Coming up on the solstice

We are getting into the longest nights of the year. December 21st is officially the shortest daylight period of the year, the longest night. After that the days start to get longer bit by bit. Nearly every culture in the ancient world had some kind of festival right around December 25th. I've been told that the 25th is the first day that you can measure the days getting longer without scientific instruments. So many ancient cultures had a festival of "sunreturn" or something similar around that time. For the Romans, it was "Saturnalia" -- a party to celebrate the god Saturn. When Christians were looking for a day to celebrate Jesus' birthday, they chose December 25th, partly to replace Saturnalia, but partly also for a deeper symbolism: Jesus is the light who has come into our darkness (see John 1). As the days begin to get longer, we are reminded that Jesus is the light, and that he has not abandoned us to our darkness but he has come to us to be Emmanuel, God with us, shining in us.

I was thinking about that this morning and remembering a woman with whom I attended seminary in the mid-90's. She was from northern Norway, up close to the Arctic Circle. I asked her once how she dealt with the long, long nights during the winter. Her response surprised me. "Oh, I love winter!" she said. "Everything slows down a bit. We have long nights for going to people's houses and visiting, or for curling up by the fire with a good book. We think and talk about lots of things. It's my favorite time." I wonder if we have missed an opportunity.

In traditional Navajo culture, there are certain stories that are only told during the "season when the thunder sleeps." These are the deep stories, the origin myths, the stories that tell some of the deep truths about what the Navajos believe. They cannot be told during the busy times of the year, but are saved for the winter months when the long evenings give a great opportunity for talk and reflection.

Many years ago our family started a tradition that we read a Christmas story around the Christmas tree. This year we're reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and I get to do the voices of Scrooge and Marley and Bob Cratchit and all the rest complete with bad British accents. What fun! A couple years ago we asked our daughters which part of our Christmas celebration was most important to them, and they told us that reading a story together was absolutely non-negotiable. This had come to be so important to them.

So what does it say that in our culture, the Christmas lights all come out before the days get too short, that rather than facing the darkness we light up the night from mid-November on, and that just about the time the days start to get longer again, we put the lights back in their boxes and pitch the tree? December 26th the radio stations go back to non-Christmas music and the only Christmas thought most of us have is trying to find leftovers at 75% off.

Hmm.

Another way of going home

I’ve been thinking lately about another sense of the phrase, “Going Home.” So often we live day to day at the surface of things. We skip along dealing with a dirty kitchen floor, or the need to run to the grocery store for bread and milk, or thinking about Brett Favre's passing game. We spend the vast majority of our time and energy dealing with what is urgent, but not important. I’m not saying that details should be ignored, not at all. But what does so often get ignored is the center of our being, the deeper matters of our lives. We live at the surface and only rarely go home to the core of who we are.

Now I realize that for some people, the idea of spending a lot of time thinking about deeper things is either terrifying or nauseating. Some people just don’t want to dig that deep, and by nature they are not created with that inward-looking tendency. That’s fine. But many others have been conditioned not to look at life in any depth because when they’ve tried to think beyond the surface, others have mocked them or disagreed with them or trivialized their insights.

One of the chief ways I see this is the tendency we have to stifle the questions of children. Three-year-olds are born theologians. I’ve heard more great questions from three year olds. Last summer a very young man, encouraged (rightly) by his parents, stopped me in the parking lot of a local park to ask me a question. Knowing I was a pastor, his parents brought his question to me to affirm and validate his curiosity. “Who created God?” he wanted to know. We had a great 90-second theological conversation about it. He was satisfied, but more important his search for answers and meaning was affirmed by his parents. Too often parents, uncomfortable with questions they can’t answer or questions that embarrass them (“Where did I come from?” or “Why do things die?”) teach children not to ask. Sometimes this is overt -- “Don’t ask questions like that.” But more often it happens when our discomfort is apparent to our children and they recognize that they have done something unacceptable. Dad is in a rush so when the question comes up, he snaps, “I don’t know,” and changes the subject or ignores the follow-up questions. Soon his child recognizes that asking such questions is, to borrow a biblical phrase, chasing after the wind. And the child learns not to ask, not to think on a deeper level, not to ponder. Tragedy. Because God created a curiosity in the heart of that child, and it has been stifled.

