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            I.

Across the round, white-clothed table,
half-emptied coffee cups, rumpled
napkins and scattered silverware,
the dark, sad-eyed young woman sits,
at the close of the breakfast buffet.

Across the table
I tender a hello,
circle the corners
of conversation.

Lean in,
curious,
there’s more here than,
I’m from New Jersey…

You look up,
pause,
breathe,
I’m a child of refugees….
my parents fled…
the Civil War…
Sri Lanka….
that’s why I look like I do…
it’s where I’m from…

Yes, I was the only Indian girl at school
in the small German town
where I grew up….
Sure, they treated me different,
but I didn’t care….

I don’t believe you didn’t care
how they treated you –
wonder why you lie about that still –
as I wonder what keeps you attending
yet another boring meeting with your husband,
as you will later this morning,
and why you visit war museums each afternoon…
wonder how you can really think
the French Quarter
might not be worth it…
the improbable and fantastic
just outside the door –
a block away
another world –
so far from this windowless
chandeliered room,
the breakfast buffet
that never changes,
day after day.

But before I can speak,
jump in, respond,
with all I do not know –
you tell me how
the depression
sits deep
and low
making a flightless bird
of one so young and beautiful
and how no one understands
no one
no one
no one

II.

The bleached blond young rail of a man,
wearing only a pair of frayed khaki shorts,
climbs from the riverbank early each morning
wiping sleep from his eyes
walking barefoot,
tenderly, down the walk
as I run by.

Later, when I run back
he’s there,
sitting on the wall,
down by the levee,
picking his foot.

I don’t know how
to approach you,
don’t know how
to say –
I’ve noticed you each morning…
as I fear so many do –
wanting something
from one so beautiful
and broken
so very young,
a child really…
I just wonder if you are alright…
if there’s anything I can do….

III.

There are conversations I know not how to complete,
conversations I know not how to have,
here in the city of sorrows,
the end of the river,
end of the line,
where the bayous pool
with tears and dreams
unspeakable stories
flowing down from Memphis,
down from St. Louis,
Baton Rouge,
down Plantation Row,
down here
to the end
or the beginning

could it be –
could it possibly be –
the beginning again
of everything.

IV.

But tonight,
at Preservation Hall the band is playing,
taking the stories and weaving the songs,
making a poem of it all
of everything
as the jovial young fat man,
sparkling eyes,
giggles his trombone over the room,

as the old man, thin and black as his clarinet,
silver keys of hair,
sings of the love he has lost,
as the trumpet player bangs his foot,
one, two, three
one, two, three
as the piano player leans into the song,
long thin fingers
dancing the keys
as the gap-toothed drummer
smiles,
gathering the beat,
sipping beer from a plastic cup
between sets.

Each taking a turn,
each passing the story,
the song,
around the room
hearing, responding,
playing it back,
playing it out
over the night
over the city,
playing in us
the possibility –
it’s happening here –
such a meeting,
a hearing,
a conversation,
our own,
a coming together
the gathering of stories,
the turning,
and turning around
to something new –
risking,
asking,
hearing each other,
making music, like they’re doing tonight,
the likes of which
we have never heard…

We spill out into dark streets,
the waiting crowd
for the next show,
it’s worth it
it’s worth it 
worth the wait….
the best jazz,
the most healing of music,
anywhere around…

Peter Ilgenfritz
September 29, 2014

 

Perhaps,
after all this
a poem is emerging –
I mean,
after the divorce,
the loss of
so many names
that spoke of home,
and told me who I was.

Perhaps,
after all this
a poem is emerging
in a bright red car
and new address
shiny silver pots and
sparkling blue plates,
pictures on the wall
and a voice who calls
me to be true –
call it, myself –
a language I am
still learning to
pronounce.

Perhaps,
after all this
my life,
indeed,
is turning
to song.

Peter Ilgenfritz
September 23, 2014

I am learning to love the resonance.

I’m not exactly sure what “resonance” is.  But when a space is resonant, sound stays alive. Goes out, keeps coming back.

Our church sanctuary is in the middle of restoration.  Carpet gone.  Walls incomplete. And on Sunday, resounding with the sound of children’s voices and drumming, a mournful oboe and exultant choir.

