Signs of Spring in the Cotswolds

After worship in Edinburgh on Sunday morning, we drove several hours to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s home in England, arriving just in time for evensong worship at Holy Trinity Church, the church where Shakespeare was baptized and buried. Entering the church, I was greeted by a retired pastor who was also slipping in late. He and I stooped to climb through the small door within a door to the church together and I again felt quite at home entering into worship with others, who like me, had come in out of the cold.

The Associate Vicar, Nicki Chatterton, shared an insightful message on Luke 8, a passage where Jesus calms the storm on the Sea before calming the storm inside the demon-possessed man from the Gerasenes. She pointed out something that had never occurred to me before . . . that Jesus couldn’t be roused by the storm itself . . . but the cries of his disciples roused him immediately. If only we could remember that Jesus will always respond to our cries for help . . . .

Monday was a day of orientation and errands, but we treated ourselves to a production of Love’s Labours Lost at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was as if they had placed an entire manor house on the stage with costumes to match . . . setting the story in the season just prior to WWI. It was like watching Shakespeare through the lens of Downton Abbey. It was absolutely beautiful—both the staging and the play itself . . . a wonderful study of love.

Today, I had the pleasure of touring through the Cotswolds with Tom Benjamin (http://www.gocotswolds.co.uk). When people think of typical England, I think it’s the Cotswolds they’re thinking of . . . beautiful golden stone villages nestled in rolling hills populated with sheep and deer—Chipping Campden, Snowshill, Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water—all of the villages between Bath in the south and Stratford-upon-Avon in the north.

Though it’s only February 10, the Snow Drops were already blooming in Snowshill. The daffodils are also starting to push up out of the ground. Hard to believe that spring is coming already in this part of the world. So sorry to hear that it’s snowing at home!

So Many Churches . . . So Little Time . . .

The luxury of being in English-speaking countries is that there are so many choices for worship. It’s so hard to decide where we should go on Sunday morning. In Edinburgh, we could worship at St. Mary’s, (Scottish Episcopal) in the Dalkeith Country Park on the estate where Ken was teaching. Or, we could worship at the beautiful St. Giles (Church of Scotland – Presbyterian) an Edinburgh landmark on the Royal Mile (the street that runs from the Edinburgh Castle at the top to Holyrood Palace at the bottom).

When I asked our tour guide, where he’d recommend we’d worship, he mentioned that St. Giles had a new pastor . . . from America . . . and that another, Episcopalian church downtown had doubled in size recently . . . a church he described as having “happy-clappy worship.” That got our interest. He couldn’t remember the name of the church, but knew that it was Episcopalian. We set out to find it, curious to know how a congregation in the big city had transformed itself into a growing church (Scotland and England have been ahead of us on the curve of church decline for quite some time now).

We wandered from the Old Town to the New Town in search of the church without a name (how often we set off on searches for we know not exactly what . . . ). Instead, we found the most beautiful and welcoming congregation you could imagine. At first, we weren’t even sure it was a church, but the building was striking . . . shaped in an oval. Even as we were standing outside the door wondering if it was THE church we were looking for, a woman opened the door and welcomed us into have a look.

The sanctuary was absolutely gorgeous . . . and our hostess, Maria, opened the doors wide to welcome us. We realized quickly that it was not the church we were seeking as it was Church of Scotland (Presbyterian, in the tradition of John Knox, the reformer), but oh what a beautiful side trip!

The name of the church was St. Andrew’s and St. George’s West. Clearly they had been victim to the mainline decline that has been eating away at our congregations for the past several decades.  In closing one campus (due to declining attendance and income), they were able to beautifully restore the sanctuary in which we found ourselves.

Maria talked about the many ways in which they’d been experimenting . . . with brief forms of worship on Sunday mornings (9 a.m. was a brief prayer service in which participants circled the altar, 9:45 was “messy” church – a 30 minute service focused on making children welcome–where anything goes, and 11 a.m. was the traditional one-hour service with choir).

Marie introduced us to her pastor, Ian Gilmour. Turns out, Ian had just been in the southern United States on sabbatical last year exploring the spiritual hymns that had grown out of the south during the times of slavery. When I said I pastored a congregation in the St. Paul area, he said, oh, the territory of Garrison Keillor (he had heard Keillor speak in Edinburgh!).

