“The individual is the meeting place of the four elements,” writes John O’Donahue of the ancient Celtic perspective.  “We have come up out of the depths.” We have this privilege, and with it a sacred obligation to live with meaning.  The word obligation sounds burdensome but is rooted beautifully in the Early French ligament – that which binds us together.”

– Lyanda Lynn Haupt, ROOTED: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit

Beloved of God,

“June is busting out all over,” and on its heels come Pentecost Sunday (also Scholarship Sunday this year) and our annu­al marking of a Season of Creation.  This year’s theme is inspired by Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s 2021 book, ROOTED: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit.  Lyanda, an urban naturalist, neighbor, and friend of Peace, invites us on a journey of rediscovering a core truth which sacred scriptures, mystics, artists, and indigenous communities across the globe have proclaimed for millennia: that all life is radically interconnected.  Over this three week season we will affirm our vocation as Earth-tenders to re-engage with these three strands—science, nature and spirit—rekindling conversation and rediscovering practices that will more faithfully embody God’s dream of Shalom for this world God so loves.  As any member of the Adult Sunday Forum can tell you, ROOTED a great read, full of keen observations, insights into nature and spirit, and practices that can bind us more closely to the natural world.  Lyanda will be with us on June 12 to talk about her book and what moti­vated her to write it.  I hope you’ll be able to join us for what looks to be wondrous and meaningful encounter.

The notion of “binding” lies not only at the heart of the word “obligation,” as Lyanda points out in the quote above. It lies at the heart of the word “religion” as well – re-ligio: to re-bind.  Jesus says as much when using an image that comes straight from the vineyard: I am the vine – you are the branches.  The more rooted we are in Christ, the more solidly at­tached to the Vine, the better we are nourished and the more we become our true selves by becoming more like him—a process that produces wonderful fruit for us to share.  This abiding, connecting, and producing begins right at the Eucharis­tic table.  On Pentecost/Scholarship Sunday, June 2, and on June 26, we’ll gather at the Feasting Table to actualize that connection!

During the Season of Creation we look frankly and purposefully at our relationship with our planet home with the aim of reinvigorating our knowledge and our relationships with this Earth God so loves.  After all, Christ was not born of this Earth—did not become a creature among creatures—to teach us how to flee the world in order to find God, but to teach us how to live fully here and now, within the creation and within the community that the Creator intended for us from the beginning.  This Earth, this vineyard, is the domain in which we have been planted.  It is from this soil and from this Vine, that our lives unfurl.  As the alarming evidence of global warming tells us, falling short of our vocation as Earth-tenders has grave consequences.  In Week Two of Season of Creation Peace member and climate activist Deb Hagen-Lukens will share how we are called as people of faith to push for changes that protect all of creation and progress we’re making in how we heat and cool our homes, power our industry and move ourselves and our goods around the world.

On Saturday, June 25, as part of our Season of Creation, we are working with the Duwamish Alive Coalition to offer a tour of the West Seattle Bog (that’s BOG, not BLOG!)  You might recall Marian Christjaener’s arti­cle in the April edition of Peace Notes about the bog. The nearly 10,000-year-old Roxhill bog, which is part of the Roxhill Park natural area, adjacent to Daystar, serves as the headwaters of Longfellow Creek, and may be the only natural peat bog left of 26 that were once in the Seattle area.  Stay tuned for more info about a TOUR in the works for Saturday, June 25^th.      [continued on page two]

Later this month, after our son’s graduation from Chief Sealth High, and our daughter’s graduation from Pathfinder K-8, our five member Kindem/Hauger household will embark on a long anticipated journey to Scotland and Ireland.  The trip, twice delayed due to the pan­demic, is finally coming to fruition, and we couldn’t be more excited.  It includes a pilgrimage to the Isle of Iona for a one week sojourn with the Iona Community, as well as two weeks in Ireland.  On our first trip to Iona in 2014, we lived in commu­nity with people from around the world, sharing meals, worship, music, faith conversations, hikes, and playful moments, and along the way strangers became friends.  Our experience on Iona, a holy place of pilgrim­age for nearly 1,500 years, left its mark on us.  We look forward to what the Spirit will show us this time.

Filling in while I’m gone will be several new voices.  Rev. Mel Jacob, retired ELCA pastor newly at Peace with his wife Mary, will lead worship twice in my stead, and Pastors Pam Russell and Chris Ode will also serve as guest pastors.  Upon our return at the end of July we look forward to swapping tales with you.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

– Jeremiah 29:11

Beloved of God,

The instant Itzhak Perlman rolled onto the stage at Benaroya Hall April 20th, applause erupted from the packed house.  The adulation was palpable.  And for the next 90 minutes, Mr. Perlman traced his life journey through music and story, sharing with us how a kid born to a working-class family in Tel Aviv in 1945 came to be a preeminent violin virtuoso.

