When I was in college I was encouraged to pick an author as a “mentor.” Eugene Peterson has been that person. He has been a wonderful mentor. Each Christmas I pull out this reading and it moves me to a place of worship and puts me in the right frame of mind about the significance of Christmas. On this Christmas day may this reading move you to wonder and astonishment. Merry Christmas!

“Wonder and Astonishment,” by Eugene Peterson

Birth: Wonder…Astonishment…Adoration.

There can’t be very many of us for whom the sheer fact of existence hasn’t rocked us back on our heels. We take off our sandals before the burning bush. We catch our breath at the sight of a plummeting hawk. “Thank you, God.” We find ourselves in a lavish existence in which we feel a deep sense of kinship-we belong here; we say thanks with our lives to Life. And not just “Thanks” or “Thanks It” but “Thank You.” Most of the people who have lived on this planet earth have identified this You with God or gods. This is not just a matter of learning our manners, the way children are taught to say thank you as a social grace. It is the cultivation of adequateness within ourselves to the nature of reality, developing the capacity to sustain an adequate response to the overwhelming gift and goodness of life. Wonder is the only adequate launching pad for exploring this fullness, this wholeness, of human life. Once a year, each Christmas, for a few days at least, we and millions of our neighbors turn aside from our preoccupations with life reduced to biology or economics or psychology and join together in a community of wonder. The wonder keeps us open-eyed, expectant, alive to life that is always more than we can account for, that always exceeds our calculations, that is always beyond anything we can make. If in the general festive round of singing and decorating, giving and receiving, cooking meals and family gatherings, we ask what is behind all this and what keeps it going all over the world, among all classes of people quite regardless of whether they believe or not, the answer is simply “a birth.” Not just “birth” in general but a particular birth is a small Middle Eastern village in datable time-a named baby, Jesus-a birth that soon had people talking and singing about God, indeed, worshipping God. This invites reflection. For birth, simply as birth, even though often enough greeted with wonder and accompanied with ceremony and celebration, has a way of getting absorbed into business as usual far too soon. The initial impulses of gratitude turn out to be astonishingly ephemeral. Birth in itself does not seem to compel belief in God. There are plenty of people who take each new life on its own terms and deal with the person just as he or she comes to us, no questions asked. There is something very attractive about this: it is so clean and uncomplicated and noncontroversial. And obvious. They get a satisfying sense of the inherently divine in life itself without all the complications of church: the theology, the mess of church history, the hypocrisies of church-goers, the incompetence of pastors, the appeals for money. Life, as life, seems perfectly capable of furnishing them with a spirituality that exults in beautiful beaches and fine sunsets, surfing and skiing and body massage, emotional states and aesthetic titillation without investing too much God-attentiveness in a baby. But for all its considerable attractions, this shift of attention from birth to aspects of the world that please us on our terms is considerably deficient in person. Birth means that a person is alive in the world. A miracle of sorts, to be sure, but a miracle that very soon gets obscured by late-night feedings, diapers, fevers, and inconvenient irruptions of fussiness and squalling. Soon the realization sets in that we are in for years and years of the child’s growing-up time that will stretch our stamina and patience, sometimes to the breaking point. So how did it happen that this birth, this Jesus birth managed to set so many of us back on our heels in astonishment and gratitude and wonder? And continues to do so century after century, at least at this time of year? The brief answer is that this wasn’t just any birth. The baby’s parents and first witnesses were convinced that God was entering human history in human form. Their conviction was confirmed in angel and Magi and shepherds visitations; eventually and extraordinary life came into being before their eyes, right in their neighborhood. More and more people became convinced. Men, women, and children from all over the world continue to be convinced right up to the present moment.

Birth, every human birth, is an occasion for local wonder. In Jesus’ birth the wonder is extrapolated across the screen of all creation and history as a God- birth. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”- moved into the neighborhood, so to speak. And for thirty years or so, men and women saw God in speech and action in the entirely human person of Jesus as he was subject, along with them, to the common historical conditions of, as Charles Williams once put it, “Jewish religion, Roman order, and Greek intellect.” These were not credulous people and it was not easy for them to believe, but they did. That God was made incarnate as a human baby is still not easy to believe, but people continue to do so. Many, even those who don’t “believe,” find themselves happy to participate in the giving and receiving, singing and celebrating of those who do. Incarnation, in-flesh-ment, God in human form in Jesus entering our history: this is what started Christmas. This is what keeps Christmas going.