One of the beautiful things about travel is that it helps you realize just how small the world really is. Sadly for us, a concert that would share that music was next week when we would be long gone from Edinburgh. The blessing was a chance for us to chat about the state of the church today and promise prayers for one another and our congregations. Ian shared this prayer with us, written by one of the elders of St. Andrew’s and St. George’s West, Arthur Chapman, that had been published in a recent history of the church, The One Tree. I think in some ways, it’s a prayer for all of our churches:

 O God, source of all being, we pray for your church in this place at this time.  Grant that we may be blessed with renewed strength, faith, and love.  May we discern your will and so enable your purpose to be shown in all we say and do.  Help us to find new ways  to bring your good news of abundant living and wasteful loving to the communities around us. Let your spirit of love and peace, hospitality and honesty, community and challenge dwell among us.  Grant that this place may continue to be a place of love to the loveless, hope to the hopeless, and elebration and joy to the downhearted and depressed. May the light of your love, the peace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit shine out to inform and illuminate our world. Amen.

I think both of us had tears in our eyes as we prayed it together.   To be a stranger welcomed by the hospitality that the prayer spoke of was a rich blessing indeed. May all of our Christian communities be the places that we pray they will be with these words.

On Sunday morning, we ended up worshipping at St. Giles’ Cathedral. The pastor there was in his fourth month of ministry, having just recently been called to serve in Edinburgh. It made us smile when he quoted Luther Seminary professor Karoline Lewis in his sermon! Funny how entering into Christian community wherever you are always makes you feel like you’re at home!

The Kindness of Strangers

I thought I was ready for navigating through Scotland on the left-hand side of the road, but I instinctively tried to enter the driver’s seat on the left instead of the right when I picked the car up from the Eurocar rental office. That first mistake . . . along with seeing the scrapes and dents along the side of the car before I even started driving it started raising my blood pressure. It took me about 10 minutes just to figure out the internal workings of the car . . . how to get the emergency brake to release, how to insert the key, how to signal a turn and turn on the lights . . .things that I typically never even have to think about. It was a humbling experience.

Amazingly, I made it from the Glasgow airport (with only one complete circling of the airport after I missed my intended turn off of the third roundabout I encountered) to our B&B in Edinburgh with nothing more serious than a case of the jitters. But it got a little tougher after that. Though I had printed Google Map directions to Dalkeith, a town outside of Edinburgh where Ken is teaching—along with some very helpful instructions from the B&B owner—I never saw the name of the first road I was supposed to turn on. A drive that should have taken only 15 minutes stretched onto about 45 . . . and I was getting nervous that the sun would set and I’d be even more handicapped in the dark trying to find my way down roads that never seemed to be marked . . . and certainly weren’t marked in the way that I was accustomed for them to be . . . and roads that were a lot narrower than the roads I was accustomed to driving.

I felt like Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire . . . totally dependent on the kindness of strangers as I asked for directions from one, then another, then another local to help me navigate to my desired destination. A gas station attendant, a non-native English speaking grocery store employee who was retrieving carts in the parking lot I turned around in, and finally a police officer making a traffic stop in front of me helped me find my way. But each of them had a different orientation . . . so each directed me according to their own understanding of the best way.

It felt a little bit like the journey of faith. Sometimes we don’t know where we’re going . . . and we are dependent on others to help illumine the way for us. Their wisdom and experience are invaluable, but ultimately, we each have to make the journey ourselves . . . to fully own it as ours.

When I finally found my way to Ken at the Dalkeith Palace owned by the Duke of Buccleuch (and leased by the Wisconsin in Scotland program), I was delighted. It was wonderful to be reunited. With Ken, I feel a sense of security that I don’t quite feel when I’m on my own. But, the journey to meet him taught me something important about humility, trust and patience.

After Ken and I had dinner (a wonderful Scottish salmon), I found my way back to the B&B without incident . . . and was so emboldened by the experience that I went back to Dalkeith later that night to pick Ken up after his evening class!

Wow!! What a difference a day makes. The next day, I was giving directions to other tourists!

Stopover in Iceland

The northern lights drew me to Iceland, but my stopover on the way to Europe was worthwhile even though cloudy skies prevented any sightings of the Aurora Borealis during my short stay. The natural beauty of Iceland was breathtaking. Volcanoes, waterfalls, hot springs and geysers were all within a day’s tour even though I couldn’t pronounce any of the sites we visited with any confidence (Pingvellir National Park, Gullfoss Waterfall on the Hvita River, Geysir in Strokkur).