Perhaps you know some of his story.  Itzhak’s love affair with the violin began at the tender age three when he first heard a violin played on the radio.  In response to his enthusiasm, his parents acquired a miniature-sized instrument for him to play, but when confronted with the squeaks and squawks it made, he lost interest.  The following year, he was stricken by polio, which affected his legs, but not—like so many others—his lungs.  God endowed young Itzhak both with a rare musical talent and a buoyant and resilient spirit, and at the age of five he returned to the violin.  Perlman’s humor was on full display when he mimicked himself at a young age, being goaded by his mother to keep up his practice and—like students everywhere—finding clever ways to work around the mandate!

His first teacher Rivka Goldgart, helped establish a firm foundation so that, at age 10, he was ready to audition for legendary violinist Isaac Stern.  Mr. Stern encouraged him to keep up his studies, despite advice from others who thought it would be impossible for  Itzhak to have a performing career because of his disability.  Not much later, American TV host Ed Sullivan discovered Perlman during a talent-scouting mission to Israel and Perlman was invited to make his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York.  That opportunity opened up a new world for Perlman.  By the time he was 19, he had appeared on the Sullivan show five more times.  Following Isaac Stern’s advice, the family moved to America so Itzhak could continue his studies.  He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1963, (a milestone that left him quite chagrinned afterward when a newspaper strike prevented him from reading a review of his performance in the NY Times), and, after studying at the Juilliard School, won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1964.

Yet, despite all this, there was a thread of doubt that ran through Perlman’s presentation that April evening; not his doubt about his potential but rather the doubt he sometimes perceived in others—particularly music critics—whose early reviews of his performances raised questions: Was it his musicality and technical capabilities that caught their attention? Or was it a mixture of his gifts and their surprise that this young, disabled kid, forced to use crutches to maneuver on stage, could play at all?  Perlman raised this issue about others’ doubts in him several times throughout the program before finally putting it to bed.  Over time, he acknowledged that, as music critics and reviewers came to know him, they focused less and less on his mobility limitations and more on his artistic brilliance.  Thank God.

This thread he spun that evening resonated deeply for me in a personal way.[1] When my father, Rev. Roald A. Kindem, headed up the Office of Communication and Mission Support for the American Lutheran Church in the early 1980’s, Disability Awareness was a growing area of concern for the church and for society at large.   A decade before Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, Dad conceived of a plan to raise awareness among Lutheran congregations by producing a major film on the subject.  To fund the film, he proposed a special benefit concert featuring opera singer Irene Gubrud, who was made a paraplegic in a carnival ride accident at age 15, and—you guessed it—Itzhak Perlman. (Dad always thought big!)  A St. Olaf College graduate, Gubrud had gone on to study voice at The Julliard School in New York City, where Perlman himself had been a student a decade before.[2]  The benefit concert was wildly successful, and provided the funds needed to produce the film: There’s More to Me than What You See, which featured Gubrud, along with Sharon Sayles Belton, later Mayor of Minneapolis, who had a profoundly disabled daughter, and Jeremiah McShane, an Olympic wrestling hopeful, who was made a quadriplegic in a sky-diving accident. Perlman’s play heightened the connection with my father’s work in a profound way.

For his final selection for us that night, Perlman played the tune for which he has become best known throughout the world: the theme from Schindler’s List.[3]  It took but a few bars for that soulful melody to draw my tears.  Perlman’s ability to embody a story with his violin—in this case the story of human frailty, cruelty, longing, suffering, beauty, and loss—is what, for me, sets him apart.  Yet, the evening didn’t end there.  For his encore Perlman turned to the stage a last time to perform a buoyant, dancing classic.  After taking us to the edge of man’s inhumanity, Perlman seemed intent on leaving us with hope.

God is in the hope business!  The sign that hope is possible was given irrevocably on the first Easter when God raised Jesus from the dead.  Throughout this Easter season we are called to LEAN INTO THAT HOPE even—perhaps especially—when our lives and the life of the world around us seem to be crumbling and the prospect for hope foreclosing.  There is more going on in this world than we can see!  The risen One is still afoot, calling us through the Spirit, to faith, hope, and love.  At Benaroya Hall April 20th, we who were fortunate enough to be present, experienced hope realized in the person and music of Itzhak Perlman.  This month, let’s keep our eyes and ears tuned for signs of hope!  And when we find them, share them.

With you, on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] I’m writing this column on the 1^st anniversary of my father’s death, April 28, 2021.

[2] A recording of Irene singing the Lord’s Prayer can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emq15rFFmps&t=23s

[3] You can find a recording of Perlman and the Los Angeles Philharmonic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLgJQ8Zj3AA April 28^th is also Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.