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The five miles down the trail off Pleasant Mountain kick my butt. Every descent leads to another rise.  Five miles go on and on. I am low on energy and water, high on exhaustion after a long day of hiking from the pond to the mountaintop and back down again.  

Its been like a perfect Day 2 of a meditation retreat, this second day of foggy doldrums and mountaintop  joy, a long, slow afternoon of exhaustion. Not yet in the swing of breath and trail. Still working too hard.

On the way down, I meet a Southbound (SOBO) sixty-something who has come from Katahdin to head back to where she’d stopped her northbound trek in New Hampshire. She says she’d heard that the 100 Mile Wilderness was difficult but that wasn’t her experience; it was beautiful. I nod and smile. I do not say that it was my experience that the 100 Mile Wilderness was definitely difficult like this afternoon is difficult. And beauty? It’s here but I can’t quite see it yet. Definitely Day 2 of my walk in the woods.  

At long last a roaring stream below, where I filter and drink. I feel better. As I step across, I think I must be close to the shelter by now and realize the other side of the stream is the place I’ve been looking for all afternoon. The shelter just beyond, and here, beautiful campsites. 

As I’m finishing setting up my tent, several NOBO’s (Northbounders) filter water at the stream, all headed to Katahdin before it closes on October 16. Some 136 miles to go in 11 days. In June on our 100 Mile Wilderness Trek we’d met some of the first hikers of the season to finish, the second woman finisher, the 12^th man. Today, I’ve been meeting some of the last, heading to Katahdin before the snow including Mango and Popeye, two young solo hikers, who set up camp across the trail.

As I’m talking with Mango, I’m thinking about Pat. I remember how on the first night out of of our 100 Mile Wilderness Adventure last June, she’d got talking to another young hiker finishing the trail and shared some food with him. She reminded us how after these months on the trail, these hikers just can’t get enough calories in them.  

I don’t want to be stingy. I want to share. I think how good it would be to share. Just yesterday I knew I was setting out with more food than I needed. Tonight I think about what a great story it would be to provide a little “Trail Magic”, some unexpected gift and support to someone along the trail.

“Here,” I say, reaching in my bulging food sack, I have an extra dinner. Would you like one?”

“Wow!  That sounds great!”, he beams, “It was going to be dehydrated potatoes again tonight.”

“And here,” I say as I scrounge deeper, “How about one of these bars and one of these?”  

“Oh this is great!” he says, “I only have enough for another day and this will help me if I can’t get to Monson by then.”

This feels good. I like providing Trail Magic.  

I walk over to where Popeye is setting up his tent and offer him a choice of dinner as well. Put on water to boil for their dinners and they soon join me on the log to tell me about their months of travel since March.

“What do you think about on the trail?” I ask.  

Mango thinks of of the woman who left him after 8 years. Popeye on what his future might be on the other side of completing the trail.  

At best, they both say, they try to think about where to put their foot next. 

And yes, on the trail there is too much time to think. 

Both say if they could do it again they would go slower. All this beauty that they walk by each day that they just take for granted.  

They are sweet young men and could well be my sons. I wonder if that’s why I’m so generous with them. But no, it’s not from some old need to take care of them, they certainly don’t need that, but from some present desire to invest in them, to be part of supporting this great effort they are undertaking to the finish.  

Late that night, I wake in a panic.

What was I thinking? Why did I ever give away my power bars?

All I could remember was how I felt my energy drain from me in those last miles in the 100 Mile Wilderness without enough food and water.  

I lie there counting how many days I have left and how many bars I think I still have. Toss and turn thinking about what a fool I am. Vow to tell Mango I made a mistake and that I need one of the bars back, but he’s gone by the time I awake – off to see the sunrise on the top of Moxie Bald Mountain. 

I think if yesterday’s words were “Up and Out”, today’s necessary word is “Grace.” A grace I’m sometimes not so good receiving myself. Today I need to make room for some surprising grace.

Fingers so numb I can’t tear open the coffee, granola packets. Try biting them open to no avail. My pocket knife does the trick.  

Morning coffee and granola and the surprise of tears as I wash my face in the stream.  

The boys gave themselves grace. Popeye canoed some 80 miles through Virginia instead of hiking. Sometimes both of them sent their heavy packs ahead and slack-packed along the trail. Popeye spent five days enjoying New York City. They listen to music, watch movies at night. 

The stream rumbles. Yellow and brown leaves on dark earth that leave no scent.  

I want to have enough, even with less. I’ll make it be enough. Show me some surprising grace.

In the days to come, find it. On a mountaintop, nights from now, after a day of intentional fasting will wonder how I could ever have worried about not enough, that I have more than I will ever need. 

Indeed, will finish my hike with a ziplock bag of remnants to spare, a Protein Gu and some Energy Chews and even one last Bobo Bar.

Mornings from now when I’ve finished my hike, I’ll meet Guy and his wife doing laundry. Learn how he’s walking the trail to raise money for the Maine Chapter of the Brain Injury Association of America. Then and there make a donation to support him to the finish. 

Downstairs at the Landmark Diner, there’s a worn young guy with a dog in front of me waiting for a table. We both get a seat at the bar. He’s fixated on his phone, doesn’t seem anxious for conversation.

But when he puts down his phone, I venture a question, “Are you a thru-hiker?”  