I think it’s good to have a resonant space for a church to gather, reminded of the great cathedrals of Europe.  And at its best, when people gather as church, there is an echoing. Memory, gifts of the past.   This present, now.  Future hope.

It was “Homecoming Sunday” at church last week, and there is probably no more “resonant” word in the English language than “home”.  Ask any 6 or 76 year old and they will have something to tell you about home.   The memory of home.  The presence of home.  The longing for home.

“Jesus” is another word that resonates.   Something about him.  What he did.  His way of being in the world, his way with people.   Certainly, many have been attracted to Jesus for many different reasons.  And I wonder today if there is something about “Jesus” that has called people “home”.  Not so much to a “home” out there, somewhere, for Jesus often called people to leave their homes, as life often does, for all of us.  But to the “home” right here, within ourselves.

Ask me about “home” and I will tell you about a place I never lived but where I spent some of the most treasured days in my childhood: my grandparent’s farm in rural central New Hampshire.

I could take you all over that old farm.  Show you everything.  Like here, that place as you step into the kitchen. That spot on the worn wood floor that creaks.  Sit with you, here, at the long kitchen table with the plastic tablecloth and print of pink flowers.  Stand, backs to the wood stove, warming with you, as we return from cross country skiing in my grandfather’s woodlot.  Dripping water, pooling at our feet.  The sound of the pressure cooker popping with my grandfather’s baked beans cooking on the stove.  The scent of oatmeal rolls in the oven.

And stand with you here, before I left for college, where my grandfather, a man of few words, shook my hand.  Held it.  Looked me in the eye, and I knew that he loved me.

Yes, I could take you everywhere.  Show you everything. But really, of course, I am taking you around inside me.  For you know what home is.  It’s that place where you are at home in yourself.  And I was so at home here – in my joy, my wonder, my discovery, myself.

I’ve come a far country from that place.  Grew up.  And other worlds called me out.  To make something of myself.  Make a family.  Make a difference.  And in my successes and failures of doing such things, I learned to be strong and competent, to stand up for myself and to fight.  To make a home for myself, an important part of growing up.

But all this making and doing, that life often demands, not all I have needed. Especially now, in this season of my life.

When the crowd gathered, and Jesus invited them to sit with him on the hillside, he spoke to them of blessings.  Blessings that we call “The Beatitudes”.  Not so much blessings that we go out and find, but blessings that find us.  Quieter virtues.  More vulnerable places.  Our need, tears, longing.   Places within.  The kind of places I discovered within myself on my grandparent’s farm.

If “church” has anything to do with home, it might have to do with calling us back to these vulnerable, human, truth-filled places within.  To what amidst all of our doing is most important.

It was 4 AM and a long way from home.  Another coast.  Set up camp late that night.   We had a long day ahead of us and much we wanted to do.  But something, something more important to do now.

Here, early morning, my nephew and I crawled out of our sleeping bags, threw on our sweatshirts, got into the car and drove up the mountain.  Here, on the edge of the coast of Maine, Cadillac Mountain.  The first place in the country, you can see the sun rise over the Atlantic.

It was cold, windy that morning.  And oh, so clear.  The edge of the continent breaking away in small island clusters. The vast blue beyond. Was it Jesus I found?  Perhaps.  Certainly, something that morning of grace, peace.  Something more important than just getting on with the duties of the day.  Something I needed to remember.

The sun shone out over the sea.

The days ahead resonated with the splendor of hills, sparkling with light.

 

 

 

Randy was the best –
a tourguide with
just the right combination
of local folklore, historical anecdotes, and bad jokes
to keep our little crowd of fifteen
laughing and listening
as we followed him
down narrow streets
in a strange city
thick with heat.

Pausing, here,
by what otherwise
we would have walked by –
this old house
wedged in the back
of the fancy hotel
which old Brad Overstreet
still owns, refused to sell, years ago
even for 4 million dollars,
back in the day
when “The $25,000 Pyramid” was on TV
and a lot of money to win.
Built their concrete hotel around him,
threatened to build it overhead,
until he took them to court, won,
proved you can’t build over anyone
no matter how much money you have.

Pausing,
by places that the fires took –
like here, where “The Upstairs Bar” used to be,
the gay nightclub set afire by an angry prostitute
at someone who was stealing his tricks.

