Beloved of God,

The month of March finds us smack dab in the middle of the Lenten journey, and with early signs of spring emerging all around us after the warmest winter on record it’s hard to miss the connection to Lent as “springtime of the soul.” The hymn by Delores Dufner makes that connection explicit as it invites us to prepare the rich, dark soil of our hearts to receive the seed of God’s word this season; to become hospitable and welcome hosts for the “grain God bent to sow.”

From meetings with families preparing for their child’s baptism, to elementary retreats at Lutherwood; from our LEGACY celebration March 7th to the Palm Sunday’s choral cantata, No Greater Sacrifice; from weekly webinars on neighborhood outreach to the Spring Cleaning workday and Family Promise Fundraiser on March 20th, we’re all about rooting more deeply the “grain God bent to sow.”

One of my former professors died last month – Loren Halvorson, who taught at Luther Northwestern Seminary when I was a student. I found myself in his “church and society” course when I was a senior.  In that seminary world where heady theological concepts and conversations tended to predominate, Loren’s lectures and the projects he required from us opened up a whole new world grounded in that place where seeds meet soil.  Loren was all about Christian praxis—faith based action at the nexus of Word and world, and the “infinite loop” linking our worship life (ALTAR) with our vocational life in the world (STREET).  He brought the social-ethical conversation, i.e. how the church engages concretely in the world, into sharp focus for a generation of students, and his keen intellect was always imagining new ways that the church could incarnate the lively and powerful presence of the gospel in the world.

Loren and his wife Ruth founded ARC (a play on the biblical image forming an acronym standing for: Action – Reflection – Celebration) an intentional Christian Community north of the Twin Cities.  The cedar log structure they built there with the volunteer labor and ongoing investment of many hands, hearts, and pocketbooks, was an early retreat place for my family when I was a student; providing a welcome respite where spiritual reflection, personal story telling, spirited theological conversation, wholesome foods, and manual labor provided a welcome balance to those who sojourned there.  Thirty years later, some of the recipes I picked up from the ARC kitchen continue to make their way to our dinner table.

During the final months of Loren’s life, his wife Ruth wrote a blog on the Caring Bridge website that went out to a large audience of family members, friends, colleagues and former students.  It was moving for me to receive Ruth’s nightly journal entry, and to feel through those entries that I was sitting at bedside with a teacher who had spent a good deal of his life awakening others to God’s presence in the world and who now, in his final days, was teaching us how to die.  What a legacy! Ruth’s January 30th entry included these words:

On our dining room table we have a bowl of flower bulbs sitting in water with rocks, sprouting roots and green shoots.  Since there is no soil, nourishment comes from the bulb itself.  Similarly, with food intake having been almost nil for Loren these past couple of months or more, he is drawing from his stored reserves to keep his body going and mind active. He remains content and grateful.  Tonight I would like to close with a quote from Albert Einstein printed on a beautiful card we received that says it all, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

Jesus taught his disciples, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)  As seeds and blossoms emerge from soil and bulb and open up their colorful and fragrant blossoms they are visible reminders of the truth Jesus spoke.  But the order is clear:  death first, then…life!

During Lent, God dares us to trust that when we enter fully into the life of his Son—the singing, laughing, crying Jesus—and open the deep, dark soil of our lives to him, his transforming presence will bear fruit in our lives; will bring new breath and life; will reconnect what has become disconnected; will unbind and free us from whatever entombs us.

Is it possible, amidst the busy fullness of this month’s calendar, that our gatherings around Word and Sacrament could become occasions for the Spirit of God to “touch and mend and rouse our dry bones from their grave”? That’s where my hope is invested!

Pastor Erik

“Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.  And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white….a cloud came and overshadowed them; and thy were terrified as they entered the cloud.  Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” ~ Luke 9:28-29, 34-35

Beloved of God,

February has arrived, bringing its own peculiar character.  The “newness” of the New Year has run its course.  Personal notions we may have had about making a new start have begun to prove themselves to be either possible or unlikely.  Collective decisions about mission goals and budgets have been made and now we begin the step by step journey of living them out.  And in the garden, crocus shoots offer a harbinger of spring.  February represents a turning point in the seasons of our faith life together as we move this year from the season of Light to the season of Lent.