“Yes,” he says, but sounds more like he once was one.  He’d been sick for the last several days, and came down off the range on the trail ahead and back to Monson to get checked out at the health clinic.  

“My old self would have stayed out on the trail and pushed through,” he said. “I only had 70 more miles to Katahdin. But I’m trying to learn to be responsible. I have a three month old son.” Hands me his phone with the picture of his smiling young baby.  

“Everyone tells me I made the right choice, but sitting here I’m not so sure. I think I should have just stayed out there and finished.”

He knows he has the physical ability to do this, it’s the mental energy he needs to make it through. I don’t say anything, because I figure he knows that energy won’t be found in one more beer and shot of whiskey.  

When our checks come, I take his, and buy his dinner as my investment in him, my encouragement. 

“Just text me when you finish,”I say.

Its not that I’m such a good person. It’s just that when I’m generous, generosity finds me. I’d finished the trail unsure if I’d have enough and had more than I needed. I have an abundance and can’t help but share. 

And yes, grace myself with the most wondrous squash ravioli and salad and bread and a brownie sundae and Bissell beer that is delicious and does not go to my head.  

Later a call to Leanne who is finding an opportunity in a time of hurt. Larry who failed his oral report and found such success because of it. Nan who had a margarita with a friend and cake with her son and the next day ran her best half marathon time ever. Surprising grace all around. 

The next day, at church in Greenville, the story of the rich young ruler who was told to give away all he had to the poor and because he couldn’t walked away sad. I don’t remember a thing about the sermon except her closing words, to open our hands and receive. 

I returned last week from a week of hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Here’s a story of what happened on the way. Day 1.

I wake in the dark, an unfamiliar bed, the scent of pine.  Where am I?   Turn on my headlamp to illumine the small wood cabin, a car door closing.  Pull on my pants and fleece, greet Tabitha who is sorry to have woken me and is off early to go get a mountain and leaving me here to wonder on the brilliance of stars.

I’m off today to begin my own interim adventure, stepping into my own anxiety and uncertainty, my first time hiking alone and camping alone in the woods. I’m far from an experienced backpacker but think I have enough to get me through the next week.  

What I don’t have is enough room in my pack for a bulging bear-bag packed with food and dry bag stuffed with warm clothes. I know I brought too much but not knowing what to leave behind, I push down harder, squashing the peanut butter sandwiches I brought for lunch today and fearing I’ve turned my apples to applesauce.  

Chattering with Phil on the hour long drive from Monson to Caratunk, a drive I hope will never end. 

But then, here we are, and the start of my journey.  As he pulls away off from the trailhead, an ache of aloneness.  A twinge of doubt, Why did I think this was a good idea?  Do I actually want to be doing this?  Comfort myself with the thought that in a few days it will soon be over. 

Head back to the shore of the Kennebec to start my journey.  Here by the river bank, on a rock warm with sunlight, watching the canoe turn away around the bend in the river, a prayer, to get out of my own way so the Spirit can lead the way.  

My former colleague Tom reminded me yesterday that I am going in the right direction. I want to trust that, to believe it’s true.  

I so wanted the position in Portland to work out. So wanted to get to hold on to Maine, to have the certainty of something on the other side of this time. A forwarding address and a new place I could imagine calling home. Instead, didn’t get the job and I’m left without job, identity and role. In other words, the “gift” of having a real interim time of unknowing and a commitment to use it to connect with Spirit. 

I rise from the river bank, ascend the trail, cross the road back to the trailhead where he’d dropped me off an hour ago, descend into a forest of green.  Trust the path, God is with you, he said. Just be yourself. You can’t go wrong. 

Hours later down the trail, I set up camp down the path from the Pleasant Pond lean-to on the way to the shore. As dusk descends, a hiker comes by and asks about sites further down. “This is it,” I tell him, “but there’s space over there and you’re welcome to it,” hoping he might stay.  But no, he’ll head down further and see what he finds. I take my dinner down the trail to sit by the water’s edge, watch the sky turn to stars.

I wake in darkness the next morning after a fitful sleep. Rustling leaves, a clear step by my tent in the night that scurried away as I banged the ground. I think it happened, not sure if it wasn’t a dream.  

The demons hadn’t only been chasing me all night as I lay awake listening for bears in the woods.  They’d been with me all yesterday afternoon on the trail. As much as I’d vowed to be present, to let go to the lilt of the trail, take in the shock of color and beauty of the north woods, all I could hear were the old tapes and tired voices of my past. Familiar twinges of regret of things not working as I’d always hoped they would, a past I couldn’t return to and couldn’t yet leave. Chasing memories that turned to fantasy, an imagined life that never truly was, the sadness of leaving the gift of what had actually been. Found my only “presence” in tripping again over my endless attempts to change what I could not, to fix what was beyond me.  

I’d hardly ever looked back at an old sermon text and whenever I had knew I could never preach that old  sermon again. What was there was for another time, a voice no longer my own, an old word that did not speak to this present one. Until last month, I’d hauled around with me for decades boxes of journal scratches I’d made tracking the swing of my daily moods and uncertainties. I’d hardly ever looked back at them because not only could I hardly read them, but there was nothing living there, only an endless re-hashing out of what was to find my way to a ground that had been then and was not this.  

