Life at 3 miles an Hour

In my earliest years I never gave it much thought.  I guess that I kind of had a "the world is flat" opinion that never really prompted a consideration for what lie to the West, beyond "the Great river" that split our country.  Sure I read the text books, saw the movies, studied American geography, played "Oregon Trail".  It wasn't until we made our cross country drive 16 years ago to take up residency on the West Coast that this nagging question "Why?" began to dominate my thoughts on travels back and forth on highways birthed from the wagon trails of old. Every time I find myself heading back to the West on these same highways, I imagine life before these asphalt trails  and the unimaginable effort it took to navigate this treacherous and desolate terrain.  I attempt to imagine the unimaginable and it always leads to "Why?" in so many contexts.  Why would you leave the relative comfort of what you knew?  Why risk for something ...

I wrote a letter the other day.  When I say that "I wrote a letter", I mean I actually wrote it ... with a pen and actual paper.  I'll have to admit that it was a unique experience.  It wasn't a post it or a memo, it was an actual letter with a beginning, middle, and ending ... on paper ... in ink ... with questionable penmanship.   It was void of all the usual trappings that I have become accustomed to.  There was no spell check, and I couldn't just backspace to get rid of my spelling shortcomings.  There was none of that annoying blue underline grammar check begging the question "are you sure you want to construct this phrase this way?".  I tend to ignore those anyway. Possibly more of a challenge though was my entering in to this letter without a clear vision of where I was headed.  There wasn't even a blinking cursor to follow across the pages.  Actually, this lack of direction delayed its writing for several days.  All I had...

We are moving again this week.  It was only a year ago that I said "not again".  It was only a year before that that I said "not again".  We haven't even moved our boxes yet and I am once again saying "not again".  And yet I know this is probably not true.  We did go 11 years in the same house a few years back before our nomadic tendencies have kicked back in.  It seems to be getting worse instead of better.  Last year we moved one block.  This year we moved one building.  Next year I anticipate taking over our next door neighbors I guess.  Walking down through my neighborhood this morning it all hit me square in between the eyes.  Passing new apartment complexes rising right before my eyes, I thought back to these past few months.  Here is the summation of our recent experiences.  We signed on to move into a bigger unit with some much desired outdoor space.  Our faith community is looking for new space in anticipati...

This past weekend I had the privilege of being present for a memorial service honoring a fine lady who passed away recently.  She lived into her 90's and I have had the joy of knowing her these past 15.  Hers wasn't a traumatic death, it wasn't unexpected, and if anyone knew what promise lay before her in the afterlife, she certainly did.  Let's just say that I wasn't attending her service expecting to experience anything particularly profound... And yet I did. For many years my wife and I shared this community of faith where she brought people together for one last occasion.  As I sat there, watching pictures of her life float by, high above the service, and heard stories of her life,  being close to so many who shared life and faith with her, I felt a voice.  Not the big booming, James Earl Jones voice of God ... Rather the still small voice of the Spirit ... I think. I'd love to say after so long in the pastoral arts that I can recognize it, but I'm sti...

This week begins, at least in my real life experience, a quest to further my writing ambition….Or is it obsession? I can’t keep it straight. Anyway, before I begin this particular part of the journey I feel the need to confess a deep secret that I would imagine might be relevant to the pursuit. Actually it’s not that deep of a secret. Those who know me best know what it is. For the rest, here it is. I have a deep seated resentment for vowels. It may sound a bit strange from someone who is pursuing a writing obsession. I mean, I don’t know a whole lot about grammar and sentence structure, but I do know that vowels are pretty crucial to the writing process. Just think if they weren’t used. Words would be pretty hard to decipher. The Valentines I gave to my wife would say things like “ Lv Y” and “Kss M” instead of the simple I Love You and Kiss Me that is so much easier and so much more rewarding. Even those who communicate in the cellular mode need a few vowels to clear the air. I don’t ...

This is one hundred ! I’ve been waiting for this day for weeks now, counting down. It actually began when it hit ninety and then I realized that one hundred was possible. I’m referring to the number of posts that I’ve made to this cyber page. It’s amazing really. Maybe not for anyone who is reading this stuff, but for the one writing it…this is a monumental day. It’s so big for me that I am sitting here amidst the caffeine even though a weekend battle with a bathroom remodel has left my back quite limited in its ability to withstand these tiny little caffeine people chairs. It was implied at home that, perhaps, I should delay this post. I don’t think so. I took an opportunity this past week to read through some of this wandering nonsense from the past two years. It was a very humbling experience. If you know me, then you know that this fits with my examination, both in life and profession, of humility over the past several weeks. God seems to have a way with teaching me “by immersion”....

I remember my earliest coffee days. I wasn't even married. It seems like many years ago. It was. My wife to be and I would hang out at a friends house, sit around the table and drink coffee for hours and talk about everything and nothing at all. I was hooked. Starbucks was only an infant in the northwest. I had Folgers, or whatever else was on sale. There were no coffee shops. Only diners and truckstops if you wanted to go "out" for coffee. But it wasn't really the coffee we were looking for, it was the company. So any table would do. Just a table to know each other over. It was that way for us through all of life's moves, changes, careers, births, deaths, you name it. We shared coffee and life. Of course over time, coffee itself became a bit more important. I remember our first grinder. I remember the excitement of first travelling down the aisle of specialty coffee beans, collected in the clear tall dispensing containers. I remember the smugnes...