HELLO!

Bethe and I were discussing our New Year’s Eve plans on Tuesday. She plans to be with others, playing games, sharing in laughter and conversation, enjoying the fruits of relationship. I too am an extrovert, but my inclination, since I turned 40, is to “go for a walk”, feel the presence of the Holy in wind, sky, trees, dogs. Often, I will break out in conversation with God, asking questions, asserting temporary wisdom, and then…waiting for epiphanies, as words come to my lips that do not feel like my own. On the stormy Monday night, around 10 pm, I went for such a walk. I was all alone, well not totally alone. God was there. The surface under my feet was slippery, freezing rain pelted down, I was soaked, off balance. Yet I found my way and was reassured there was a way.

Clouds belched buckets of rain, Sky exploded with thunder. From Whirlwind came your thundering voice, Lightning exposed the world, Earth reeled and rocked. You strode right through Ocean but nobody saw you come or go. Hidden in the hands of Moses and Aaron, You led your people like a flock of sheep. Psalm 77:17-20 (The Message)

In describing Psalm 77, Walter Brueggemann uses the phrase “a speech pilgrimage.” What a beautiful way not only to frame this particular Psalm but it’s so helpful, I think, in giving us perspective, a way to meet and move into crises as they arise for us. A pilgrimage is a journey in which we venture from one place to another place, carrying in our being an openness to be met somehow by the Holy; recognizing before we ever set out there will be difficult stretches, thoughts of quitting, turning back. Disillusionment will happen. There may be companions, some who are helpful and some not at all. Taking breaks will be important, finding rest. A speech pilgrimage then is this journey we take in stages by way of our words…words which bring us from one place to an entirely different place. And just as a pilgrimage isn’t simply about going for a walk, we can imagine there’s more to a speech pilgrimage than simply talking ourselves into or out of something. We can imagine a Holy accompanying of sorts. There will be words that stop us in our tracks…words that bring us to the edge…and if we stay with it, words that open-up, make a way … words that land us into new vistas. For the Psalmist there comes the recollection of another powerful formative story -- the Exodus story, where God makes a way for a people out of an impossible place, through an impossible path. That story re-membered, re-collected, somehow brings into his or her own presence a taste, a feel, the reality of God’s delivering, saving grace. One of the gifts of this Psalm is the witness it offers us, in case without it, we might never imagine it possible…that we could somehow break out of that cramped space of our own despair and find ourselves in the wide-open spaces of God’s grace. God’s Word is Life!

May you/we see a blazing light, feel God’s presence in thunderous upheavals of your/our life, and know God makes a way where none seems possible. Walking with you in “speech pilgrimages”. Peace, Kevin

PS My friend Roy sent me these photos as the sun rose near his downtown Halifax apartment. Such a vista is reassuring and illuminating, a gift.