Last night I was privileged to sit with the 9th grade confirmation class at Central. Curt and Ryan and I sat on chairs up front and we took a solid hour just to try to answer some of the questions these young men and women have been asking throughout the fall. What fun! We talked about how the Bible was written, why divorce and tragedy and sin and death and evil exist, whether the world will end in 2012, what is the difference between “heaven” and “eternal life,” and lots more. Great questions. Curt, who is the primary leader of this group, has done an outstanding job teaching them that it is okay to ask questions.

The Bible says that God has placed eternity in the human heart. This expresses itself in many ways -- our sense of beauty, or our need for relationships. But another way this comes out is that we long to look into the heart of things, to ask hard questions, to seek after God and the things of eternity. It is one way God has created us with a hunger to know him. Asking these hard questions, reflecting on deeper things, going to the core of who we are, is in a very real sense like Going Home. It is who we are created to be.

So just in case this is a struggle for you, here are three questions to get you pondering today.

1. Who has most deeply influenced my spiritual life, and how?
2. Why do I do the things I do that have negative consequences?
3. What one thing could I change to give God more access to my life?

Have fun!

Conversation this morning

Had a good time with the guys at Sportech this morning. They've been meeting for study for almost a decade now, working either through a book of the Bible or another book that helps them apply the Bible to their lives. It was a privilege to drink coffee, talk, and pray with them today. This morning we read a chapter out of From Slavery to Freedom and discussed it.

I was struck by two things this morning as we talked. First, the chapter we read focuses on Pharaoh's power and his desire to be in control. I was impressed again by how God does not use the strong, the powerful, the movers and shakers to accomplish his purposes. He takes the weak -- the Israelite slaves, for example, or Moses, the convicted murderer and fugitive -- to do his work. God does not want us for our strength, but so that he might demonstrate his power in our weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12:9). When we realize that all the glory, all the honor, all the control belongs to God, then we realize that what we thought was strength is really only a gift we can offer back to God for his purposes.

Second, as we read aloud Exodus 5 and the first part of Exodus 6, I was struck (especially in this group of guys) by how our work can become such a tool that our enemy uses to oppress us. The Israelites were oppressed by their work. Pharaoh used brick-making as a tool to keep them under his thumb. I talk so often to guys who are bound up in their work -- in the need to be productive, in the need to prove themselves, in the need to demonstrate their competence and ability. But Satan uses work (which is supposed to be a gracious, life-giving gift from God) to enslave us. I jumped the tracks this morning and went back into Genesis, to the story of Cain and Abel. Did you know that "Cain" means "productive"? (See Genesis 4). And though the Bible doesn't point it out, "Abel" is the Hebrew word for "empty." Adds a different dimension to the question of why God accepted Abel's offering and not Cain's, doesn't it? Brings us back to the question of strength vs. weakness and what God really wants from us.

God doesn't want your ability, your productivity, your busy-ness, your quotas. He wants your brokenness, your weakness, your inadequacy, your emptiness.

Origin stories

Going back to the beginning is something humans have always done. And no matter how much we think our own quest (in contrast to the primitive and misinformed who preceded us) is based on cold, hard facts, the truth is that we are all looking for an answer to the questions, "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" and "What does it all mean?"

So it's interesting to read an origin story from a contemporary religious source (National Geographic), peering deep into ancient times to decipher these questions. Read this article and notice the whimsical, even scriptural language, complete with "prophets" going up the mountain to get the straight story on our origins (Moses, anyone?), a mysterious universe of chaos, dark forces beyond our understanding, and poetic language that tells us that our own darkness, our own chaos, our own collisions and difficulties can give birth to brilliant light and surprising stability.

What sets the Genesis accounts apart from this National Geographic article? I think this is a good question, and one we should be careful not to answer too quickly. The temptation is to say Genesis is "fact" and National Geographic (by their own admission) is describing "theories." I'm not sure the Bible would distinguish the two that way.