The season of Epiphany comes to a climax on Transfiguration Sunday, February 14^th as Jesus and three companions go mountain climbing and their dazzling encounter on top nearly leaves the disciples speechless.  God speaks and the disciples listen, but still don’t quite catch the drift.   How do you explain mystery?  Words fail.

After this high point, we move into Lent, the springtime of the soul. Entrance into Lent begins with the Ash Wednesday service (Feb 17), reminding us of our mortality, and how our destiny, our dying and rising, is linked to Christ in baptism. Forty days of reflection and meditation begin as we follow Jesus into the wilderness.  There he again ascends to the mountaintop.  Only this time it is Satan who accompanies him.  He promises Jesus the world, but Jesus sees through the charade.   How about you and I?  Can we see through the empty promises with which Satan would lure and entice us into empty and dead-end thoughts, actions, and relationships?

In the ancient church, Lent was a time of intense preparation for those who were to be baptized into Christ at the Easter Vigil.  This rhythm of preparation is being reclaimed in congregations that practice the Catechumenate, a way and a process for accompanying those who are drawn to Christ and to the waters of baptism—either to be baptized for the first time or to affirm their baptisms.  A group of us who attended a Catechumenate training event recently at Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church are exploring what such a process might look like at Peace.  You’ll be hearing about an opportunity soon.

The season of Lent is a season for gaining clarity:  clarity about our bond with Christ in baptism; clarity about our lifelong call as Christians to discover God’s will for our lives; clarity about the power which is God’s gift to us through the Holy Spirit; clarity about our mission as a community of faithful people who have been marked with the cross forever.  As we follow Christ on his road through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem and all that awaits him there, we learn once again of the height and depth of his love for us and for all.

How will you enter this “springtime” of the soul?  One of the traditions of Lent is to simplify, to pare down to the bare essentials.  Fasting, prayer, acts of charity are traditional practices during this season.  Some folks simplify their lives in Lent by choosing one thing to let go of or give up, such as an unhealthy habit.  Others choose to add on to their routine a spiritual discipline or a giving of themselves in some other form.  The options and opportunities for spiritual growth during this “springtime” are endless.

How about you?  How will this season be marked within the rhythm of your life?   Whatever our choices, we can be assured that God’s Spirit accompanies us, within and without, just as Christ promised; coaxing and guiding us toward a deeper dependence upon God and a more accepting relationship with our neighbors.

May God’s accompaniment bring joy, peace, and accompaniment to your Lenten journey.

Pastor Erik

The Pastor’s Pen

Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the bind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ~ Luke 4:16-19

Servants of God,

Each New Year brings its own assortment of hopes and dreams and goals, and when it’s over we look back at them and begin evaluating how well (or not) the year lived up to its promise.  We go through this process as individuals and we do it as a congregation, too.  On January 31^st we will stand on that crossroads of past and future once more and make decisions about where and how God is prompting us to go in this New Year and decade.  Some level of fear and trembling accompanies the discernment process leading up to the annual meeting every year (as it should!) for we dare to say, as a community “We believe God’s Spirit is calling us to do X.” What do we base the “X” upon?  We are a community of the baptized, and because of who and whose we are, we look to the gospel of Jesus to shape our mission agenda in the world.

The passage above comes from Jesus’ first hometown sermon.  The quotation is from the prophet Isaiah.  The words are a forceful declaration of how Jesus intends to fulfill his God given mission.  And the reaction he gets?  The reaction moves from congratulations to critique to violent intention.  By the time he leaves the synagogue the congregation is ready to throw him off a cliff!  Yikes! Jesus, it seems, did not fulfill their expectations.  He did not come to endorse the status quo but to call God’s people to a radical reorientation around God’s mission—what God is up to in the world. Adopting that mission plan eventually cost him his life, and simultaneously seeded new life for you and me and all.

On January 17^th we will celebrate the life and legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who inspired us with a dream for racial equality that beckons us still today; a man who taught us that racism belittles both the perpetrator and victim alike; a man who showed us that non-violent resistance to injustice has a moral force that violent means can never match; who said, “The arc of history is long—and it bends toward justice.”