The crowds that gathered
shouting outside –
Burn!  Let ’em burn! –
It wasn’t always this liberal you know,
not the city where just anything goes-
no, not always, not then.

Teaches us the difference between
“Creole” and “Cajun”
“Balconies” and “Galleries”
“Gumbo” and “Jambalaya”
and no, we didn’t always eat alligator,
how to pronounce “praw-leans”
that should melt like air
on your tongue
not gritty and sugary like
well, I’m not say’in but they’re
a poor excuse for pralines.

The best place
to put your palm sweaty
in the hands of another
who will tell you how fortunate your future shall be,

where to linger on Bourbon Street
where good jazz, some of the best around,
is still to be found,
but no, not the kind they blast on the streets,
you have to walk in to find it,
down dark corridors in back rooms
the kind of music like Miss Jessie’s here,
playing the clarinet like nobody’s business
as we fill her pail with applause and spare change.

Where real muffaletta can be found
like Napoleon’s or Central Market
though they don’t serve it hot there
not like it’s meant to be,
and no, it’s not from New Orleans,
just ask someone from Sicily…

The best Creole restaurants
like Tujagues and The Gumbo Shop,
and where the locals live –
Algiers, across the river
where I make plans to go tomorrow,
good book shops (Beckhams)
and the best gelato (Antoine’s) around.

Sounds out New Or-leans,
not “N’awlins” –
no one around here but tourists
talks like that –
in this city without
Southern drawls,
a port city,
more connected to Philadelphia and Boston
than Atlanta which for all its other charms
does not have a port,
poor thing,
a Union city during the war,
but the Proclamation that freed the slaves
no, did not free them here, no,
but declared them merely the “spoils of war”
fit to wipe soldier’s boots and clean their pots,
shovel out stables.

Tells us stories that leave us wide-mouthed,
anecdotes that make us dangerous,
tidbits of facts
to jumble into our own urban legends
like the carriage drivers do –
they are notorious for that –
don’t believe a word they tell you.

But when we ask Randy about Katrina,
he walks off,
says there is a museum if we want to know,
can see it all –
where the waters came in
and how high they rose
but we need to live in the present
it was nine years ago –
you must let us live.

Comes back,
eyes spotted
with tears,
says it took him six years to see the exhibit,
and all he could do was go and
hold Laurita and weep –
you can tell the locals,
it’s what we do –
nine years ago,
we have to move on,
you have to let us live…
leads us across the street
shaking the memory
out – I have to get it out –
brings us back to this
moment in time.

We’re really not, we hope,
like the tourists on his bus route home
who ask him each day how high was the water
and how long the electricity was out,
how many died,
and what’s become of the city.

Instead, he tells us everything we really wanted to know –
that the flood was real
and he is too,
that he was here and survived –
which is the possibility
that we’ve been looking for ourselves –
that we too
might make it through
the storms that are raging, and
might find our way
through the flood of tears,
our own secret byways and dark alleys.

And yes, makes us wonder
as we follow on after him
what might happen
what might really happen if
we didn’t shy from each other –
made campfires
and told the stories
we have told no one before –
if we stopped believing
we all knew and understood each other so well,
much less ourselves,
and risked going to the limits
of the conversations –
to tell the stories
we need to remember,
to release the stories
we need to put down,
to be recalled to the present
we need to embrace.

Peter Ilgenfritz
September 8, 2014

This year,
I don’t want summer to end –
don’t want to give in to fall
and the turning of leaves,
but to linger here,
in these long days of heat,
this time,
between seasons
of purpose and doing.

Some years,
preferred shadowed days
to summers fullness –
too much life and possibility,
too much light –
which is to say I have known some summers
that have not been easy.

But this summer is different –
and I can’t get enough of
summer heat,
bowls of blue
berries and ripe
fruits on the vine,
the lap of waves
on sandy beaches,
the play of children’s feet –
such splashing!
Such of everything
that will not,
cannot,
be contained.

Here,
before the return to more serious matters –
the beginning of school,
sharp pencils and crisp clean notebooks –
I remember,
once more,
the gifts of summer,
in the holding of time  –
a young boy,
a younger man,
a dock,
a river,
half way into a leap,
to shout
my praise.