There are many ways to eat in Italy from the most simple to the most formal.  Kathy and I tried each in our short visit to Italy.  Each has its own pleasures.  I have noticed the small town restaurant needs a reservation if not more so than in a big city.  I think in part because the small town family-run restaurant has just one seating and you have their full attention for the night

There is an expression, A tavola non si invecchia,  “At the table one does not age”, that speaks to the notion of the good feelings that come with dining, whether at home or in any sort of eatery.  Italians, unlike Americans, do not adopt special restaurant manners, but instead approach a restaurant meal as a source of pleasure and social relaxation.  One of the joys of eating in Italy is to observe the behavior of diners nearby.  Kathy and I having only each other to talk to on this sabbatical were glad we are extroverts and at times could take a break from talking and enjoy watching the people around us.  The best was one night at Locanda di Nonna Gelsa, in the village of Niccone.  As Kathy told Chiara, “this is the best 50 euros we have spent so far in Italy.”  Chiara is the charming hostess who knows both English and French.  This is a very good family-style restaurant.  I knew it to be family when she decides to start and later stoke the fireplace next to me. I felt like reaching over and helping.

What also made it the best 50 spent yet was the people watching.  Each mise-en-tavola seems to be a small drama, whether tragic or comic.  We delighted in watching four generations of a family carry on precisely as they would at home.  Small children were doted upon and given relatively free rein in terms of self-expression.  The Elderly relatives were closely watched to see that they were eating, as they should.  Everyone plays and laughs, with an occasional outburst of anger. 

One of the big surprises is how the table is simply a social gathering.  And here is the surprise.  It is common in Italy for male friends to go out for dinner as a group while their wives and girlfriends stay home.  This is a legacy I find out since the days when Italian women did not go out unaccompanied.   I am told that in Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) in which Alberto Sordi seems to be on a continuous night out with the boys reflect this idea.  While today his contemporaries are less wild, the tradition of men going out for a good meal endures. 

On this night out from my vantage point, I watched two tables (Kathy watched the multigenerational table).  One was a table of two older men in their late 60’s and the other of two young guys (that would be my age, no laughter please).  I will comment only on the older guys.   Unlike other tables these two did not want to order the table wine.  They bought what had to be a good year by the way they breathed in the aromas, held the bottle, the way they filled each others glass, read the label and then comparing it to some of their best wine they have raised in their lifetime.  They were oblivious to everyone else in the restaurant except Chiara.  They knew her well and you could tell coming here was a ritual, a tradition, and a commitment to a soul friend.  I knew this had to be a regular guy’s night out when they got up laughed and laughed and joked with Chiara and then left without paying as Chiara began writing down a new number to their running tab.

For me on the first visit, (though not to be my only in the two weeks there), what I prized was the “Wild Boar Stew” though more like slow cooked pork smothered in a sauce that melted in my mouth.  For them, a conversation that never dragged, a bottle of wine shared together between two close friends over a good meal.  A tavola no si invecchia  “At the table one does not age”. 

What those two guys have we men in the church need and I want personally, a commitment, a ritual, and a tradition. A tavola non si invecchia, “At the table one does not age.”

Guys, we need good male connections.  Heart of a Warrior is a Men’s Wednesday night study led by Virgil Bakken and Mark Peske.  There are a variety of Men’s Small Groups offered this fall and listed on the Small Group brochure.  Oct 15-18th a group of guys are heading to Adventurous Christians a Covenant Wilderness Center along the Gunflint Trail.  This will be a time for fellowship in the outdoors and to plan a few men’s events.  Also, Kevin Jackson desires to give leadership to the men’s ministry.  See Kevin if you would like to help.

The following comes from a journal entry I wrote at the end of the sabbatical and I want to share with you.

I start with a poem by Wendell Berry.  I have not been a person to quote poetry but in this case it seems to fit.  I like Berry’s poetry. Berry has written essays on culture and novels but at the center of his work are his poems.  A farmer through and through, his is a kind of rural expression unique to America.  It is not simple or quaint in the slightest, though.  Living near family, animals and the land it is a rigorous and often tough stance.  I like the intensity of his work.  