Here's my knee-jerk answer to the question. The resurrection of Jesus validates, in some sense, the creation account in Genesis. Not that Jesus' resurrection means that Genesis describes the exact "historical" sequence, but that Jesus' resurrection declares, among other things, that the Genesis accounts of our beginnings are the God-given answers to the questions above -- Who am I? Where do I come from? and What does it all mean? At their base, these are questions of philosophy and poetry, not so much questions of science and history.

I realize I'm opening a HUGE can of worms here. (Ever wonder about that expression?) But thinking about Genesis does that.

A project?

I've been thinking a lot lately about a T.S. Eliot quote that Paul, our senior pastor at Central, likes to use: "Our beginnings know our endings." The actual quote is "In my beginning is my end," (from the poem "East Coker") but the concept is the same. I've been thinking about this as I often do in relation to the church, specifically the church in America in 2009, specifically to mainline churches in tension with ourselves, with culture, with scripture, with evangelical churches, with ... you name it.

Lately I am thinking that we have lost touch with our beginnings. I was listening to an online forum with the presiding bishop of the ELCA yesterday and I was struck by how frequently he talked about "mission". We need to engage in mission. We need to enhance mission. We must stay focused on mission. Mission suffers when we are in conflict. If congregations or individuals withhold funds from our churchwide organization, mission suffers. But I don't believe we have a clear sense of what "mission" is -- because we have lost touch with our beginnings. This is true at many levels. I think it would be great fun to wade through the first dozen chapters of Genesis to see what God says about our beginnings, and what we can learn there about our mission. Paul made reference to this in his sermon (you can link to it here) yesterday and it brought me back to this train of thought. He spoke of chaos and fear and Jesus' presence in creation. What could we learn about who we are and where we are headed if we took a hard look at Genesis 1-12? Might be fun.

Winter is always writing time for me, and I think this might end up being the winter's writing project.

Busy weekend

Saturday was a full day -- we are attending a prayer ministry class at Redeemer Lutheran in Fridley, and then in the evening we held our Alpha healing night at Central. So that was a pretty intense day. Then Sunday worship at Central was busy and joyful and a little chaotic and great (as I've come to expect) -- then we spent an afternoon together setting up the Christmas tree, among other things.

The prayer ministry class is something I first got introduced to when Julie took it last year. It's through a ministry called Elijah House. The concepts and principles taught in this class are not complicated, but they are a little different from the way we are normally taught to think about things. My consistent experience, both when Julie was taking the class and now when I'm taking it for myself, has been that these ways of praying open up the Bible -- and allow change in real life -- in an amazing way. We each experienced a lot of transformation in our own lives and in our family as we worked through some of these things. Bottom line, the idea is that we take God's word seriously when the Bible tells us how the universe is designed to function. When we live in ways that contradict this word, we hurt ourselves and put ourselves in bondage. When we bring that bondage to the cross of Jesus, he sets us free and helps us experience the fullness of life God wants for us.

Think for a minute about some of the directions our society is drifting. Pick the moral or spiritual or social issue of your choice. In any arena, when we choose to act against God's word, we harm ourselves and the people around us, and we eventually find ourselves in bondage to unintended consequences of our actions. Take a simple one -- the Bible says "honor your father and your mother." God attaches all kinds of promises to that command, and what we see is that where we obey it, we do well; where we dishonor our parents, we are bound either to repeat their mistakes or live our lives trapped in bitterness about their shortcomings. For example, have you ever said, "I'll NEVER be like Mom / Dad ..." and then found yourself doing exactly what you hated in them? Or have you ever tried to get past some of your parents' faults and failures? Counselors and psychologists by the thousand deal with these issues every day as adults try to work through their childhoods, recognize parental strengths and weaknesses, forgive and release and get free from all that baggage. Not to mention the fact that as adults, we in turn dump all this baggage on our own children!