The Dock
For Thomas

Around the cove from where
the single lane concrete bridge
used to span,
just up from the railway trestle
before the dam,
at this old wooden dock,
I taught you to swim.

Held my arms out to you
as I stepped slowly,
ever so slowly,
away from the shore,
testing the tension
between courage and fear.

You pushed off,
exuberant splashing,
as I called confidence
to you across the water.

Wide eyed, panting,
you clung to my chest,
exhilarated and worn,
until daring release
to try it once more.

Once, when you were older,
we swam across
to the dark pined shore
spotted with birch
where Indians used to dwell
and arrowheads can still be found.

Stood near the shore
on large smooth stones
like long legged herons.
Looked down on fallen trees,
the remnants of a wall
that had once been a mill.

We swam back,
strong firm strokes
against the current,
until sitting,
as we do now,
wound in damp towels
on warm knotted wood,
knees wrapped in our arms.

We rise,
daring each other
to jump, one more time,
to fling ourselves out into
blue sky –
where for a moment –
everything stops,
everything stills.

Peter Ilgenfritz

August 15, 1994.  It feels like a long time ago I began my ministry here at University Congregational United Church of Christ.  Feels like yesterday.

And last week, on August 15, 2014, we had an stupendous church party to mark the 20 years I have been pastor here.

As one of my colleagues noted, it was a unique occasion. Most often we mark a pastor and congregation’s connections when the pastor is leaving – or at the time of their death! Not often do we take the time in the muddle and middle of life together to mark all we have shared.

Last Friday night’s celebration was simply the best.  It was a grand church party – with hot dogs and sloppy joes, cake and ice cream, a great band and testimonies. A chance for us to celebrate all that has been and all that is unfolding here in our life together as church.

Sometimes only a few words are needed.  And for me on Friday they were “thank you.”  And I am full of thanks for this congregation, and all the planners and preparers for Friday’s great party. For all the cards, notes, prayers – all the ways that have helped mark these 20 years – I am full of thanks:

For an amazing array of paper sail boats that were made for me on Friday night.

 

For the congregation’s gift of a “Livery Pass” to the Center for Wooden Boats where I learned to sail last fall.  For the next year I can go sailing in the great sea of Lake Union in downtown Seattle for free. And yes, it is true, I especially do enjoy sailing in the winter.  I’m looking forward to sharing many voyages on my little sea with our congregation.

For my colleagues gift of a life-preserver.

And for a guy that struggles with getting lost, what a wonderful gift to receive a ship’s compass to mark 20 years.

20 years is something you could never plan.  When Dave and I first came to University Church in 1994, in what felt like the “outback” of the Northwest, so far from what I believed was the “heart of civilization” on the East Coast where I grew up, I thought maybe 7 years would be enough.

But something happened.  The move from a senior/associate to a team ministry structure enabled me to grow in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated.  I was able to take on leadership and responsibilities in areas I knew nothing about.  I got to learn about and grow to love elementary education and youth ministry.

I have had the privilege of working with wonderful colleagues over the years, each of whom has taught me so much about the craft of ministry.

And yes, I have been blessed beyond words by this congregation.   I’ve found here with this community of faith, two qualities that have been essential for my own growth as a pastor: high expectations and deep love.

When expectations are high, it keeps me at the top of my game.  And this congregation has.  I don’t ever remember this congregation saying, “we did enough…”, “we don’t have to do that…”   Instead there is a deep longing in this congregation that is always asking, “what more might happen?”, “why not?”, “what if…?”  My ministry here has often been running to catch up, to celebrate and encourage the passions that have enabled this church to step again and again into change, risk and the unknown.

It’s true that I have failed here at learning how to “coast”.  And that too, a gift. Instead, I’ve continually found myself changed and challenged, growing and deepening in faith by my ministry in this place.

And along with high expectations, deep love.

Yes, part of such love is sharing the joy of “you did a great job!”, and I have found such encouragement and support here along my way as I have grown and changed, tried and failed, stumbled and gotten up again.

But the other part of deep love is the love that dares to risk the honest word, to have the deep conversations. To share with me, “You disappointed me….I was hurt….I am frustrated….”  The risk of having those conversations together over the years has opened the possibility to the very heart of community – the call to deeper listening, the invitation to forgiveness, the gifts of grace, and beginning again.