It was a different brother Martin who warned of the propensity of human communities to become “curved in” on themselves when confronted with life’s challenges.  The gospel of Jesus, this Martin said, compels us always to turn our vision ever outward toward the welfare of our neighbor.

Charlie Mays, my pastor during seminary years, who served Christ’s church in the Northwest for decades and whose death one year ago left many of us bereft, liked to say provocative things about the role of the church.  Like: the church is the only organization that gives itself away for the sake of those who are not its members.

When we review our congregational life on January 31st, and get caught up in discussions and decisions about budget line items, salaries, and how we will fund our mission, we do well to remember the larger purpose to which we have been called in Christ, and the gifts with which God has blessed and equipped us.  We do well to recall the long arc of God’s salvation story, which reaches out to us in God’s Word-made-flesh and pulls us toward a future characterized by hope and fulfillment, a future that is unfolding even now in our lives and in the lives of all whom we serve.

Blessed New Year!

Pastor Erik

The Pastor’s Pen

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”   ~ Luke 1:30-31

Servants of God,

Sometimes, progress toward a goal is measured in seconds. With the Winter Olympic Games coming soon to Vancouver, BC, I think of the pending competitions where seconds or even fractions of seconds will mark the distance between medalists and also-rans.

Sometimes, progress is measure in terms of months—nine months, in the case of the young Mary. (We’ve had a number of families measuring time that way this year!) A reasonable length of time to prepare home and heart(h) to receive a new life…or maybe not.  By turns those weeks may drag on, or race forward with a swiftness that leaves parents-to-be breathless, with half-finished baby preparations dogging their heels.

Sometimes, progress is measured in decades. “Four score years,” the Psalmist declared, is a generous interval for human life.  My parents both crossed that threshold in 2009, and some of you are approaching or have exceeded that mark.

But sometimes, progress toward a goal is measured not on any human scale at all. Take geologic time.  The time it took the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon.  The time it took the slow motion collision of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian Plates to produce the Himalayan Mountains.  The time it took the earth’s primordial land mass known as “Pangaea” (from the Greek pan = entire + gaia = earth) to spread out across the globe becoming seven distinct continents.

Within the cycle of seasons we call the church year, Advent is here once more, and with Advent comes the invitation to expectant waiting as we look forward to the fulfillment of God’s plan to unite heaven and earth under the gentle rule of our Savior Jesus Christ.  The first generation of Christians expected the fruition of God’s plan in their life times.  The delay of Christ’s much anticipated return was the subject of deep conversation among the congregations Paul founded and corresponded with, and by the time the gospels were written one can see how this “delay” challenged the faith of some.  Two thousand years later, we still await the fullness of God’s promised redemption.  How we wish that God would abandon this infernally slow timeline and adopt ours instead!

Enter Pierre Teihard De Chardin (1881-1955), a Jesuit theologian, philosopher, geologist and paleontologist, who combined his knowledge of the earth’s origins, and his studies of early humans with his faith in a divine Creator to produce some of the most imaginative and forward thinking theology of the 20^th century.  De Chardin once wrote:

If Chardin is right, (and the evidence seems to point in that direction!) God is not the least in a hurry.  John Haught, professor of theology at Georgetown University, illustrated this point powerfully in a presentation I attended earlier this year.  Imagine that each one of the Universe’s 13.7 billion years was contained in 30 volumes, and that each volume had 450 pages; and that each of those pages represented 1 million years.

Using this analogy, the Big Bang constitutes the first letter of the first word on the first page of Volume 1.  But it isn’t until Volume 21 that the earth itself is completely formed, and in Volume 22 that the first forms of life emerge.  In Volume 29 we find the so-called Cambrian explosion of new species and complex animals.  Dinosaurs don’t make their entrance until Volume 30, the final book, and become extinct on page 385.  Most startling of all, modern humans like you and I only appear on the last paragraph or so of the last page of the last volume.