But what about the fact that no matter how much they deserved it, in childhood I also judged my parents and condemned them? The question is not were my parents wrong. Of course they were at times, and at other times they were right but I disliked their actions. The question I have to ask is, was I wrong to condemn them -- and the answer, according to the Bible, is yes. So if I dishonor my parents, I reap the consequences. When I said, "I will never be so stoic and emotionless as my Dad" I bound myself to that vow. When I became an adult, I had two choices: First, I could become exactly who I promised I would never be, because I was now in bondage to my vow. Or, I could live by my vow and be bound to always fighting to show my emotions and wear my heart on my sleeve. More than likely, I would end up in a messy combination of the two. But what I never experienced was the freedom to express emotion in an appropriate way, the way God had created me. Stoic or sloppy, I lived in bondage to my vow. By recognizing that I dishonored my father in condemning him for his stoicism, asking God to forgive me for what may seem like a trivial sin, and inviting God to grow me into who he created me to be, I can begin to experience freedom from that emotional bondage.

The reality is that each of us lives in bondage in many, many ways. This business of honoring / dishonoring parents is one example, though it is a huge one. Christians (especially in America) have focused for generations on issues of salvation, by which we have meant "who gets into heaven and who doesn't." But the New Testament talks about salvation as something that is BOTH a change that happens instantaneously AND something we grow into as we are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We've done a great job in American Christianity of talking about the instantaneous change, but a lousy job with the "being transformed" and growing into the image of Jesus. (Traditional theological terms for these two sides of the coin are "justification" and "sanctification" though these words get one into trouble sometimes as well, since everyone wants to tweak the definitions to their own perspective.) This prayer ministry class focuses on helping believers open their lives more and more to God's work so that different areas of their lives can be lined up with God's word and they can experience the power of God to set them free and in turn, they can help others begin to experience that same freedom.

Though I did not know about Elijah House at the time I wrote it, these same concerns are at the root of my book on the Exodus. The question at the root of that book is, How does God set people free? It seems so clear to me that God desires a freedom for us that we so often miss. My hope in writing that book was to get a sense for the freedom God desires for us, and the ways he leads us toward that freedom. In some ways my book is an introduction to topics and ideas that Elijah House deals with in much greater depth. This Wednesday morning I get to meet with a group of guys at Sportech in Elk River who get together each week for conversation and study. Right now they're working through my book, and I'm excited to have a chance to hear their thoughts as they read through it.

Advent again

Tonight the Alpha team from Central decorated the Christmas tree in the sanctuary for the -- I think -- fourth year in a row. This has become a fun event with kids running around, lots of visiting, and a few people at a time working hard to get the tree up, lit, ribboned, and ornamented. As with any extended family, most of the conversation is just fun, but here and there some really in-depth stuff happens as well. It is a great chance to reconnect.

This year, as with the last several years, we have ended by singing some Christmas carols and praying together. Tonight we had the kids up front and their parents sitting in the first couple rows of pews in the dark sanctuary, with the freshly lit tree shining out in all its glory. I look at these bright faces and I wonder: how will God use these children to build his kingdom? For four years most of them have been coming with their parents to lead Alpha in some form. They have grown into friendships together. There's no question that this group of children owns the church -- just watch them! They have strong opinions about the best ways to do ministry. They assume, from living with their parents' modeling, that it is right and proper not only to worship on Sunday, but to stand around after worship and talk to your best friends, who of course worship with you. And not only that, but you should also expect that you are giving your life away a few hours a week in some ministry that leads people closer to Jesus in very specific ways. They've learned by watching that when you have trouble in your family, you go to this same group of believing friends, and one of those friends is probably a pastor or other church leader, and that's also a good place to go for help and support. They've heard their parents and their parents' friends ( who are really more like extended family) talk about taking risks and making sacrifices because that's where God is leading them. They've overheard conversations about doing the right thing no matter what it costs, and about how to know what the right thing is. All in all, I think these kids have a pretty strong foundation for understanding what it means to love Jesus with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. I can easily imagine them in twos and threes when they hit college age going off to do a summer stint in Knoxville or Kenya or Kazakhstan or Kuala Lumpur, because they're convinced that is where Jesus is leading them. Yes, it will cost them something, but they've learned that is to be expected.