20 years.  Quite a marker. And yes, a transition as well. From what has been, to what still may be.    

It has been an amazing journey of grace, sailing with this congregation as I have grown and changed over these past 20 years.  For the gift of that grace, finally, there are no words.   But only the offering of these tears of memory, thanksgiving and such great love.

 

On my sabbatical this spring, I did just what I planned to do in March.  I wrote each day, painted and learned to sail.

But April was a month of surprise and took me to a place I never expected – to Iceland on a Writer’s Retreat.  I arrived four days before the retreat, rented a car, drove through the countryside, and stayed at farmhouses.

And yes, got lost.  Lost many times physically and emotionally.   And in the process of finding my way,  discovered so much.

Writing is an important way for me to find my way through challenging experiences.  The advice I learned from my teachers on the retreat, some of the simple wisdom I needed to take the next step in writing.

Here’s the final installment of my story of what happened in Iceland, and what I learned about finding the way from lost to home.

Lost in Iceland:  Part 3

“Lost” I realize is how most of us have come to this writer’s retreat – tentatively, shyly, as we did that first day seeking to find a seat on a bus full of strangers.  Confident that everyone else around us had written better, published more, and certainly should be here more than us.

It the week that follows, we learn we all know a lot about “lost”  and the longing for home.  And yes, all of us, no matter what our “credentials”, have our own share of the daring spirits necessary to write our way home.  I’ve met some wonderful new friends.  Learned some simple steps to take me on the next step in my writing.

But now its Sunday, late morning, and the writer’s retreat has ended and I have one more day before I fly out.  Here I am trying to find my way to the hostel where I’ll spend the night.

The little “39” circle on my map says that the hostel should be right here.  But every building I’ve imagined is the hostel, yet another block away, is not.  I take out my reading glasses to try to decipher, one more time, the little numbers on my map.

The new friends I met have scattered.  I feel as lost and alone as when I first arrived. The drizzle of rain mixes with tears.  I’m a little boy with his paper map flapping in the wind stuck at a roundabout with no crosswalks.  Cars whisking by splattering puddles.  Wondering how pathetic I can look until someone – please anyone – might stop and ask if I need help.

I adjust my reading glasses.   I notice that there are in fact pink circled “39”‘s and blue circled “39”‘s on my map.  I missed that.  How could I have missed that?   I’ve been looking for a pink “39” when my hostel is over there at the blue “39”.

“The key is in the details”, I hear Geraldine remind me.

“Anything that defamiliarizes is good for writing”, James chimes in.

“Start with lost”, Susan adds.

“Keep up the daily practice”, Iain charges me.

Well, here I am.  Lost again. Feeling the ache and longing for home, that place that James says is that grand source of creative energy.

Standing here, lost in the rain, I’m a Pulitzer Prize in the making.

I see the blue “39” for my hostel is a mile behind me.  Down the harbor from where I’ve been chasing imaginary hostels all afternoon.

I turn back.  When I reach the hostel, I see in the distance, friends walking towards me.

“All settled in?”, Gemma smiles.

I smile. The first time in hours.

“We were looking for you.  See you for dinner?”, Carrie asks.

Yes, home has been here all the time.  It just took me a while to find it.

“What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?”, the joke goes.  “Stand up!”  The “forests” they’ve just started to plant here are new, the “trees” mere stubby bushes.  My own forests of “lost”, much older, complex and gnarly.  I can’t just stand up and see my way home.

But I’m learning to write my way there through anxiety and fear, right through the heart of self-doubt and not-knowing.

“Make a space and time to take your vocation of writing seriously”, Susan Orleans reminds us.

It’s what I’m doing now, early morning at a worn wooden table in a hostel I thought I would never find.

Looking out at the harbor, and a sailboat playing in the wind.  Through the mist, purple mountains pockmarked with snow.

Pen in hand, coffee by my side, waiting for my friends to join me for breakfast, I write “Crappy First Draft” on that first draft.  Free myself from having to get it right, say it right, be right.  Instead, to just write.  Set words on the page and keep on going.  Finding my way, one more time, from lost to home.