And yet, stepping out into the woods, those old words, tired regrets, unfixable issues were all I could hear. A much more experienced hiker than I had noted that the things people say are hard about hiking is not what is really hard. It’s this – these old memories, unsolvable puzzles that gnaw at you and will not let you go. No wonder I found hiking so exhausting, the futility of working up a perilous mountain peak of interior noise while trying to scale a real one.  

Somehow, survived the demons of the night and yesterday on the trail to find myself here, the next morning, atop Mount Pleasant, lying on a warm ledge in the bright sun, my tent, tarp and ground cloth, drying out from the morning dew, flapping gently on the rocks beside me held down by hiking poles. A second breakfast of a handful of peanuts and raisins, a not too bruised apple and cell service. Delighted in texting family and friends, views from the mountaintop.  Telling them about surviving my first night on the trail, my slow hike beginning, vowing again to savor everything.  

Up here, looking out at green mountain islands floating in a white sea of fog.  Early that morning I’d had my morning coffee down there, wondering on the bright skies far overhead. It felt down there on the foggy shore like my life felt – like I couldn’t see a thing before me with clarity, and yet, up above a sky so blue and clear.  

And now, here I am, having found my way up into that blue, looking up and out.

He’d watched me like no one had ever watched me professionally before. Filmed and Watched as I struggled to connect with a congregation I’d barely met who had disappeared behind the crack at the top of the sanctuary door where they sat at home watching the morning service. Saw when I got lost in my head, witnessed when I was just present. Helped me get out of the way so the Spirit could get in.  

Last week, he’d left me a little paper box with a note inside.  

You told me that you arrived with thirty-seven boxes.  Thirty-seven boxes of assorted memories and trinkets. Thirty-seven boxes that were weighing you down in one way or another. Thirty-seven boxes that you were attached to as well as things that were attached to you.

In retrospect, I can see them weighing you down.  As I look back on your time here I can also see you starting to stand up as you started to let go. I’ve watched your shoulders start to square, and have seen your head rise. I watched as you went from looking down and in, to up and out. I watched with a smile as you stood proudly looking up and out and proclaiming that you had finally been able to get rid of those boxes “with help.” Could you have done it any other way?  “Where two or three are gathered in my name, then there I am among them.” You can’t do it alone.

You are the man who has made it through.  You are the man who stands taller and straighter because you have been there before, the man that looks up and out because to look down and in blinds and incapacitates. You have a good heart that is open and ready for what the Spirit has to offer.  Wherever you go from here is where you are supposed to go. I feel that in my heart. Be well my friend,

                                                                                    Tom Dewey

I roll up the tent, tarp and groundcloth. Stuff it all into my over-stuffed pack. Take off up the trail, knowing my direction. Keep looking up, keep looking out.  

Just over a week ago, October 3, I stepped out from the home that had been into the discovery of what might yet be. Set out to do something I’d never done before – to take a week hiking and camping alone on the Appalachian Trail. Now, a week back from the trail, my story of what happened.

Monson is the place up the road. That place in the North Woods at the end of the road where the pavement turns to dirt.  That place where you’re headed after leaving what had been your home.  

The kind of place where people say, “Monson?…What’s that?… Where?… Why?…”  Only one “uh-huh” of recognition from a local who’d been there.

Monson was where I headed on that Sunday afternoon after the final service, after the cake.  The place I was headed like I told people I would, the place that gave an answer to their question, “What’s next?”  

I’m heading to Monson.

Monson, a crossroads, a supply town just off the trail. The place between this way or that.  

Early that morning, at last had stopped. Done with the final sorting and packing. Done with checking behind the door and under the bed to see what I might have left.  Done with all of it but to stop and sit for a cup of coffee and found the tears that had been eluding me for months. 

These tears as they came and come again now in remembering that I don’t understand. Not the wrenching tears of loss, not the quiet tears of grace, but the full and flowing tears of leaving a people and a place that you have loved because the time has come, your work complete, our time together at a close.  It’s not that its unexpected, you’ve been working towards this since you came.  But then its here and amidst all that was done and all left undone, is just this love, the love in these tears for this place and these people, the love I have shared and the love I so richly received and how it all and grown and changed me, dislocated me from who I was to what I might yet be, as these tears are doing now.  

The gift of grace, after that final service, after the final words of thank you, forgiveness and release.  After passing on the church keys that had been entrusted to me 20 months before, the snow shovel and ice scraper that you need to be a minister in Maine.  The gift of the grace of tears in the masked hugs and handshakes, all the words already spoken and all that is left, these tears of love.  

Tom slipped me a note as he said goodbye, “You are going in the right direction.  God is with you. You will not be led astray. Just be you.  You can’t go wrong.”

And so, I take that last trip up 27 North heading to Monson. A slice of cake by my side.

Stop along the way to take it all in. The abandoned old church, the little table of squash, the colors that cry out at the side of the road. It is all so beautiful.  

Text Phil that I’ll be arriving by 4.  Receive a text back, “Who is this from?  Not expecting anyone.  I’m sorry but I’m closed for the season.  You’ll need to find someplace else.”

I’m surprised and rather awed that I do not panic.  Don’t beat up on myself for not confirming the reservation I thought I’d made, not mad at him. Curious instead as these past months have taught me to be instead, wondering where I can camp for the night and find a bite to eat. Learned these past 20 months that things not going according to plan is the way of things these days. 