God is most decidedly patient with the unfolding of this vast universe. We have no idea how many volumes God plans, but the witness of Scripture is that the Universe is moving toward a goal, an end (telos), and that this end is, finally, seeded with hope.

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” This is Advent’s invitation. That’s what Mary did, and it in a burst of insight that can only be a gift of the Spirit, she caught a glimpse of the Divine trajectory of hope within the human story—within her story—and it rang out from her soul in a lyric of such crystal clarity that we’ve never forgotten it, or her.  [Luke 1:46-55, The Magnificat, see below.**]

In what is often the most frenetic season of the year, the words of De Chardin and the song of Mary are worth holding onto: A God of immense patience calling us into sympathetic patience with ourselves and with each other as the “spirit gradually forming within” us, and God’s hope for this world, are revealed.

O, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel!

Pastor Erik

**When a divine messenger approached Mary about God’s plan to bring Jesus into the world through her, she also learned of her cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Luke records what happened next:

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” And Mary said,

Servants of God,

• Becoming core supporters and hosts of Family Promise ministry.
• Hosting neighborhood events that affirm our stance as a congregation that engages the community around us.
• Revitalizing our ministry to young people and families under the leadership of Nicole Klinemeier.
• Becoming an Reconciling in Christ congregation.
• Formulating policies to ensure Peace is a safe haven for children and vulnerable adults.
• Updating and expanding our presence on the World Wide Web, our 21^st century “welcome mat.”
• Incorporating new talents and resources, both musical and visual, into our worship life.
• Becoming more intentional about how we greet, welcome, and follow-up with guests.
• Growing in number and in generational diversity.

When Abraham and Sarah set out toward a new and unknown destination, their faith in God’s promises undergirded them along the way.  Not that they didn’t question what God was up to from time to time—they did!  (They even tried to substitute their own solutions, which proved , at times, disastrous.)  But through it all, God’s promises held fast, and God’s faithfulness proved a rock solid foundation.

We, too, are on a journey together.  But I like to imagine our journey in a little different way.  Instead of a physical pilgrimage, ours is a journey toward fully inhabiting the vision God has called us to make our own. We are, it seems to me, not unlike homesteaders who have staked their claim on a new dwelling place and, bit by bit, acre by acre, board by board, have labored to make the new habitation their home.  Not every acre is cleared; not every structure is up; not every room in the main house is fully furnished; not every space is fully realized.  But the vision is crystallizing and the new habitat is gradually becoming our own. Fully inhabiting this vision is a process that takes time and prioritizing and experimenting and ongoing investment.  And at key junctures it requires a purposeful and focused gathering of all our forces to reach a new level of habitation.

As the church council begins developing a mission budget for 2010 it is clear that we are approaching such a juncture. Our vision is robust—and our financial support and ongoing investment in that vision must continue to be equally robust in order for us to fully inhabit the vision.  I anticipate that the proposals we will see in coming months will challenge and stretch us, requiring bold and faithful—even sacrificial giving—in a manner that may be new territory for some.  There will be plenty of opportunity for conversation, and I hope you will plan now to participate.

While this challenge may feel daunting, it need not frighten us.  After all, we worship a God who risked it all by emptying himself, fully inhabiting human flesh, and who gave himself completely for the sake of the world he so loved.  When we keep our eyes focused on what God in Christ has first given us, then it becomes clear that this challenge is part and parcel of the call we have received to fully inhabit the vision God has given us: to be a community grounded in God’s grace, and called to venture beyond ourselves, so all people will experience God’s love.

Living in God’s hope, I am your servant in Christ,

Pastor Erik

British composer Ralph Vaughn Williams’ setting of Psalm 90 is forever seared in my memory.  I cannot pray this psalm without singing the music, which I first learned at Pacific Lutheran University as a member of Choir of the West.

The psalm is a community’s heartfelt plea for God’s compassion in the face of tribulations which threaten to drawn down the curtain of despair; a lament in which the human soul plaintively yearns for God’s merciful accompaniment.  Vaughn Williams captures the essence of the psalm’s longsuffering reflection on life’s brevity from the vantage point of one who has experienced the full complexity of human community.  How fitting that the subtitle of the psalm is “A prayer of Moses, the man of God,” for Moses spent the better part of his years shepherding a reluctant and complaining people through the wilderness and toward a future land of promise which he would never experience.

