The Change

Coming to the farm after a life of standing in the pulpit has been life changing.  There is no way I could have imagined eleven years ago the person I would find myself in the process of becoming.  I knew life in a rural area would be different than the urban area of the years of ministry, but I assumed it would be more about superficial external changes rather than internal core value changes.  The farm did not just provide a different environmental venue in which to live, but an ongoing experience of being overwhelmed by God's holy creation.    

It is one thing to take an afternoon hike through the country side and another to set out for a walk like the Appalachian Trail which will take six months.  It is one thing to walk on the edge of the shore where the white water foams at the completion of its journey and another to go out into the deep and jump into waters that have no edge.  It is one thing to move in and out of moments of experiencing creation and still another to be constantly immersed in its beauty, power, and unpredictability.    Being here has brought me into an awareness of the silence I often tried to manufacture and the solitude which I saw as worthy of pursuing is something which now comes to me.   

There is so little about the way the Holy One is experienced that was anticipated when the transition from there to here took place at the moment of leaving the  life of the confined spaces for the life of the open spaces.  I find myself deeply grateful for the blessings of holy awareness which have come and continue to come in what seems like such ordinary moments.  But, the truth is there is no ordinary moment.  There are no ordinary places.  There were times when it seemed that there were holy moments and not so holy moments, sacred places and secular places.  I now realize I was wrong.  Every place and every moment is holy.  Everything is a holy and precious treasure.