Then, on my way to another plan, another text,   “Go ahead and make yourself at home. You’re all set with me.  No worries.  See you in the morning.”  

So tonight, here, these stars, so bright!  Home found where I didn’t think I’d have one.  

Phil will drive me to Caratunk tomorrow and I’ll spend the week following the trail back to Monson, that place where you’re headed after the life you had ended. That place that finds you, the home you never expected to find, at the end of the road.

I’ve been saying “beyond words” a lot of late as I’ve found myself unable to fully articulate the privilege, honor and grace it has been to minister with the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor these last 20 months. As I said in my sermon on Sunday, this time changed and opened me, released and called me. I am grateful that we gave ourselves the gift of time for a good goodbye, taking time for conversations to reflect on what we have learned and wonder on as this season ends.

I am looking forward to my own interim time to take it all in as I give myself the gift of time to walk and write, write and walk through the next few months. My time here instilled and deepened in me a call and passion to be with communities in “interim times” and I look forward to another opportunity to learn and minister with another community at some point in the future. But for now, this interim time to reflect on all I have learned and how it has changed me.

20 months ago the children folded 100 boats that they passed out to the congregation as we began our interim journey together. We heard a story of a small band of disciples who went with Jesus across a stormy and tumultuous sea to the other side of the sea. Along the way, they discovered Jesus in the boat.  (Mark 4:35-41). 

In a time that invited me to put down all my well-made plans and treasured assumptions, I had to instead lean in and together with the congregation and church leaders find our way through this stormy time. And while none of the work is ever fully “complete”, this time at its best Opened us to the New that is God – Opened us to the discovery of one another, and Jesus here in, between, beside us all.  

Every Sunday this year I have ended our time of worship together with the same benediction, imprinted on one of these little boats as a blessing for the congregation’s future adventuring with Todd in this season of new beginnings.

The poet Amanda Gorman reminds us,

When day comes, we step out of the shade,

Aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it,

For there is always light,

If only we’re brave enough to see it,

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

(Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”)

May God grant you the grace never to sell yourself short,

Grace to risk something big for the sake of something good,

Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth,

And too small for anything but Love.

(William Sloane Coffin, Jr.)

May the Love of God

Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit 

Burn brightly within you and go ever before you

From this time forth, and forever and ever more.

For Anne, Horst and Rue;l>

On the counter the remnants

The last quarter of wine 

Crusts of bread

A few onions and the tomato 

you never got around to eating

All that is left of the summer

As the housemates headed west this morning 

And tonight a last supper with the neighbors who remain.

The summer residents I never expected to see last year

Who appeared in spring in the shuttered houses 

That I skied around on moonlit nights in winter wondering 

The neighbors with exuberant waves

Who appeared in spring at your door looking for sugar or an egg

Who entice you to go swimming 

The one time you did, even though you didn’t want to

These neighbors of yours with whom you sit on the porch

To talk about wolves

Who water your garden because you never do

These neighbors who were around in a summer of COVID 

When no one else was 

The usual family and visitors not coming this way

Who are sitting down to dinner in 15 minutes 

Wondering if you are free 

For fish chowder and salad

A glass of wine and conversation

“Nothing special”

When everything about it is 

Afternoon conversations over philosophy and beer 

That is so delicious you cannot wait until next summer 

For it to continue and so you don’t

Neighbors who go to bed as early as you

Who you watch to see their house grow dark, 

Just after sunset

The glow of their bedroom light

The comfort of knowing we are all safely in bed

Neighbors for whom you check in on the house while they are away 

And report that no tree has yet fallen through the roof

Are those for whom you cut up the tree that fell in the yard

Stacking it with care

Anticipating their return

On a blustery day in late January 2020, I drove into a town I’d never heard of, in a state I knew little about, on a coast I’d not lived by for 40 years. 

For the past twenty months I’ve had the privilege of anchoring here in Boothbay Harbor to serve as the Interim Pastor at the Congregational Church. I moved here from Seattle where I’d spent nearly half my life and yes, most everything here a shock and surprise from front doors that never opened to snow storms that would have shut down the city for a week that locals here didn’t even notice. I’d never lived in a small town before where people I’d never met called me by name and news of the new pastor in town would warrant an article in the local paper.  

And then, five weeks after I arrived, COVID found its way to Maine, and all of us were thrown off from the patterns and assumptions that had been our lives. All of us tossed into a communal interim of anxiety as we wondered on what had become of our lives and if we would ever get them back.  

As perhaps its been with you, these past 20 months for me have been both a challenge and an opportunity.

With all my familiar “plans” shut down and with nowhere to go, I stayed put on the peninsula. I ran the roads and land trust trails, skied miles on moonlit nights around the empty cottages surrounding my home. Ate lots of take-out haddock dinners.  

As the congregation disappeared from the pews for 14 months, I became the “TV Preacher” I never aspired to be. As I channelled Mr. Rogers, I learned to talk passionately each Sunday morning across an empty sanctuary into the crack at the top of the sanctuary door beyond which the congregation I had barely met sat sipping coffee and making breakfast. I still meet people who have never seen me outside of their TV or computer screen.

It’s not all been easy. 