The Wild Geese

 Horseback on Sunday morning,

Harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end.  In time’s maze

over the fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves.  We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here.  And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear.  What we need is here.

Several themes touch with my life: ”Sunday morning, harvest over, summer’s end”.  The sabbatical has been everything I had hoped and so much more.  Opportunity to “taste and see” that God is good.  For the past week as my sabbatical was winding down I have experienced the wonder of ending.   It felt a little like the last week of summer vacation when I was in school:  I know I’ll miss the freedom, but it will be good to be back.  I’ll get to see the congregation again, sit at my familiar desk, look around to see what has changed and what has stayed the same.  Certainly one thing that has changed is my outlook.  I feel rested, renewed, and ready.  I am ready to return, I think.  I have missed the people at church.  Even so, I experienced the grief at ending the sabbatical.  I loved writing and know that will suffer in the return.  I loved the freedom I had to choose how I will spend each day.  It has been fabulous, without a doubt.  I am running the gamut of emotions from grief to anticipation.  I go back different than the Pastor I was three months ago and congregation that has changed as well.

And so, as I have come off of sabbatical, as I have returned and unpacked books I also come unpacking my new energy, ideas and resolve. 

 I also return embracing the other theme of Berry’s poem:  

“What we need is here.”  It is hard for us to believe this is really true. And yet the word of St Paul came to mind when he writes, ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ he is not handing us a notional theological abstraction. He is saying that we live in a God drenched universe. He is agreeing with the Psalmist when he says, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” A few hundred years later St Augustine put it this way: “God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.” A few hundred years after Augustine, Pascal wrote, “God is that reality whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

If all this is true, if God’s loving presence suffuses the whole of creation then I can trust God and not be worried. Everything we need is already here.  On a personal note “everything I need in returning to Bemidji Evangelical Covenant is already here”.

On this sabbatical I renewed my commitment to be a “contemplative”.  The best definition of a contemplative comes from a book I read on sabbatical by Ian Crone and I take the liberty to adapt to my experiences on this sabbatical: A contemplative is someone who is being graced with a new perceptive appreciation, a capacity to see God in all things. They are arrested by God’s presence in the wind moving through trees in Bemidji, his majesty in the sight of a blue Jay perched in a tree in Grand Rapids Mn, by his glory in Mozart’s Coronation Mass or Hydn’s Creation Requiem heard in Salzburg, Austria. 

The contemplative has a growing capacity to recognize the Vestigia Dei—the footprints of God everywhere she looks whether the Mediterranean Sea in Positano or the hillsides of vineyards in Umbria Italy. The contemplative sits at the “sacro desco” with friends and strangers in Lecce Italy and understands the welcome and hospitality of God.  A contemplative gazes at an artists painting and sculptures and sees the scriptures come to life.  As a result of receiving these new eyes the contemplative moves through life radically amazed, full of awe, graced with a rich awareness that all of life, as poet Elizabeth Barrett Brown wrote, is “crammed with God.” In short they are living lives full of wonder.”

The challenge will be to see it.  It is the gap between what we see and what is available to be seen that will be the challenge as I return.  Thank you for your prayers while on sabbatical and as I return to ministry.

Pastor Dean

As many of you know I am heading out on sabbatical soon.  The Lilly Endowment awarded Bemidji Evangelical Covenant Church a $45,000 grant that enables me to participate in the National Clergy Renewal Program.  Kathy and I will spend two months in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Canada, as well as one month in the United States studying the ancient tradition of sacro desco or “sacred table.”

Growing up on a farm from the small town of New Richland, Minnesota, I never imagined I would find myself traveling to Italy and spending Holy Week in Rome and spending two months traveling Italy, Austria and Switzerland.  And yet, it was in my small hometown Covenant church that I came to understand community, through potlucks, casseroles and lime Jello salads.  It was through sitting at the table with people of so many ages that I came to understand my faith and experience and the unconditional love of Christ.  It is a desire to rediscover the importance of hospitality for today’s culture that takes Kathy and me on this sabbatical.  Building community and developing soul friends is such a need for today.