This group of shining kids gives me a sense of excitement for what God is doing in his kingdom. They love to sing, and to pray, and to serve, and their attention spans run out as fast as any other kids', and some of them can throw a mean spiral and they know all the best hiding places in the church. But they also have a deep-rooted sense of holiness, an awareness of the presence of God. When we say, "Let's pray" during the evening, they know exactly who they're talking to. It's beautiful to see.

Advent

God caught me by surprise last night. We went to the Bethel University Christmas concert mostly because my daughter was playing in the Wind Symphony. But the experience totally caught me off guard and carried me to a place I did not expect. I have not thought much about Advent and Christmas yet this year; I tend to be ready to think about Christmas sometime around December 20th. But I wrote up some of the experience of last night's concert. If you're looking for an entrance into Advent, a way to begin anticipating the celebration of Christ's birth, here is one possibility:

Come with me. Wait, wait. Such a tangle in the parking lot. Is everyone here for the same thing? Wow. No room here. Follow the trail of red lights, watch the shrouded figure with the orange flashlight waving us on. Up the hill to the back lot. Is there room here? Yes -- yes, an open space. Finally!

Now, out of the car -- come on, we’ve got a ways to go yet -- and just follow the crowd. No, I don’t know the way, but I hope they do. Back down the hill for starters. See? Everyone is headed down that long walkway. It’s cold! Feels like snow by morning. The wind tears inside every seam on my clothes. Oh, good -- they’re headed in that doorway. Now the press is warmer, but crowded, too. Down the hallway, down the stairs, lower, lower. One last speedwalk across the mezzanine, past the ushers -- what? Oh, yes, I’m expected, I have a ticket here somewhere -- quick, find a seat, there, down toward the front, there’s one left. Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, oh -- sorry about your coat, ma’am -- sit down.

At that moment strains of song begin ... A lone voice at first, then two, others joining from the long procession of figures in dark robes, their faces lit by candles, line upon line carrying forward the ancient song.

I am caught up in the scene from Revelation, I realize, Revelation 4-5. We are gathered around the throne of God, faces lit with candles, lit with music, lit with joy; each player carefully placed, planted; every movement choreographed to the millimeter yet alive with the Spirit of the living God, flowing, calling forth music, voices -- thousands of voices, a multitude beyond number, my voice also cracks and wavers through tears, but the song is not marred by my emotion -- an ancient song of praise:

“Joyful all ye nations, rise;

Join the triumph of the skies.

With th’angelic host proclaim:

‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

The song continues, flowing from one into the next, a group here, a solo there. Now and then a voice rises to speak the words of the long-ago prophecies, declaring the promises and the works of our faithful God. All this pageantry, all this panoply of sound is for the One who sits on the throne, and we have joined together to lift him up, glorify, praise, adore.

A strange man steps to the fore. At first I am offended. What does such a man have to do with standing before this assembly? I see his scuffed shoes, the too-many creases in cheap pants, the hasty topcoat thrown over all. His untidy beard. I am put in mind of a children’s story, however, when he steps up. In the story each one who came into the circle, ragged and simple and humble, was revealed as a great lord or lady as they stepped into the ring. So here -- in his stoop, the movement of his arms and shoulders and fingers, the way he holds his head a little to one side (‘ware the pursed lips and his flashing eye!) even the clenching of his jaw -- every fiber of his being is given to this grand service. He is an artist, leading the artists, who lead the worship, bending every shred of his will to create an offering worthy of the King of kings!

The song goes on, rising and falling. Then, in the midst, a simple love song. Once written by a young woman for her lover, now the high voices carry this haunting tune to a new depth, a new love, a new Lover. But there is one -- among the perfect faces lit with joy, one cut by grief. Perhaps it is too near for her to sing of her true love. Her lip trembles and a wistful, even tearful expression escapes the rigid mask of propriety. Is there not love enough in this throneroom to heal her grief? Will she discover that this Lover is indeed sufficient for her every desire, her every need? The song goes on, and her face fades into the multitude.

