WELCOME

I slowly make my way up the familiar steps of my childhood church. While not my weekly home of worship anymore, there's something meaningful about this place and all the memories I have from the years I spent here. With the exception of a Christmas Eve service last December, the only thing that's been bringing me here for over a year has been the passing of old friends I knew from here. It's been the strangest thing - four fixtures in this faith community gone within fifteen months. I can't help but feel their absence from my life after such a long time. Even though I wasn't regularly spending time with most of these people anymore, I always looked forward to seeing them at special events or would find myself reminiscing about good times spent together in the past. But now, as I enter the church doors, I'm here yet again to say goodbye. This time to Dolly. 

Rosslyn Chapel is considered to be one of the most beautiful examples of medieval religious architecture. Located in Scotland, it has become a place of tourism, spiritual quest, and pilgrimage since becoming famous when Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code brought to public interest, further cemented by a film of the same name a few years later. While many other articles and information exist that tell the history of this famous religious location, locals tell a story about it that, I believe, carries profound meaning for us in light of our own spiritual and emotional healing...         

The gardener of this English manor house describes his agricultural duties at this historic place and notes with an apparently rueful laugh, "This is definitely not a garden for the faint-hearted." I guess one could contend all gardens take a certain amount of dedication and perseverance to deal with, but it seems that this one requires an extra bit of fortitude than most. The soil is less than desirable and gets waterlogged in winter, hard as concrete in summer. Winds come roaring in from the sea and get trapped inside the hills, causing much damage. There is much working against this particular groundskeeper's efforts, including that of deer, rabbits, and squirrels who want to cause their own havoc on the place. Yet... for the last thirty years, this man has faithfully been showing up and tending to his botanical responsibility and, as the article states, "he clearly has a deep affection for his difficult charge." Otherwise, why would he stay at it for so long?        

I look out the windows of my small, country church at the rising sun on Easter morning. As the delicious smells waft up the stairs from where the men are cooking our annual Resurrection Sunday breakfast in the kitchen below, I notice how the dawning light outside is barely kissing the tops of the nearby mountains and painting the sky a golden glow. Clouds that let down a dusting of snow overnight now turn pale pink as the world wakes up to the start of a new day, a new week. 

Lord, teach us to pray.

High above my head, while running some errands in my local town, I notice an eagle cruise right over me. It's nothing uncommon for me to see these majestic birds that signify national strength resting in a tree all over this place. Perhaps it's why the original settlers of this area named this town and the nearby river that flows through it, Eagle River. They are everywhere, and it's not lost on me that so many people travel to my state to catch a glimpse of these incredible creatures and I get the chance to see them pretty much all the time. I'm constantly reminding myself that living here, I get to experience other's dream. And isn't that kind of the way life is anyway? We're often living through moments that someone else in the world is praying for and, to us, we think nothing of it.    

 "Miracles happen everyday

When I think back on some of my favorite childhood memories, there is one in particular that comes to mind. I was probably in my early teens at the time, and the church I attended back then was having a Family Fun Day at one of the local lakes. It was in the dead of winter, so all of the activities centered around ice and snow. Some people went cross-country skiing around the lake while others went sledding. One dad even built an igloo with his two little boys! The church had rented the large lakeside cabin for the day, so board games and steaming crockpots of chili and soup awaited everyone inside, along with a roaring fire, when the outdoor chill became too much. For some reason, this memory has stuck with me. 

A very real occurrence here in this arctic world of mine is that it's a process in the winter to defrost the car. If you don't have a garage where you can park your car away from the elements, any snow or ice buildup cakes onto your windshield and side windows, leaving you with quite the job just to leave the house when you need to. You have to allot extra time just to make sure your line of sight is clear enough so you can drive safely. Anybody living in a cold, wintry climate knows the struggle is real. So turning the heater on full blast, the scraping and watching the ice melt on the windshield is a common sight and one that I've been used to for many years. 

I caught myself doing it again: slapping on a smile when nothing inside of me feels alive. Saying that I'm "fine" when the whole world around me doesn't feel fine and all I want is to bring back what's been lost and to stop the soul-bleeding and the suffering and to have the ground quit shaking all the time. This comes from a heart that's tired. Honesty spilling out of a spirit that is weary and flesh that is weak. And somehow, God knows. He always does. And judge me for being here, He does not.    

I've lost count of how many times I've spoken the words.  

Almost seven years ago, when my best friend died, a part of me died too.