The first weekend I arrived, I attended the memorial for fisherman Chris Pinkham. The Opera House packed that snowy Sunday afternoon with young friends and family. I witnessed your community showing up for each other again and again after housefires and accidents, the death of others who died far too young including beloved UPS driver Jeremy Smit and childcare provider extraordinaire, Kim Crocker.  Knelt with you on the Common after George Floyd’s murder, vowed with you to work to leave a country better than the one we had been left. 

At church, the deaths of Jim, John, Dee, Priscilla, Barbara and Roger. So many losses, so much grief, so many who died without the familiar gatherings and rituals we would have had in more ordinary times.  

School just open and so quickly so many kids in quarantine. More stress for already stress-filled families, teachers, staff. Church school closed before it could begin. 

So fall comes again to Boothbay Harbor, and with the turn of seasons, questions, as the boats are pulled in and preparations made for the water to be turned off to the summer house. 

Is it time to sell the boat?

Will it be different next year?

Can we still keep up the place?  

Will we ever be done with COVID?

Fall comes and I too full of memory and wonder. Miss seeing Dan and Rob lifeguarding at the pool, Sonja at the front desk, Charlene at the West Boothbay Post Office, as I am missing already my Saturday morning bantering with Larry in the locker room and with Harolyn at the library as she passes my books through the window. Already miss stopping along the road on the way home to chat with neighbors Mary and Wendy out for their morning walk. Miss sharing haddock chowder dinners with Rue during a summer none of the usual family or visitors came, the late afternoon draft of beer and philosophy with Horst on the porch. Ordinary, everyday, little things that this season have felt extraordinary.  

The past months, I’ve had the privilege of being invited to offer blessings for the Fishing Fleet and Burnt Island Light, for Christmas Boats and Veterans at the Memorial Day Parade.  But more than any blessings I have left, are all that I have received.  Here at the edge of the sea, on the tip of a peninsula so far from all I’d called home, you emptied me out of all my tired assumptions and worn-out stories. Opened me to the wonder of a new shore that wasn’t just to the East as I’d expected it to be but wound its way every which way – North, South, West as well. 

Like the summer visitors and seasonal workers, like the osprey and hummingbird, it is time for me to say goodbye. On Sunday afternoon, October 3, after the congregation welcomes its new settled pastor, Todd Weir, I’ll drive down Route 27 one last time, this interim work and time, complete. The satisfaction of having done good work, together.  

Head up North, East and South for a season to take in all this time with you has taught me. And yes, in time, harbor once more with another community in an interim time. Set sail with them in the wonder of how to get from where we once were to the possibility of all we might yet be.  

But before I go, turn back one more time with a heart-full of thanks,

To Arlene and Logan for their early morning greetings at the front desk at the Y,

To Andy and Meagan and our 5:30 gym class – Steve, Jen, Jamie, Bill, Matthew, Denise…

Goodbye to Jen, Rick and Hannah who outran me all over town.  

To Harolyn and a library staff who helped me find so many books.  

Blessings to an amazing congregation that learned with me to adapt, grow and surprise ourselves in a time of such challenge and change.  

Goodbye wonderful neigbors,

Goodbye to the insistent whistling osprey,

The hum of the Southport Bridge, 

The clang of the gate at the Coast Guard.

Goodbye to the moan of the Burnt Island fog horn,

The roaring wind and wave that shake the house in winter. 

Goodbye faithful woodstove and splitting axe,

The orange and pink sunset over the Sheepscot, 

The smiling fox who wanders the yard and scares the chipmunks away.  

The chestnuts pounding off the roof of the shed and knocking across the yard.  

Yes, Boothbay Harbor, as you fed the Pilgrims centuries ago,

these past twenty months, you fed this Pilgrim’s soul.

As part of saying goodbye these past months I’ve been asking you questions.  

“What have you learned these past 20 months?” I mean, what have you learned about yourself, the church, your community or family?  

And a second, “As we conclude this interim time together, what do you wonder about?”  What questions linger?

Words cannot express all I have learned about the gift of this time here with you these past 20 months. This time of dislocation moving 3000 miles across the country to a town I’d never heard of in a place I’d never lived changed me. Thrust here with you into a time of crisis and challenge none of us had ever experienced before, I stretched and grew, was challenged and became more deeply grounded in my faith, call, passion, sense of self, values and commitments.

Among the gifts beyond words that I’ve received from this time, I put words to these:  

The Gift of Learning in Real Time.  I came here as a penultimate planner and organizer and grateful that within 5 weeks all of my fine “plans” were tossed in the air.  I was gifted by not being able to return to the ways I’d done things before but had to imagine with you new ways to do just about everything.

The Gift of Being Real is Perfect Enough.  Having to jump in to act before planning and figuring things out meant that I’ve had to put down my perfectionism which tends to rise to the fore when I’m stressed. Instead, I’ve been reminded by AV Technician Tom Dewey each Sunday morning that worship is not about doing it “perfectly” but in fact our mistakes, vulnerability and authenticity “makes” live worship streaming work.  In all the learning and newness I’ve become more fully “myself”, at home with my foibles and quirks. I’ve learned that I need to aim for 80% “good enough” and push “send” or “do” instead of wasting too much energy and time fussing over the remaining 20% to make it all impossibly “perfect.”  