During my continuing education sojourn up at Holden Village last month, one of the presenters was Fred Niedner, professor of Biblical Studies at Valparaiso University.  I’m always happy to see Fred’s name on the docket for such conferences because he’s a scholar who excavates the Word deeply, uncovering hidden veins of riches which never fail to enrich my understanding of scripture and undergird my faith.

At the conference Fred reminded us that WILDERNESS is the longest story in scripture.  Wilderness is an in-between place, a place of transition. Teasing back the layers behind Israel’s constant “murmuring” at God and at Moses, Fred taught us that the Hebrew word for wilderness, mid-bar, comes from the Hebrew word for “word” (da-bar).  To get to wilderness you begin with “da-bar” and add to it a preposition that means “away from,” “apart from,” or “without.”  What you end up with, then, is a word for “wilderness” that translates, “the place where words don’t work anymore,” “the place where meaning eludes us,” “the place in which we don’t have the words for what we’re experiencing.” So wilderness, then, is to be understood as a place beyond or without words.

All of us have stood in that wilderness place in our lives, that place which no words can accurately describe; that place where our experience of loss or rejection or betrayal or abandonment leaves us “without words.” In those times it may seem to us, as it did to the psalmist, that we are bearing the weight of God’s wrath; or we may find ourselves desperately casting about looking for someone besides our selves to blame; or we may feel so numb that all the possible explanations or reasons for our experience fall hollow on our ears.

No one gets out of the wilderness without dying.  That’s the hard lesson God’s people keep on having to learn over and over again.  The life of faith is a long pilgrimage in which we continually let go, more and more, ceding control of our selves, our agendas, our possessions—all we have so carefully gathered and sought to preserve—into the hands of God, and are left standing in the buff with only a bare-naked trust to hold on to.

The leaves of autumn are instructive for us in this regard, for this is the time of year when they give what they have back to the tree, and then let go.

The gesture of thanksgiving you see me make each week during the Great Thanksgiving in the Eucharistic liturgy, is a gesture built upon the idea of lifting up what I have—what we have together—to the heavens.  The subtext of that simple refrain—LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS – WE LIFT THEM TO THE LORD—is that what we have been given we cannot hold forever.  We must give it up.  We must heave it toward heaven.  Our liturgy teaches us how to do this, week after week.  It is a rehearsal for the times when we have no words.  And when that time comes, as it has and it will, we are met by the Word made flesh, who offers his life for our sustenance, and shows us, like the leaves, what it means to give up his life on a tree.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Erik

Beloved of God,

Can it be September already?  The fringe of color I saw yesterday on a young maple, the back to school shopping ads, and preseason football games all say YES.  I write as our family prepares for a “last hurrah” camping trip to mark the summer’s end.  Next week we will enroll Kai in Kindergarten, marking the occasion with a mixture of excitement, pride, and no doubt tears.  (Not his, but ours!)  Even while we have been preparing ourselves—and him—for this eventuality all along the way, the first day of kindergarten, like other markers in the rhythm of life, still surprises us.   Remember, we remind ourselves, he belongs to the LORD, in baptism he has been planted by streams of living water!  He is held in gracious, strong, trustworthy hands! So kindergarten marks a threshold not only for our son but for us as parents as well.

There are other markers that accompany September’s arrival within our life as a congregation.  The shift to 10:30 worship, the return of the choir, the beginning of our fall Christian Education programs, the walks, fundraisers, and other special events that all say: It’s time to get down to business!

Because of your generosity in response to the Summer Appeal, we are in a much better financial situation as Fall begins.  That enables us to move into autumn with a sense of confidence in our mission rather than foreboding.  And that makes all the difference in the world.

When we gather for worship and become reconnected after summer travels and vacations away, we are reminded that our roots in Christ have been planted and nourished by living water, and that Christ is cultivating fruit in us—fruit that we will sustain our community, our neighbors, those in need, and the world.  While the leaves on the trees that surround our neighborhoods will turn in color, darken, and eventually fall, the leaves on the trees of faith do not wither.  Let us see together what harvest God has in store!