Peter Ilgenfritz

April 30, 2014

On my sabbatical this spring, I did just what I planned to do in March.  I wrote each day, painted and learned to sail.

But April was a month of surprise and took me to a place I never expected – to Iceland on a Writer’s Retreat.  I arrived four days before the retreat, rented a car, drove through the countryside, and stayed at farmhouses.

And yes, got lost.  Lost many times physically and emotionally.   And in the process of finding my way,  discovered so much.

Writing is an important way for me to find my way through challenging experiences.  The advice I learned from my teachers on the retreat, some of the simple wisdom I needed to take the next step in writing.

Here’s the second installment of my story of what happened in Iceland, and what I learned about finding the way from lost to home.

Last week I wrote about struggling to get out of the airport rental car parking.   At last I did.  The little yellow gate rises and I am on my way.

Lost in Iceland:  Part 2

A woman with a sweet little British accent in my GPS directs me in 30 meters to “enter the roundabout and take the second right.”  “Turn right.  Turn right,”  she insists.

Lady, there’s no roundabout here and nothing in sight except a barren brown expanse of rock.  It is soon clear that wherever she is directing me from is not where I am and where she is taking me not the way to the little cafe in downtown Reykjavik that my friend Tom recommended to me.

“Good writing starts with research”, Geraldine Brooks says.   Thanks for the thought, Geraldine, but I’d prefer to jump into the real work of writing.  It’s why I don’t take time to actually learn how to use the GPS – or know how to turn it off.

“Before I write, I take notes”, Iain Reid, another of our teachers, shares.

Thanks Iain, but I don’t want to take notes.  I don’t want to sit here and “note” my frustration, my anger, my perplexity, my lostness.”   I want to be drinking coffee at a wooden table at a little cafe in downtown Reykjavik with a view of the sea and purple mountains pockmarked with snow.

Finally, I have to give in.  After my British co-pilot directs me in circles one more time, I pull over in a hotel parking lot, and slowly, one more time, go through the little prompts on the GPS, enter the name of my cafe and find my way.  It’s closed.

But the coffee shop across the street with a window seat and a view of the harbor down the alley is open for breakfast.

“To write well, you need time to think – the interim time to think”, Susan Orlean reminds us.  Time to do just that meets me here.  That and a cup of coffee, a bowl of museli and something white, yogurty and sweet they call “skyr”.

“Be a collector of words”, Geraldine Brooks tells us.  Well, here’s my first new one today in a land full of long consonant-laden words I cannot pronounce.

Geraldine draws our attention to characters in novels who pass a problem around between them.  Well in this story, there’s only me, tossing “lost” back and forth in the days that follow.

Lost finds me parked at the side of the road in the drizzling rain under a towering brown cliff.  Car trunk open, pouring out the little rolled piles of clothes in my backpack looking for my wallet.

“Sort through your notes again and again before you begin to write,” Iain Reid reminds us.

Well, Iain, despite all my sorting, there is nothing here.  I pad myself down again – side pockets, jacket pocket, back pocket…back pocket – I hadn’t checked that – where I discover I’ve been sitting on my wallet all the time.

Lost.  It’s me out on an early morning run, the sun not yet up over the mountains, cold and dark, losing the little brown string of a trail in hills of heather and ankles of cold mud.

“Humility is the key to good writing”, Geraldine Brooks reminds us.

Humility is what I find as the miles extend away from where I thought I was going to some point further and further out on the long finger of a peninsula of sand and brown tufted grass.

“Imagination always gets things right”, James Scudamore tells us.

I try to “imagine” my way out of here – turning a bend and seeing the spire of the church in the center of the city.  Finding any familiar sign of home.

Seeing none,I run down to the shore, and find a black, hole pocketed volcanic stone, worn smooth by the tide.

“Reading your words out loud is essential for good writing,” Susan Orlean reminds us.

Looking out across the gray sea, the descent of fog, I place my rock at the top of a small cairn at the edge of the rocky shore and speak my Sunday prayer, “Help me find my way.”

The road curves back down the penninsula.   There around the bend, on a far hill, the spire of the church I am looking for.

“The longing for home is one of the most powerful incentives for writing”,  James Scudamore reminds us.

I get it.  I feel it.   I’m not home yet, but I’m getting there.