The Gift of Putting Down the Stories.  I came here with 37 boxes of my past I didn’t need to keep hauling around. This summer with the help of good friends I was able to let go of what needed to go and hold on to the treasures that matter now.  Besides my 37 boxes, I came here with my 1001 assumptions about you, your church and how to do things. I delight that to date 100% of my assumptions have been wrong. Putting down my assumptions has opened me to other gifts I didn’t recognize, the gifts of wonder and curiosity. 

 The Gift of Wonder. Serving as an interim pastor has been good for my soul.  As an interim, I’ve had to put down my propensity to “fix” things (and the belief that I really can “fix” anybody!)  Instead, I’ve learned to celebrate when things break down for the opportunity it brings for wondering with you what to do and what we can learn from the breakdown. 

The Gift of the Word. The scriptures came alive to me these past 20 months like no other time in my life.  I was reminded how the Bible was written in times like ours – a time of crisis for a people in crisis. I can’t imagine not having a weekly zoom Bible Study to play in what we are discovering in the scripture together.    

The Gift of Each Other. I came here with decades of experience working on leadership teams but it wasn’t until this time with you that I really got into my bones just how much we need each other. None of us has what it takes alone to find our way through the immense and unprecedented challenges we faced these 20 months and are facing today. And yet, together, we found our way.  

The Gift of Technology. Among my 1001 assumptions were a lot of opinions and assumptions about the role and impact of technology on the life of the church. This year, thrust into being a “TV preacher” I learned with Tom and Genie and you how worship can work and connect on-line. Grateful as well for the experience of learning with you about the gift of Zoom Bible studies and support groups to create a deep connection and conversation with a new wide-spread community that could never have gathered in person.

The Gift of Growth. I came here with an interest in conversations on race and leave with a commitment that the ongoing work of becoming an anti-racist is a deep part of my ongoing passion and call. As a white man, I can step away from conversation on race and never think twice.  This past year taught me stepping away from becoming an anti-racist is a luxury that I choose not to take.  

The Gift of Maine.  Alright, I can’t say I have thrown myself off too many docks into the cold Maine sea, but I do delight in all my explorations of the wonder of Maine. Hiking all the BRLT Trails on the peninsula, tobogganing down an icy rickety wooden shoot in Camden over an ice pond, running the Waldoboro Half Marathon (aka. “All Hills.  No Frills”), conquering  the 100 mile wilderness (and my first multi-day backpacking trip), Katahdin, the Knife Edge (that I will NEVER do again), a tumultuous boat journey home after a joyous wet hike on Monhegan, sailing, sweating and swimming at 5:30 at the wonderful Y, missing all the targets and thankfully killing no real turkeys at the Fish and Game Club Turkey Shoot, Ham and Bean Suppers (pre-COVID) I have rejoiced in the wonders of your amazing state.  

The Gift of Trust. Another word for “faith” is “trust” and this year nurtured in me a deeper grounding in trust and faith than I knew I had.  As I step out of this  interim with you into my own interim of “unknowing” I head out open to the Spirit’s call and lead. Deeper than any anxiety I feel is a trust I know that I can and will work with the Spirit to set my sails and find the way.  

The Gift of Call.  I’ve grown personally and professionally in ways I can see now and in ways it will take stepping away to recognize. I leave with a deeper passion and sense of God’s call to continue to work with communities and individuals in the dislocation and opportunity that comes with the in-between. In the months ahead I’ll have time to hike and time to write. Time for solitude and time for community.  Time to take in the wonder of what has been and the possibility of what may yet be. 

And yes, as I set my sails to head out to sea, I turn back one more time and wonder, 

What will you and I do with the abundant gifts we have received in this time?

Will we use these gifts to maintain and support the lives we have had?

Will we use them to free us to live the life we are called to live more fully and make a difference in the world in ways we never before could have imagined?

Know I keep you in my heart, hope, prayers, now, always. 

Peter 

I drove into Boothbay Harbor on a snowy day in early January, 2020, got out of my car, turned around, held up my car key and clicked. “Beep!”

Someone behind me said, “You don’t have to do that here.”

What?  19,000 miles of locking my car and you don’t have to do that here? 

I drove back into Boothbay Harbor a few weeks later with all I had – 37 boxes that I was having a hard time letting go of and my 1001 assumptions about who people were and how things worked. 

But from that first day, I’ve found that 100% of my beloved assumptions have been, well, wrong.

So many funny things have happened as I’ve been learning about the silliness of my assumptions.

I’ve had a chance to visit only a few people in their homes since I arrived, but when I have gone to someone’s house I’ve had no idea how to get in. What?  You don’t use your front door?  And is it really okay to be wondering around your backyard to find my way in?

I was sent out to pick nasturtiums in the garden before dinner.  After being told what a nasturtium is I picked these tiny little orange flowers thinking this is going to be a very tiny bouquet.  I walked in with my tiny flowers only to learn that the bouquet was indeed cute but alas the flowers were to be cut up for a salad! 

My first winter I asked people at the first snowfall how they were coping with all the snow.  

“Are you kidding?” they said.

In Seattle these three inches would have shut the city down for a week!

Tom arrives on a Sunday morning in spring singing of how warm it is out.

I respond, “Warm?  Its freezing!”  