The songs are familiar. Until now I had thought them baubles, cheap phrases used by advertisers to increase revenue in this silly season. The tattered remnants of commercials call to my mind shopping malls and interminable pop radio -- “All Christmas, All the Time!” These songs have been tawdry and thin at their best up till now. But here, they are revealed in their glory, as all things in that Presence are revealed in their glory, in the beauty of the first morning of unstained creation. Here there is no unreached potential, no sad failure to achieve; all is fullness, all is glory, for all is filled with the Spirit of God, even the songs. Especially the songs. These are fitting tribute and offering in the court of this King. There is no plate passed, no basket at the door, no appeal for support, for every heart here is laid on the altar; every life laid down for love’s sake; every shred of self will nailed to the cross.

What makes it so? In such a presence, how can one not worship? Each singer, each player, is caught up in that moment in full awareness that their craft (in German, kraft means strength) their art, is worship.

Then, when all was full and resounding like breakers in a February storm tearing at the rocks on the beach, like the fury of an early blizzard descending across the prairies without warning, like the stillness of the morning when frost rainbows ring from the trees in unbearable sunlight, then there came one like a Lamb, bearing the wounds that had once caused his death.

“Nail, spear, shall pierce him through

the cross be borne for me, for you

Hail, hail, the Word made flesh

the Babe, the Son of Mary.”

He came before the One seated on the Throne, and a voice declared, “You alone are worthy, for you were slain, and your blood purchased for God people of every tribe and tongue, every people and nation.”

We are caught at the unutterable edge of grief and joy, the undividable edge where need and fullness meet and become one. Here is the one who has opened the door, gathered the multitude, taken my brokenness onto him self so that I might be lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Then all goes silent. Out of the worshipping quiet comes a tone, a bell, a chorus of bells. Their eerie harmonies call from the altar that stands before the throne, saying that the vision cannot last -- not yet -- and time will come soon to turn back.

This multitude gathered around the throne is a band of messengers, come to tell you of a love beyond the reach of your heart that holds you, heals you, and waits for you. Know this: the time of your waiting, the time of your bondage, the time of your exile is short.

Meanwhile the song in heaven does not stop. It continues and praise swells through the ages ever greater, ever fuller around the throne:

Christ, to Thee with God the Father

And O Holy Ghost, to Thee

Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving

And unwearied praises be;

Honor, glory and dominion

And eternal victory

Evermore and evermore!

Walking in the light

I just returned from a few days hunting with my brothers in the badlands. What a great time to get away! We camped (yes, in a tent over the first of December) at the edge of a canyon, nestled among the junipers. Each morning we were up a couple hours before daylight and hiked out to look for mule deer. Each night we returned after dark to eat, talk, and strategize together for the next day's hunt.

Throughout my life, times like this have been critical to help me understand God and his word. The Bible was not written in an age of laptops, ipods, cell phones, electric lights, or even automobiles. So getting away from those things for a while frequently helps me to understand God's word better. The fact that so much of our technology has changed does not mean that human beings have changed. When I can get away from the distractions, I begin to see clearly the wisdom God has placed in his word.

One contrast, for example, that came very clear to me this past few days was the contrast between light and darkness. Jesus frequently used these terms to help his followers understand what it meant to know and follow him. (See for example John 8:12 or John 12:35-36.) Camping during the long winter nights, one becomes all too familiar with darkness. And hiking in the dark through rough terrain can be difficult at best.

One example. Tuesday morning I left camp about an hour and a half before sunrise. I had a strong headlamp to show me the way as I skirted the edge of a canyon looking for a manageable way down into the bottom. Even with my strong light, I learned that walking with a flashlight is different than walking in daylight. Because the source of light was coming from me, I didn't see a washout that was hidden behind a large clump of grass. Carefully watching my path eight or ten feet ahead, I stepped through the grass and put my foot confidently into the washout, dropping down a good two feet farther than I expected. Needless to say, I fell hard. Fortunately my leg was not held tight in the narrow washout so I didn't sprain or break anything. More amused and embarrassed than hurt, I climbed up and walked much more carefully on my way.