Peter Ilgenfritz

 

On my sabbatical this spring, I did just what I planned to do in March.  I wrote each day, painted and learned to sail.

But April was a month of surprise and took me to a place I never expected – to Iceland on a Writer’s Retreat.  I arrived four days before the retreat, rented a car, drove through the countryside, and stayed at farmhouses.

And yes, got lost.  Lost many times physically and emotionally.   And in the process of finding my way,  discovered so much.

Writing is an important way for me to find my way through challenging experiences.  The advice I learned from my teachers on the retreat, some of the simple wisdom I needed to take the next step in writing.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll share some of my story of what happened in Iceland, and what I learned about finding the way from lost to home.

Lost in Iceland:  Part 1

 Here I am: 6:30 a.m., just off the all-night flight from Seattle to Reykjavik and trying to find my way out of the rental car parking lot.

I follow the little white arrows around the lot that lead me to a little yellow gate with a little yellow box to insert a ticket that I do not have.

This is not what I’m looking for.  There must be another way.

I’m looking for a middle aged Icelandic woman with black hair and a tired expression sitting on a stool in a little glass booth, who will slide open a little window and ask for my “zcarbon zcopy of my zrental zreceipt from zAvis.”  I will hand her my little pink receipt and ask her how to get to downtown Reykjavik.  She will tell me to “zturn zright” and say she “zhopes zI zhave a zgood ztrip.”

Since my imagined Icelandic woman in the little ticket booth is not here, I lurch into reverse.  “Oh yeah, it’s a stick shift”, I remember again, put in the clutch, and follow the little white arrows around and around the parking lot that take me back one more time to the little yellow gate and no way out.

Last month I saw a bright red postcard with a photograph of a black rocky cliff streaked with snow, and words in glacier white, “Icelandic Writers Retreat”.   “Iceland” or a “writer’s retreat” was not on any bucket-list I’d ever had.  But when I saw that little postcard, I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I wanted to be there.

I spent the next week telling everyone who would listen how I really didn’t need to go to Reykjavik to write.  “I just like the music of, ‘I want to write in Reykjavik,'” I explained.  “But I really don’t need to go to Reykjavik to write. ‘Reykjavik’ is just a good metaphor for what I can find here.”

After talking so much about what I didn’t need to do, I finally heard what I indeed did.  On the last day to register, I found the website, signed up for the retreat and pushed “send”.  All of which seems to have sent me to a parking lot with no way out.

“The place of not-knowing is where all good writing begins”, James Scudamore, one of our teachers at the writing retreat, tells us.  “That’s why I keep my office in a constant state of flux.  Move my desk from one side of the room to the other.  Rearrange the pictures on the wall. Write sitting down, standing up, lying down.  Anything to keep it mixed up.”

At this point, I wish I’d stuck with re-arranging my office.

Not whoever this “me” was that thought this was a good idea.

Yesterday, my bed piled with rolled winter clothes, plastic quart-sized bags of travel toiletries, and socks stuffed in sneakers, I would have given anything to have stayed home.

Susan Orlean, another teacher, intentionally seeks out new experiences as the way to find her way into writing.

“You need to become a student again in order to write.  Be willing to not know.  In the discovery, the learning, that’s where good writing begins.”

If that’s so, I’m in a perfect place.  Stuck in a parking lot in Iceland.  My life drained this past year of most everything that it used to be and that I depended on for stability – the end of a 28 year relationship with my partner and best friend.  My home now a rented room in somebody else’s house.  An aloneness I’ve never experienced before.

“And vivid description is what propels good writing,” Susan adds.

I wonder if I write all the more descriptively about “the barren brown flat expanse around me, the gray rolling clouds, the cold breeze from glaciers hidden in the fog”, will it help me get out of this parking lot and on my way?

“And details.  Details matter,” historical fiction writer, Geraldine Brooks reminds us.

I hate details.  Which is probably why I didn’t notice until now that on the little yellow box by the gate is a button with a “?”.

I push the button.  Something buzzes.  Buzzes again.

“Zhello?”

“Hello!  I’m here at the little yellow gate by the little yellow box in the rental car parking lot and I don’t know how to get out.”

“Zyou zdon’t zhave a zticket?”