And yes, the heartbreaking assumption of being so excited to at last find an ice cream shop open after 8 only to learn that alas you cannot get a hot fudge sundae after 8 at Sarah’s Scoops even though they are open until 9.  

Yes, it has been poignant experiences of putting down assumptions.

Rally Day this past Sunday was all planned and going to be great with the kids back for their first day of Sunday School and leading the beginning of the service.  Alas, a phone call on Saturday that there was a case of COVID at the elementary school and 45 kids in quarantine.  “We’re getting good at this pivoting,” Magen said, “We’ve had to do it so many times.  Yet again, all that we assumed was going to happen with the kids – hasn’t.”  

I’d planned to meet Jack for breakfast on Friday and had already thought about what kind of pancakes I’d get and how good the coffee was going to be….and instead of breakfast, sat with him at his bedside in the emergency room at Miles hospital where he’d come in the night before. Our morning coffee conversation took place but instead of over pancakes over the phone the next week in short conversations each day before and after his surgery. 

We’ve all had to put down so many small and not so small plans of what we assumed we’d be doing. When loved ones have been sick and in hospital, we haven’t been able to be there.  The graduation celebrations that “always” take place, didn’t.  The summer camp where we “always” go, closed.  

When a beloved has died, we haven’t been able to do the things we assume to do when there is a death.  Memorial services cancelled.  Grief and gathering disrupted or delayed.  

Its been a strange, disruptive and at its best amazing time for putting down assumptions and welcoming new stories and experiences.  

In it all, I can be just like Cleopas (Luke 24) who meets Jesus walking right there beside him on the road to Emmaus and doesn’t have a clue.  The Jesus he knows is dead and the stories he’s heard about an empty tomb preposterous.  Besides, this person looks nothing like him.  

Like Cleopas I hold my assumptions and stories tight too much of the time. 

And yet, a gift of having my assumptions toppled time and time again has been the wonder of learning that I have something else beside my assumptions – I have my curiosity and wonder. 

In a couple of weeks you will welcome another Stranger from Away.

Your new settled pastor, Todd, comes with lots of gifts and experience and he’s been around the block of life a time or two. Yet when he comes it will be easy to see him as “clueless.” He won’t know how you do things, won’t know where you put things, won’t know all the assumptions you have about how life is “supposed” to work and all the loss and dislocation you feel because they aren’t working that way these days.  He’ll ask questions and you’ll think, “Everyone knows that!”  

Next week you’ll welcome three fabulous new members as well. They too will come with lots of life experience and abundant gifts, and it will be easy to think they too don’t have a clue. 

The great gift of “cluelessness” Todd and the new members will bring won’t last long. All too soon, they will become “one of you” and learn where things are and how things get done around here.  But before everything gets “settled” may you lean into this opportunity to wonder with them about how things work and why. May you be curious with them about why is it you do things this way and wonder with them about different ways ministry and meeting might take place.  

I have no doubt that over time Todd and the new members will learn your traditions and treasure your stories.  

And I wonder, Do your hearts burn to learn their traditions and hear their stories?

Will you in other words be open to surprise, to the gift of new questions, new stories, new ways you never heard of or expected?  

Yes, in the coming weeks, months, years ahead, I plant a prayer that you may be blessed with putting down your assumptions and picking up your Wonder.  To discover, in other words, Jesus in your midst who is always opening up a new story just when we thought the story was over.  

The Door 

You asked me what I would like to have.

More than I would like to have knowledge,

More than I would like to have certainty,

I would like to have a door, opening

into a wide field, filled with the songs

of small birds, filled with light, filled

with dancing and with gladness.

And far across the field, another door

opening into Summer, into wilderness,

a greening of imaginations.

and finally, at a great distance,

another door, opening, opening…                                              

Alex Noble

Last week I had the privilege of officiating a wedding on Monhegan Island. I’d enjoyed talking with Ellen and Rick over the past months as they prepared to celebrate the home they had found in one another.  I’d been looking forward to a trip to an Island that I’d heard much about. 

On the day before we were to leave I received a phone call from the boat company.  

“We wanted to let you know that you’re all set for your outbound journey, however….. coming home is another matter….

The day of our return home was also the day Hurricane Ida was set to come through the Maine Coast.  The boat from Boothbay Harbor cancelled, and our return trip rescheduled to the “Hardy Boat” that would take us to New Harbor where we’d meet a car to take us back home.

Not the journey home we’d planned and not one I was looking forward to. I did not like tippy boats on tippy seas.  However, I easily forgot the return trip as I luxuriated in the outbound trip sitting on the crowded top deck with other happy passengers taking pictures of the passing islands and lighthouses and thought how ocean travel was indeed quite a fine thing. 

I loved clamoring the rugged trails on half the island that afternoon, celebrated a beautiful wedding by the lighthouse that ended with a soft sprinkle of rain. “Its like confetti!” I laughed. 

A spectacular orange-pink sunset, and an over the top delicious meal to close the day at the Island Inn.  What could I possibly worry about after a day like this?  

I woke early the next morning to the patter of rain, put on my rain pants, rain jacket and boots and headed out to hike the trails on the other half of the island on trails had turned to not so small rivers.  As the wind picked up and the trees bent, I decided it was a good time to turn home for coffee and breakfast.  

