing the flags at half-mast for the victims of the Pulse shootings and now for the Dallas police officers, he commented to a friend, "Maybe we should just keep our flags at half-mast."  It is symbolic of our sickness as a nation. We are not getting well.

He told us of a new idea he is formulating, something he called Fusion Activism.  It is based on the story of the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37.  Ezekiel hears the bones begin to connect, to fuse back together.  As God starts reconnecting the bones, they make a racket that can't be ignored.  Dr. Williams said that he thinks we need to reconnect with other bones to build the body back up.  He said that one bone is the LGBT community and one bone is the NAACP and one bone is the Latino community and one bone is the Methodists and one bone is the Baptists and we're all gonna start coming together for God's justice and making a racket!  (As he's casting this magnificent vision, his voice gets louder and louder and the congregation is on their feet clapping and shouting "AMEN!")

He spoke about the evil that has been with us from the founding of this nation.  And that's where my experience with purging comes in.  This country was built on the lie that some lives matter more than others.  We swallowed that poison pill that allowed us to build and prosper and grow into one of the greatest nations in the world.  But our stomach has been sour this whole time because of that poison pill.  We have tried antacids and other over-the-counter solutions to just get things to settle down. But they can't because we've never purged that poison pill from our system.  We fight it.  We make excuses for why it's still there and why we need it or how it's not really bothering anyone.  But we can't heal, we won't heal until we finally purge that poison pill and repent for all the lives it has destroyed.

At the end of the service this morning, Dr. Williams issued an altar call.  It began as the usual church type - if you want to know Jesus or move your membership. But then he said he had an additional call.  If we would commit ourselves to the fight for justice, would we come forward?  I cannot tell you how badly I wanted to stay in my seat.  But the Holy Spirit would not allow it.  So I went forward at the church that didn't know me, the visiting white woman standing up front with the saints of the congregation. We grabbed hold of one another's hands and Dr. Williams prayed over us.

I don't know what God is doing in me, but I have felt it stirring over the past month.  If you read any of my blogs from Guadeloupe, you know that learning more about slavery was a theme of my time there.  I'm trying to pray through this, even while I feel physically nauseous.  But I know this poison pill has got to go.

Swimming with the Fishes

I had been snorkeling many years ago.  We were staying at a Bed and Breakfast in Hawaii, and while Clif had to go to work meetings all day, I got to play.  Another couple at the B&B offered to take me snorkeling with them and I had a wonderful time swimming a short ways out from the shore and seeing giant sea turtles and colorful fish.

So when Bethany suggested that we go snorkeling with her friend Katy for my last full day in Guadeloupe, I was excited to re-create the experience.  But much had changed for me in the last 16-or-so years since I last swam with the fishes.  I have developed a fear of heights, especially when there isn't solid ground under my feet.  This particular excursion started in a glass-bottom boat.  They took us over to the Jacques Cousteau Reserve on Pigeon Island and let us sit on benches while we looked through glass windows at the sea life and divers below us.  It was magical.  But I also began to get that queasy feeling in my stomach from looking down.  There was a moment of panic - maybe I should go back to the upper deck, maybe I should close my eyes, maybe I shouldn't have come (and paid good money) for this experience.  My competing emotions were utter joy at the hidden world I was seeing for the first time and sheer panic.  I decided to let joy win.  It was a quick pep talk, "You traveled all this way...you'll likely never be here again...who knows if you'll ever get an experience like this again...you already paid for it, so enjoy it..."  What helped most is hearing Bethany beside me on the bench, full of her own delight at the underwater beauty.

But then the boat stopped and it was time for us to get out (if we wanted) and go snorkeling.  I remembered that it took a while to get the hang of breathing through your mouth when you snorkel.  When you first put the mask on, you can panic that you can't breathe through your nose.  It takes some coordination and mind-over-matter to breathe exclusively through your mouth.  My particular mask needed some adjustment but I didn't realize it until I was in the water.  And here's the thing - I'm a decent swimmer who can handle being in deep water.  But I'm usually in swimming-pool-deep water, with shallow water very nearby.  It is a different thing altogether to be in VERY deep water and realize that I don't have a flotation device.  So I'm trying to tread water and adjust my mask and the panic returns, "What are you doing?  You can't concentrate on two things at once!"  I had to get back on the boat to adjust my mask correctly. And by that time I was starting to think, "I've already seen what's under there through the glass bottom on the boat.  In fact, I could go back down to the glass bottom right now and just look at everything and everyone else snorkeling."  You know what convinced me in the end?  I had ordered a special prescription lens snorkel mask for this trip so I could actually see the fish without my glasses.  I had paid good money and carried that mask all the way to Guadeloupe and the next day I would be returning home.  If I was ever going to use this special mask, today might be the only day.