While on sabbatical, Kathy and I will dive into scriptures, enjoy foreign cuisine, visit friends, take in breathtaking scenery, and travel the footsteps of St. Benedict, and at this foreign table re-imagine hospitality.  This “sacred table” and its ability to unite are not only counter-cultural, but necessary.  I am looking forward to exploring how to bring us all to the “sacred table.”

As Kathy and I prepare to be away we ask for your prayers for us and for our kids.  As I prepare to leave, I leave you with a few quotes that have been speaking to me about this time away.  I hope they help you to better know how to pray for us, understand what a sabbatical is and what the role of Sabbath is in your life.

“A time apart.  I do not know a single pastor or pastoral leader whose heart does not in some measure thrill at the possibilities the phrase invokes.  Not just to get away from- though Lord knows there is a good bit of that- but to get away for and to.  Finally sabbatical, like Sabbath, is not about avoidance and escape but encounter and embrace.” William Brosend.

Time is valued in our culture, but not in itself.  Time is often seen as something to be filled up, blank spaces on the daily planner waiting for appointments.  Our importance as people is often judged by how full our time is, and how efficiently we schedule it.  Rarely do we think of time as a discipline, a way to connect with God.  According to Wayne Muller, “Sabbath is a revolutionary invitation to consider that the fruits of our labor may be found in the restful and unhurried harvest of time.  In time, we can taste the sweetness of peace, serenity, well being, and delight.”

“Time to reflect.  Time.  This is what clergy renewal is about.  To continue in ‘the heat of work’ our whole career is to rob ourselves and our congregations of the time we and they need to reflect on our lives and our call.  Here is where change begins.”  Melissa Bane Sevier

• I may not have a singing voice but God loves to hear me sing
• If a wee little man like Zacheus could see Jesus so can I
• With God’s help, like David, we can knock down our giants
• O be careful little eyes what you see
• I have the love of Jesus down in my heart
• The wise man built his house upon a rock
• Dare to be a Daniel
• Happy all the time
• One door and only one
• Jesus loves the little children
• Let the sunshine in and face it with a grin
• Jesus loves me this I know
• Jesus wants me for a sunbeam 

Take any of these items and extrapolate them into sophisticated adult terms – apply it to your family life, work, or your world, and it holds true and clear and firm.

Decades later I still have the love of Jesus down in my heart. I want to know God and the desire hasn’t cooled. There have been times I have allowed myself to be overpowered by other desires, business, lesser loves, laziness, and the temptation to let someone else do all the hard work of digging into the rich reservoirs of scripture. All to often I find myself tempted to live a distracted life. You know the kind – the one where in the midst of the busyness of life you still manage to perform the stand up, sit down, clap, clap, clap of regular church attendance. You drop a check in the offering plate, hope for a new nugget of knowledge, understanding, or insight in the weekly sermon, and check off a random, albeit short list, of acts of kindness to others. Somehow I’m supposed to feel like I’m living the Jesus-driven life. I don’t. Thats when hunger appears in my belly and overtakes my soul, grumbling that there must be more, even in the mundane. 

I find myself wanting more of God. Surely, I can’t be the only one who looks at the seemingly rich buffet of everything this world has to offer and loses their appetite. I can’t shake the sense that there is more. The hunger cries out that there is more of this God-infused life to live. 

I hunger for simplicity. I want to approach God in childlike faith, wonder, and awe. Such a God-infused lifestyle requires me to step away from any insta-grow shortcuts and dig deep into the soil of spiritual formation found only in God. 

I want to discover God anew, in a fresh way. I want to know a God who, in all his fullness, would allow me to know him. I want to know a God stripped of as many false perceptions and adult sophistication as possible. I want to return to the childlike faith, to the B-I-B-L-E. Through Scripture, God invites us to discover the wonders of Jesus shining in its pages.

This fall, through the preaching series, in forming a small group or by taking a class, may we in childlike spirit once more sing out:

• Give me oil in my lamp!
• Isn’t He wonderful!
• There is a fountain flowing deep and wide!
• Oh, how I love Jesus!
• It’s me, it’s me O’ Lord standing in the need of prayer!

What do you remember from Sunday School? Allow it to help you discover God again, anew, in a fresh new way!

Pastor Dean