When the Bible talks about walking in darkness, it's not saying that we are totally blind or ignorant. It's talking about relying on ourselves as the source of light. My reason, my experience, my understanding are important -- but without a source of light that comes from beyond just myself, I will stumble and fall. That is why we strive to live according to God's word.

One of the things I treasure about the staff team I work with is that both among ourselves and in our roles as church leaders we strive to "walk in the light." This is not referring to issues of salvation but to daily practice. How do we walk in the light? We live according to God's word. We do not hide things from each other. We communicate openly. We try to be up front about our needs, agendas, and motives. If someone offends us, we go to that person directly and deal with the offense in the light. We strive to avoid actions that are "dark" -- hidden, manipulative, unclear, or indirect. When others have tried to draw us into gossip or triangulation, we stop the conversation and say, "I encourage you to talk to that person directly, and just so you're aware, I'm going to talk to them about this conversation." This practice of "walking in the light" is not going to save us from an afterlife in hell, but it does save us a lot of anguish in this life. I enjoy a level of trust with the other members of this staff that I have rarely known with coworkers. Similarly, we enjoy a level of trust and a shared sense of mission with key leaders in this church because we have consistently tried to walk in the light together.

Once I figured out I had nothing broken after my fall, I walked down into the canyon about a quarter mile, very cautiously. Finally I found a sheltered spot at the edge of the canyon bottom where I sat for a half hour until daylight. When the sun rose, suddenly my little light was unnecessary. I could see the terrain clearly. Drop-offs and potholes that could have tripped me before were now revealed. 1 John 1:5-7 says that "if we walk in the light as [God] is in the light, we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." This is the goal -- to walk in the light God gives us in his word in every daily matter so that we can have fellowship with one another. When we fail, we are able to receive forgiveness and to extend forgiveness to one another. It's like a sunrise that gives light and clarity to the whole landscape.

Going Home

This summer and fall I've been writing, just for fun, a series of reflections around the theme, "Going Home." I wrote the piece below a few days ago and when each of my daughters read it, they independently told me, "You should put that on your blog." So at the direction of my daughters, here it is. I will be offline for a few days but should be posting again by the first couple days in December. I hope you are having a blessed Thanksgiving and entering into a joyful Advent filled with anticipation.

One of the problems with going home is that in a mobile society, many of us have multiple homes to return to. One of my favorites is the badlands of North Dakota. I go back there to bowhunt for mule deer with my brothers. That fellowship of pleistocene ritual is wonder enough, but layered over the top for me is the emotion of going back to the badlands. My first call as an ordained pastor was to Williston, North Dakota, and I fell in love with the wide, dry, rugged land.

Western North Dakota is what geologists call “negative topography.” That means that once upon a time the surface of the ground was more or less level, far higher than it is now, and what would eventually become vast prairies were laid down in successive layers by a warm inland sea where mosasaurs and other primal creatures did epic battle. Their bones eventually settled in the mud at the bottom of the sea. Depending on the sources of inflowing water, the mud was brown, or white, or black, or reddish. When the waters dried up, these great prairies became lush grasslands. Here and there a river cut the surface and over time erosion began to carve the surface down, layer by layer, into canyons and coulees. The multicolored layers of clay and dirt and sandstone opened up to reveal a riot of color and eye-numbing designs on the sides of the canyons. As the runoff cut deeper and deeper channels, the winding canyons twisted and turned back on each other until this deeply carved area -- miles and miles and miles across -- became a navigator’s nightmare. You can literally walk in, turn around once, and be lost. The designs, the canyons, all look the same.

Mule deer love it here. They sleep in the junipers on the north facing slopes and graze in the sage on the coulee bottoms. Coyotes and rabbits and rattlesnakes all have a place in this severe wonderland. I wounded a rabbit with an arrow one hot day and followed him into a narrow washout where he retreated to hide. I crawled six feet inside the small cave, dark and dry, where he had disappeared before I remembered rattlesnakes. I backed out slowly without injury, but a few minutes later saw a six foot rattler slide through that same hole.