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Erik

Summer is once again upon us and as we reach the midpoint of this year the warm, sunny weather we normally expect after July 4^th has already caused backyard gardens to flourish and sent seasonal crops into “bumper” territory.  Green and growing things are responding prodigiously to the conditions provided and the verdant result is a sight to behold!

Would that we engage our mission with such unrestrained exuberance!

The water heater that ruptured in the sacristy last month, causing a temporary lake to form in Peace’s fellowship hall, has been dried out, and the repair phase will soon begin.  As a result of the flooding several sections of the asbestos layered floor tiles need replacing, and we’re engaging a crew of seasoned professionals to engage that task.  Once the floors are done, there will be fresh paint for the walls, new carpets to install, and a new ceiling slated for the fireside room.

With what kind of attitude will we approach this incident?  We could bemoan it as a major inconvenience, shake our heads, and focus on what a mess, what a waste, and what a job it is to clean up! ARGHH!

But another way to look at the situation is with a pragmatic eye, which is to say, we now have the opportunity to go through the entire basement anew with an eye toward evaluating how the spaces there can best be used for ministry and making decisions about what’s worth saving and what’s best let go of.

When I think about the timing of the “flood” I end up in a place of gratitude.  First, we’ve got insurance to cover most of the costs.  Second, it happened at a time of the year that interferes very little with our ministry commitments.  Third, an energetic, organized, and generous crew of people have been hard at work already, determined to make this harvest of lemons into lemonade!  Frankly, I’m not surprised.  This kind of open, care-full, and generous attitude is what I’ve come to expect from the people of Peace.

This congregation has cast a powerful vision and we have been investing ourselves and our best energies these past two+ years putting flesh and blood on that vision; making it real, making it “sing.”  The result is a set of core ministries that (in my view anyway) will match up with the best work being done in small parishes anywhere.

Still, as we stretch toward the considerable goals we’ve set for ourselves—including the mission budget we approved for the current year—we are finding ourselves once more in the throws of another divine challenge:  at the end of June we are close to $7,000 in the red.  The spending side of our budget us right on schedule, but the giving side, our income side, is a few percentage points behind.  The church council has decided, wisely, that the search for a solution belongs to all of us.  When we meet together as a congregation on July 12^th, we will take stock of our options and try to discern where the Spirit is calling us.  Together we embraced our mission budget in January, and together we need to decide how we will address the circumstances before us.

This summer is filled with ministry opportunities: reclamation of the downstairs; co-sponsoring the Community Meal; the jr. high bicycle trip to Lopez Island; the July 2^nd BLOCK PARTY for Tour de Revs; providing staffing for Family Promise; the national senior youth gathering in New Orleans; Vacation Bible School.

Add to these the small group opportunities and our weekly worship gatherings around Word and Sacrament and you get the picture that Peace’s ministry is hardly “on vacation” this summer.  God’s work continues in every season and you and I are part of that work.  The list of resources with which God has blessed us is long, and it includes keen minds and dedicated hearts, and it also includes financial resources for undergirding God’s mission here.  What might the “bottom line” look like if we were to bring our own habits of giving and sharing into conformity with the generosity of the one who, though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich?

Your partner in service,

Pastor Erik

Beloved of God,

Seeds are remarkable things. In recent weeks a variety of them have been sown in little containers on the south-facing window sill above our kitchen table.  As we gather for each meal we mark their progress, watching in wonder as the little green shoots poke their way up through the soil and begun taking on characteristics that reveal their inner selves.

Science can explain how it happens, of course; can map out the unique architecture of their DNA, predict the growth cycle, describe the soil medium that best encourages growth, graph the timeframe from seed to harvest.  Yet, it remains, in my mind, a miracle that something which will produce fruit prolific enough to feed and nurture our family comes in such a small, unpretentious package.