So I put it back on and jumped off the boat.  I stuck my face in the water and saw beautiful things, wonderful things.  They weren't distorted by the glass on the boat.  They were clear and right in front of me.  It took a few minutes to find my rhythm - breathe through my mouth, tread and float and try not to run into another person, look around, and relax.  Eventually I found it, that place of peace and delight.  My heart was so full of the wonder of God's creation.  So many things to see that I had never seen before!  At one point, a whole school of large blue and yellow fish swam right in front of me.  I could have touched them. I laughed out loud, which is kind of hard to do with a breathing tube in your mouth.  After they passed by, I lifted my head out of the water and I heard another person laughing, too.  My daughter Bethany was just a few feet way and was laughing at the same school of fish.

There were still some moments of panic if I got too far away from the boat.  But I calmed myself and started swimming in that direction.  After the 30 minutes of snorkeling, we got back on the boat and celebrated with rum punch.

I came really close to missing it, to allowing myself to miss it.  I almost talked myself out of that once-in-a-lifetime experience.  I almost let fear of the unknown ruin what was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  So I really felt like celebrating with that rum punch!

But I also wondered, what other things have I missed because I let fear win?  What else might I have seen and done if I'd just "jumped off the boat"?  I'm glad that this was one time I let joy win.

Last Sunday Goodbyes

My last Sunday in Guadeloupe was also Bethany's last Sunday at her church.  She will be returning home on July 9, and the church will not meet again for worship before then.  As the timing worked out, it was also the last Sunday for their pastor, Jean-Pierre Anzala, who has served them for five years.  He and his family are moving to France.  While these two losses would be a lot for most churches to absorb at once, this congregation also learned that a key leading family - my hosts Katy and Hubert - are also moving back to France before the church resumes worship again in August.  It was a triple whammy goodbye Sunday.

But before we even got to church, I was already very emotional.  As I was preparing for the day, I was listening to music in my room.  I happened to be listening to Gungor, one of my favorite Christian bands.  As the first notes of the song, "You Have Me" began to play, I started to tear up.  This song of devotion is one that Bethany selected for her commissioning service when she began her life as a missionary.  It was her song of dedication.  And now, on this last Sunday before she leaves vocational missionary service, I looked back on all God had shown her and how God had worked through her to love people.  I said a prayer of gratitude for this incredible woman and her incredible faith that has allowed her to experience so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpATmuPr84Q

It's so hard for churches to know what to do on days like this, when you still want to maintain the integrity of worshiping God, but your hearts are heavy and there are many emotions filling the room.  So they did their best to include meaningful music, inspiring message (preached by Hubert), and communion - always communion.

In my post about my first worship experience here, I made a joke about not yet understanding the kiss greeting.  I have grown to understand it better, and in the church, it is a beautiful and biblical expression of community.  Romans 16:16 says to "Greet one another with a holy kiss."  We Americans are much more comfortable with a handshake - or a hug for a good friend.  But the cheek kiss is the natural, normal greeting in France.  It took me a while to get the hang of how to do it right.  You touch cheek-to-cheek on both sides while kissing the air.  There isn't a specific greeting time in the service - a passing-of-the-peace - because everyone greets everyone else when they first arrive.  It is important to arrive early so that you can greet everyone before the service starts.

Bethany has been working with the children during her time here, so she had them lead a song in French during the service and also sing an English song - "Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other gold."  Bethany was also asked to sing a song herself.  She chose a camp favorite, "Lay Down Dear Brother (I Bid You Goodnight)."  I sang a harmony part for the last two verses.  It was her goodbye to her church.

They had communion by gathering in a circle around the table.  After Jean-Pierre gave the Words of Institution and prayer, the basket of bread and the cup of wine were passed to each person (grape juice for the kids).  For me, this was the high point of the service.  I guess that's not surprising since I'm a Disciple and communion is the central part of all worship services for us.  But in this particular moment, knowing that this group of people will never gather around this table together again but that they will continue to gather around Christ's table wherever they are, I was struck by how connected we are.  Even when we're preparing to separate and go to different countries, speak different languages, follow different customs, we are bound together at this table.  I thought of my church, Living Water, celebrating this same meal back in Kansas City.  It was a holy moment for me, to see a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.

The flower arrangements for the morning were arranged by a church member from her own garden.  So beautiful!

There was a time for gifts for all those who are leaving.  The church gave Bethany a beautiful calabash lamp, made by piercing an intricate design into a dried gourd. When the lamp is turned on, the design is thrown on the walls of the room.

After the service there was a reception with all kinds of wonderful foods, soft drinks and champagne!  I'd never been to a church reception with champagne, but it was so appropriate for this place and this occasion.

This wasn't the only party, however.  There was an after-party in the home of one of the church members.  As we drove there, we passed a typical sight on the island, a single cow tied up so it could graze.  This cow was across the street from the church.

The party was a potluck, and the home had a beautiful porch overlooking the ocean and the pool.

The food was fantastic, as was the company.  Such a great celebration, the exclamation point, of Bethany's time in Guadeloupe.