“Zno.  I was never given one.”

“Hmm.  ZI zwill zbe zright zthere.”

As I sit waiting without my little white ticket in hand, I wonder what other things I didn’t come with.  How about some credentials to start with?  Who am I kidding?  Me, a writer?  I like to write but I’ve never published anything except years ago a couple of short pieces in magazines that no one has ever heard of.  And what was that on the packing list about “Icelandic business attire”?  What’s that?   Designer hiking boots and a down parka?

I can’t believe I didn’t even come with a guidebook or glance at one before I left.  Instead, I read two Icelandic novels and a book of poetry.  What was I thinking?  What am I doing here?

The man in the little yellow box calls back and says he will let me out without the little white ticket I was supposed to have.  The gate rises.

Peter Ilgenfritz

 

 

Just before I left on my sabbatical, a note and a gift showed up in my mailbox at church.

“This compass has helped me find my way through many mountain adventures. I pass it on to you with my hope and prayer that you will find your way well through your sabbatical, and return safely home.”

On the first day of my sabbatical, I thought, “I want to do something each day to remember this time.”   I remembered the compass.

From that first day on, I pulled out my compass every day and took a picture. Something that happened I wanted to remember.  Took a particular moment, placed it in the care of the holding of memory and time.

Marking each day helped me see that even the hard and challenging parts of my sabbatical were a gift as well. I learned so much in both the joyous and challenging steps along the way.

The compass went many places:

Showed up with the President of Iceland,

with friends,

and yes, out sailing many times.

One day in Iceland, my friend Arielle showed up with a tattoo of an ancient Icelandic compass, a vegvísir. One who wears a vegvísir, the tradition goes, will never lose their way in storms or bad weather. And when no way can be found, a way will open.

My imagination took me to Viking explorers setting sail on turbulent seas with the sign traced on their foreheads or chiseled onto their helmets. A sign, a blessing, that they too would find their way safely and well.

I almost got a vegvísir tattoo myself, and the story of why I did not, another story. But the gift I received in not getting a vegvísir tattooed on my arm was the invitation to become a vegvísir.

What if, I wondered, instead of wearing a sign, our lives became the sign? What if we lived lives of risk and trust?  Showed, that the little ships that we are, are finding our way through smooth and rocky seas.

What if we lived as if it were true: that even when no way is found, we trust that way will open?

The “Way” is the ancient Christian term for followers of Jesus. And although they may never have heard of a vegvísir, they lived as ones that carried that same trust through the storm.

“Are you all settled back in after your time away?” Jerry asked me last week.

“No!”, I responded, “I actually feel quite disoriented!”

“Great!” he responded, “That’s why we need to go away – to come back disoriented. To see things in new ways. Hold on to ‘disoriented’ as long as you can!”

Jerry’s reminder, the blessing I needed.

Four months away, a long time. In these past months I have grown and changed. The communities, people in my life grown, changed as well.   I come back with new eyes. Notice what I hadn’t before when I was deeply and contentedly settled into the everyday routines of my life at home.

Instead of fighting the feeling of being disoriented, at my best I’ve become curious about it. Curious about what works, fits, and what does not. Exploring new patterns and ways when some of my old familiar ways have been washed out of me.

My “new normal” as I explained to a friend this morning is “I am disoriented!”

“How long did it take you to come to that?!”, he asked.

About 52 years

Maybe it is a disorienting time in your life. Maybe circumstances in your life have changed.

Maybe a sacred space that you have counted on for stability is being remodeled – as our church sanctuary is.

Maybe you or people important in your life have grown, changed. Maybe you too are seeking to get your feet on the ground again. Maybe in all of this you are seeing, feeling, what you hadn’t noticed before.

And maybe discovering that “disoriented” is a lot more true and real than your old ways of putting everything together into the box of “Fine. Fine. Everything is just fine.” Maybe you too can’t and don’t want to put things together the same way. Want to discover more about the new ways being shown to you.

No, “disorientation”, I am learning is not a “bad” place to be.

Walking through these past four months with a compass in hand helped to orient and ground my passage through the gift of that time.

Now, I am learning to trust in a different, internal compass, which is leading me forth in trust, in faith, that even in the disorientation of today, the way is opening as I find my way back home again.