There are several important “seed” projects have been growing in our congregation, nurtured and tended by small groups of leaders.  This month, one of those is being brought out for all of us to see.  The Church Safety Committee has been hard at work developing a policy which will help ensure the personal safety and well being of vulnerable members of our community.  You all have received a letter regarding this, and are invited to participate in forums following worship on each of the four Sundays in June.  I urge you to come.  The issues raised by this topic touch each one of our lives.  I’m grateful for the work Janet Taylor, Nicole Klinemeier, Margot Massey, Marcia Olson, and Bob Wightman have done in preparing this conversation.

Another seed project is the ongoing development of our presence on the World Wide Web.

A core group has begun working with web designer Erik Steen on developing a Web presence that will enable our outreach and interface with the growing community of internet users.  Bob and Lindie Wightman began this journey on our behalf 5+ years ago, and it’s exciting to be embarking on a next generation process with the help of Steve Bernd, Joey DiJulio, Sonja Outlaw, Dustin Smith, and Dave Ward.  Look for new fruit toward the end of summer.

A third project I want to mention has its origins beyond our congregation, but within the larger church communion of which we are part.  It’s called Tour de Revs. In a nutshell, Tour de Revs is a seed sown by the Spirit that found fertile soil in the minds and hearts of three ELCA pastors, all friends, and has grown into an incredible odyssey:  From May 13 – August 20^th these three pastors are traveling 13,000 miles over 3 months on a costume built bamboo bike built for three (a “triplet” custom made by Craig Calfee: www.calfeedesign.com ), with a goal of raising 5 million for the ELCA Hunger program.  Their route takes them into each one of the 65 synods of the ELCA.  They will be in Seattle on July 2nd and Peace Lutheran will be serving as host for a public gathering that evening. We’re hoping to tap into Seattle’s cycling community with this event, as well as area churches and other interested folks.  More details will be forthcoming—but I encourage you to put this on your calendar.  For more background information on this amazing tour, go to: www.tourderevs.org.

The Spirit of God is afoot in the world, scattering Good News like seed into our lives, and who knows that will come of it? Sometimes we witness that seed being flung from God’s hand and finding fertile soil; and we do our best to tend the seed, support the conditions that will enable its growth.  But, as Jesus’ parable suggests, at times we simply marvel, dumbfounded, at  how the Spirit is working to bring about a harvest which will nourish the world.

Let’s keep our eyes open for seeds of the Spirit within and beyond our community this summer!

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Erik

Beloved of God,

During these 50 days of Easter we learn what it means to be Easter people.  It’s a time for equipping and preparing us to carry Christ’s message of reconciliation to the world in a form the world can recognize.  To incarnate it; enflesh it; live it. It is not a time for business as usual but for breaking down old paradigms, breaking open fallow soul, and imagining, as St. Paul once wrote, the “whole new world” that Christ’s resurrection summons.

So…how is that going for you? It seems to me it ought to be about as easy as falling off a log—what with all that resurrection inspiration, that Spirit-filled power at our disposal. But it ain’t.  In fact, to be honest, it’s anything BUT easy….SIMPLE, maybe, but not easy.

Speaking for myself, I have to say the old ways of doing things are so seductive and the justifications so ready at hand that it’s hard to give up any of it.  I’ve grown used to my old ways, old rhythms, and old habits. Why should I give them up?  Doesn’t God love me anyway?  Truth be told, I’m much more inclined to put a bridle on the Easter story and its explosive message and to try to make it conform to my well worn ways of being in the world—than of the other way around!

But that’s not the way God would have it.  The Spirit Christ sends as GIFT to us will not be domesticated by my truncated vision or limited by my lack of imagination.  This Spirit turns the old systems by which we live upside down and suddenly the up are down, the last are first, and the meek are set to inherit the earth, and Jesus and his trouble making go merrily on!

Sometimes, you need to get away in order to be able to see things more clearly.  Sometimes you need to let go entirely in order to gain clarity about what’s really important. That’s what our family will be doing the first week of May.  We’re heading out into the Pacific and will be joined by Chris’ parents Jay and Nancy.  It’s a special trip to mark their 50^th wedding anniversary. Please pray for us.  Pray that we will find refreshment, health, and joy.

Easter joy!

Pastor Erik