Visiting a Unesco World Heritage Site (Pingvelllir) and seeing the rift valley where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are drifting apart was amazing (and would be a familiar site to you Game of Thrones fans). But after braving the windy cold, a highlight for me was spending an afternoon at the famous Blue Lagoon, swimming through milky blue hot spring water and meeting people from all over the world. Soaking at the Blue Lagoon was a wonderfully refreshing way to step into this sabbatical, and a wonderful introduction to many folks whose countries I will be visiting soon.

It was amazing to see what a global crowd is drawn to Iceland in winter and how friendly folks are when they’re on holiday. I had wonderful conversations with many folks, including a couple who came from the same county in Ireland that my niece Emer is from (Galway), a librarian from South England, a young couple from France, some Welsh women, and a Chinese student studying in France for the year, and a couple of fishermen from Louisville, KY). It’s fun to guess home countries based on dialects. (One interesting discovery was that many Icelanders speak with a Scottish brogue. Scotts were brought to Iceland as slaves centuries ago . . . and also as wives for the men from Norway who settled here).

In addition to a banquet of dialects, Iceland also had a banquet of culinary delights. The Kentucky gents convinced me to try Minke Whale . . . and it was surprisingly good–like eating a finely prepared beef tenderloin. Who knew? A little whale appetizer and a bowl of lobster soup with a local Gull lager made for a lovely meal. And, who knew that eating licorice encased in chocolate would be so good . . . another Icelandic treat. I was warned to avoid the dried fish and decided, instead, to eat more chocolate.

For this Lutheran pastor, it was fun to be in a country that was predominately Lutheran . . . since the 1500s when the Catholic bishop was beheaded for gaining a little too much political influence and reformers started emigrating from Germany. The reformation took hold swiftly. All future bishops were Lutheran! The conversion from Catholicism was so complete that there remain only two Catholic churches in all of Iceland. (It’s also interesting to note that Iceland had a female bishop before the ELCA did!).

Iceland is a very modern and progressive country. Their use of geothermal power is an inspiration for other developed nations to seek new clean, sustainable/renewable energy in the future. Who would have thought a country so small could do something so big?? There may be a lesson for all of us to trust that we have the power within us to effect change for the good wherever we are and whatever resources God entrusts to us.

Just so you can hear a little of the native Icelandic dialect, here’s the Lord’s Prayer . . .

Packing for the Journey

On February 2, the day following our annual meeting, I will begin my sabbatical, leaving the country for three months on an international journey that will take me to Iceland, Scotland, England, Germany, France, Italy, and The Netherlands. During sabbatical, I will be celebrating the natural wonders of the world that God created, worshipping with congregations of all shapes and sizes, and viewing sacred artwork in many galleries and cathedrals. It’s amazing to think that I will be gone from mid-winter to late spring.

Since I’ve never been away from home for that length of time, I’ve been getting advice from all kinds of people about what to pack for the journey. Jesus told his disciples not to pack anything for their journeys (Luke 9:3), but I’m going to be toting a few things along with me on sabbatical. In addition to a totally black and gray wardrobe (better to hide the dirt), maps and guidebooks and lots of sabbatical reading on church leadership and marriage enrichment for baby boomers (mostly on Kindle—which only weighs a few ounces), a Bible (also on Kindle), and a journal, I’ll be taking my church directory and a very small candle with me. I want to remember you regularly in my prayers on sabbatical just like I do at home . . . and I hope that you’ll remember me (and Ken) and the staff in your prayers during this time of sabbatical too.

I may be packing for the adventure of a lifetime, but I’ve also been working with our worship team to pack a wonderful assortment of experiences into the next several months for you too. During Lent, Holy Week and Easter, you will have a veritable feast of preaching—with Pastor Nate and many other gifted preachers from our very own congregation. During mid-week Lenten worship, Rev. Mary Pechauer will lead a series called The Cup of Life, to encourage you to find renewal in this sabbatical season too (See The Cup of Life story in this issue to learn more.).

I will return to church on May 28; and I’m already looking forward to sharing stories about this season of renewal in our lives. Sunday, May 31 (the Sunday following Memorial Day) we’re planning a reunion celebration. Please mark that date on your calendar, because I will be eager to reconnect with you after my time away. During my absence, you can follow my sabbatical journey through The Traveling Pastor blog on our website.

Your traveling pastor,

Pastor Pam