As I came through the door to the Inn a woman asked, “What’s it doing out there?”

“Oh its just great! Pounding rain, howling winds, tumultuous seas!  A real Maine storm!”  

She looked at me askance. Not the answer she was looking for.

And I had loved the wet walk and now the plate of blueberry pancakes and bacon and hot coffee – what could I possibly worry about?

An hour later, luggage packed, standing on the porch of the Inn looking out for our little “Hardy” boat home to arrive. Pouring rain dripping off the eaves, white-capped waves, flags snapping. 

“I’m so glad we don’t have to leave today!” said the couple sitting in the rocking chairs behind me.

“The Hardy Boat is sure tossing about in the waves,” the man with the binoculars shared.  “It looks so tiny out there.  Would you like to see?” Hands me his binoculars.

No, I do not want to see. No, I do not want to know. And as I looked through the binoculars because I had to see, yes, I wish I was staying until Saturday safe on shore with the rocking chair couple. 

But no, our boat arriving through all the mess. 

Maybe they’ll cancel the trip, I thought…alas no.  

Instead, standing on the dock in my rain pants, rain jacket and very wet boots, hood pulled up tight over my head, I so don’t want to do this.  I don’t want to get on the boat. I don’t want to go.  But sometimes there is no choice and the only way out is through.

“Do you have sea-bands?” I asked the skipper as I stepped on board. 

“Yes we do,” he said and I promptly bought a set.  

As I sat clinging the bench as the boat clanged against the dock, I asked the 16 year-old deck-hand Rob if he ever gets used to this.  “It never bothered me,” he said.

As we took off into a roll of waves, first mate Zsa Zsa offered assistance for our rocky journey home.

“Sometimes its helpful to hold something on a journey like this,” she said and passed out little white bags for us to hold.  

And sometimes a ginger candy helps settle your stomach.  I took a handful.  

“If you’re worried about the boat, don’t be,” she continued. “This boat has been through much worse storms than this.” 

I couldn’t imagine “worse” and was so grateful I wasn’t on board on a “worse” than this.  

As we made our rolling way tossed this way and that across the pounding seas, up and down, side to side, I sat on the edge of the bench looking out towards the horizon as it appeared then disappeared below the waves.  Remembered how I’d been told that in times like this what can help is looking out to the steadiness of the horizon which holds when nothing else is.  Looking up and out far enough, far enough, I breathed, breathed. Finding a new way home.  

Several years ago as I was preparing to leave a beloved home and set sail for an adventure into the unknown, a wise kind pastor said to me, “Endings are messy, don’t try to clean them up.”

In these last weeks before I set sail from this home of the past 20 months, I’ve been remembering his words and thinking on the messiness of endings. 

How times like this require a putting down of perfection and releasing of control. An opening of hands. Of how a new way home is made not by clinging but by holding your sight to a far horizon always before us, steady and sure.  Of the necessity of stepping into the fear and not around it, putting your hands in the care of a crew who has been through worse before and a boat that is hearty enough for seas like this.  

And yes, in time, a harbor appears.  Songs of praise. We made it safely, a new way home.  

 

Truth be told thanks to the song by Jim Croce that’s about all most of us know about Jeremiah. For 2500 years he’s been trying unsuccessfully to get us to look up and pay attention to how we’ve lost our way. And for 2500 years, well, we’ve had other things to worry about besides Jeremiah’s antics. He’s the great reminder that we are much more invested in keeping things the way they are than in looking up and seeing what more might be possible.  

Jeremiah gave his whole self to his call of taking in and taking on the heartbreak of his time that has such echoes of our own – environmental catastrophe, neglect of the most vulnerable and a cascade of bad prophet imitators who are making life miserable for others. He did his best, tried everything he could, pulled out all the stops to get his people to see beyond their short term interests including eating bad figs, refusing to get married, making and breaking a beautiful pot, burying his swim suit. 

All of it, an attempt to get us to look up to see each other, remember who we are and are called to be.  He had a wonderful image of our human possibility – a great parade of all of us led by the blind and lame and pregnant women.  

I love the ending of Jeremiah.  Everything Jeremiah said would happen, has happened. The Babylonian Empire overran tiny Judea, destroyed the temple, took the king away in chains to Babylon.  It’s now a generation later and there’s a new king in Israel (still languishing in jail like the last king) and a new king of Babylon. The King of Babylon releases the King of Israel from prison and invites him to sit at his table each night and cares for his daily needs. Two enemies sit down together and discover each other which gives me hope for the rest of us.  

Last Saturday I officiated at my first wedding in the last 19 months. Cooper, 4, and Connor, 2, were the ring bearers. They started out down the aisle with Cooper holding Connor in a neck brace stumbling along together. When their Dad opened his arms for them to come, Cooper ran down the aisle leaving poor Connor stumbling out to find comfort in his mom’s arms.  

“Cooper you forgot Connor,” his Dad said. 

Cooper looked back and went back down the aisle to find Connor.  

This time he tried holding Connor around the waist but Connor walked too fast and Connor tumbled to the ground.  

Cooper stopped, turned around.  Came back, held out his hand and together hand in hand they found their way down the aisle. 

If you walk ahead of me I may not follow. If you walk behind me I may not lead.  But if you walk beside me, together we might yet find a new way home.