Before he led the charge up San Juan Hill or got himself elected President, Teddy Roosevelt had a ranch just northwest of the canyons we hunt. In later life he was fond of reminiscing about how his time in the badlands made him strong.

Because the landscape is carved from the flat surface down, not lifted up like traditional mountains, it is deceptive to drive to the badlands. You drive and drive across flat prairie and it sucks you into the illusion of flatness. You think it will go on forever. Then suddenly you come around a corner (why have a corner in flat country? you wonder) and the bottom drops out and you run down the coulee into bottoms where the rust and cream bluffs tower over your head. The farther down you go the deeper it gets and the higher the canyons, until the bucks are sitting on a shelf a hundred feet above your head and watching you drive by, confident that you are blind to their presence, and you are.

Strange things live here. Bighorn sheep and mountain lions make an appearance from time to time, and in Teddy Roosevelt National Park there are herds of bison. Even the geology takes on a life of its own. There are towering buttes with flat tops where a tabletop of flat, hard sandstone protects the clay underneath from being eroded away. By some strange geological happenstance here and there you can find something that look like gigantic cannonballs, two and three feet across, dark brown and waiting for battle. Swallows nest in stands of wavering sculpture that look like drunken mushrooms leaning on each other for support, but the whole formation is made out of clay. Here and there a seam of coal shows through. Other places there are dark red, sharp-edged scoria rocks, formed when one of those coal seams caught fire and baked the clay around it.

I knew a man once who made his spending money as a boy digging that coal. He and his brother parked a wagon at the top of the bluff, and one brother climbed down to dig the coal. He’d fill a three gallon bucket they had tied to a hundred twenty feet of rope. The other brother waiting at the top pulled the bucket up and dumped it in the wagon. They repeated this process until they got a wagon load, then drove the horses twelve miles to town and sold the load for five dollars.

You can still find old cabins, broken down and mostly rotted, here and there in the badlands. Some homesteader in the early 1900’s, probably poor, probably from Denmark or Finland, came to try his luck at the American Dream. They almost all failed, for the badlands don’t suffer fools lightly. Brutal winters, scorching summers, desperate men avoiding the law and nearly every other pestilence known to humanity has taken up residence there at one time or another.

The weather here can be ornery, too. It’s not unusual to get a week of beautiful 50 degree sunny weather in the middle of winter when the winds are right. But don’t let it put you too much at ease! Frequently those warm spells give way to a blizzard, and in an afternoon the temperature can drop fifty degrees and usher in two feet of howling snow.

I used to take my daughters to the badlands just south of Williston when they were about five and eight. We found slides in the clay formations, wore the backsides out of our pants, learned about cactus and bull snakes, and I taught them to shoot the replica Henry .22 I bought just for the purpose. There’s something just right about a lever-action rifle when you’re in that kind of country. I’d like to take them back. It’s probably one of the first real homes they have to go back to. The summer they were seven and ten we camped with them in the north unit of Teddy Roosevelt National Park, in a campground we had all to ourselves. All to ourselves, that is, until sunrise when a bachelor herd of bison wandered in, about thirty males all testosterone and determination to show each other who was the baddest. This was the first night we ever let the girls sleep in their own tent. My wife and I watched breathless as the snorting, heaving, wooly behemoths came within six feet of the girls’ tent. The girls were transfixed, fascinated, in awe of a spectacle that is just a little different in person than on Animal Planet.

So now and then I go home to another home, to commune with the windswept buttes and yucca plants, to see a few mulies, to hear coyotes sing and to sleep out in the open country with my brothers. I climb the buttes and lay in the grass, avoiding the cactus, to scan the coulees below for mule deer. We walk ten or twelve miles in a day, or maybe we sit in one spot and never move more than a hundred yards. Just like it did for my ancestors thousands of years ago, it depends on the deer. We get up in the early dark and sit by the fire after sunset, carrying jerky and water to get us through the days. And after a few hard days it will be time to pack it all in and come back here, come back home, come back to the ones I love most. I’m excited.