Staff Retreat at Tahoe, March 18-22

After an epic Sabbath involving St. Patrick's Day festivities and my young adults taking over the church service, I was all too happy to hit the road again.  This time, I had a traveling companion--the other associate pastor, Gary Smith, and instead of the 5, we took the scenic Route 395.

I had never driven Route 395 myself before, and it was worth the trip.  It dazzled me with scenery of such intense beauty, from the starkness of naked desert land against the purple sky to the warmth of Red Rock Canyon to forests, frosted with snow.  There are few towns on that highway, and it felt good to be away from the relentless bustle of LA to behold the lovely beauty of sparsely-populated nature.  Gary's company made it even more fun.

Our senior pastor, Donald Smith, arrived at the time share in Tahoe shortly after us.  Together, the three of us shopped for food for the week.  Being native to the kitchen (thanks to Camp Wawona), I took a leadership role with this.  We dined together, then Gary and I lost spectacularly at pool to two young men from the Bay Area.  Knowing better than to continue to challenge such pool virtuosos, we retreated to the room, where the three of us played Upwords, a modified form of Scrabble, before settling down for the night. 

The gentlemen were kind enough to give me the bed, shuttered from the rest of the place, while they chivalrously took the floor of the time share's living room.  As their chatter fell into silence and peace descended on the room, I reflected on how glad I was of it.  I really, really needed solitude and the ability to defrag after such an epic weekend, and to prepare for the weekend to come.

After a good breakfast together, we recapped the service and discussed small group matters at length.  In the afternoon, we walked through the snow to the movie theater at the Horizon to see One Thousand Words. 

There were only two people staffing the whole theater.  Our movie started 20 minutes late because they were cleaning up a popcorn emergency in Concessions.  I didn't know it was possible to staff a movie theater with just two people, and I admired the courage it took them to do it.  The film itself, after all that craziness, was really good.  Although it was a formulaic anti-workaholism morality tale, I liked how it approached the issue from such a different angle.  It was all about finding peace and learning to communicate in ways that are more important than words.

A thousand words.  I would be dead already, just from writing this email, if I were Eddie Murphy.

The following day, we really delved into the conceptual work of the small group series, then went to see The Lorax, which I loved even more on the second viewing than on the first.  The first time I saw it was with my buddy Hillary after a very, very long Sabbath, and the last song in it made me cry, it was so good.  Or maybe I was just tired. But I have been ridiculously obsessed with that song ("Let It Grow") ever since.

The last full day of our retread, we put together all of those ideas into a beautiful whole.  The outline of the series emerged, and I began to feel some excitement about it.  We also cleared the air on some frustrations from the last series, which was needed to build team unity.  I suffered a good deal during the first small group series  because we didn't do this kind of prep work on it, and I write the curriculum.  I go into this one excited and prepared.

For our last movie of the retreat, we saw John Carter, which was so sumptuous, it made me want to read the book it's based on.  Later, I would get a chance to see a number of its props and costumes on display at the El Capitan Theater, but even on this first viewing in a far humbler theater, I was struck by what a good film it is.  It seems a shame that it was marketed so badly.  Would it have killed them to mention that it was based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also wrote Tarzan?  Or that it had really good-looking people, great effects, and a compelling story in it? 

After the movie, Don and I took a walk in the sunlit day.  I really appreciated it because of how rarely I get some quality fresh air, sunshine, and exercise back at home.  It was also a good chat.

I made taco salad for dinner--no easy feat with the equipment at hand--and the guys seemed to like it. 

After a final worship together the next day, Gary and I took off towards home.  The landscapes on the 395 had changed; instead of the pure, crystalline snow there was earth and land exposed.  Heading towards Mojave, we almost run out of gas, but fortunately found a tiny station with one pump just after Red Rock. 

Once I had bid Gary good-bye, I tried to treat the rest of the evening as a night off.  I needed to store up my energy, because I was preaching that weekend.  The day after the retreat, I was preparing the most difficult sermon of my life thus far.  It was called "Journey On," and I forced myself to relive the days surrounding my brother's death over and over again in practice, weeping in the sanctuary of my church, until the telling had cleansed my grief. 

In some ways, even though this was the most difficult sermon I've ever preached, something about it makes me really feel like I can journey on myself.  It's been eight years since Justin died, and I've never had the courage to talk about the whole experience publicly in the US before.  Getting it out there and really processing it like that finally helped me to understand what the peace Justin was talking about the night before he died was all about. 

It's a beautiful dance between the hereafter and the hear-and-now.  It's preparing for eternity while enjoying the present.  It's loving the people with you right now while loving the Savior you'll see later.  It's accepting the light of grace for the future while trying to live a grace-filled life now.  No easy task, no strict science, but a wonderful art.

I hope you come to know that peace.  I am still working on it myself, but I'm learning more about it day by day.

A Little PUC Visit

It shocks an appalls me to realize that I haven't written to you since February, and that I am not one, not two, but THREE episodes behind. I apologize. I have been a terrible correspondent of late, and unless I set my priorities to stay in touch early in life, it will not happen as I get older and life REALLY gets crazy.

And it was partly because of life's inherent craziness that I decided to visit the PUC campus in February. Actually, I had a large variety of reasons, and I had been meaning to visit for months. What finally forced me to get around to doing it was a silly promise I made to my friend Diane in January about visiting for Mardi Gras, even though Mardi Gras isn't a terribly important holiday to either of us. Silly or not, I keep promises when I make them, so I stuck to my word and made the long trek across Highway 5 to the Napa Valley.

On that trip, I was shocked to have to pay $4.20 a gallon for gas. Oh, how I miss those days!

There was something cozily familiar about rushing to the caf to get to my 5:00 pm appointment with a church member. I sat in a booth, reading Les Miserables on my iPod, stirring occasionally as someone recognized me, or I recognized them. I was pleasantly surprised to run into my former room mate, Rae, who seems to be doing well. Of the nine room mates I had in my college experience, she was one of the better ones.

My appointment never showed up, and my friends ambushed me instead. With great interest, I listened to the details of their lives over the last few months. Some had experienced great joy; others, intensely difficult, painful life transitions. What was weird about it all was that even though we were catching up, it felt like I had never left. I even went to the library right afterwards, as used to be my habit, and curled up on what used to be my favorite couch (although it's in a different place now) with a book I'd been dying to get my hands on for some time.

What was this book? Walter Rea's The White Lie. Although I'd had a passing academic curiosity about it for some time, my interest in it grew when I figured out that my church, Alhambra, was the last post Pastor Rea held as the book was being published and the controversy over it arose. I'd been familiar with its basic premise for some years, but I never expected the actual tone of the book to be so passionate and punchy, like a verbal assault. I forced myself to keep reading, but it was truly a breath of fresh air to leave the library and visit my friends once more.

We celebrated each other's company into the night, laughing merrily as the power went out and we had to use flash lights to see. It was past midnight when I stumbled through the dark mist of the unlit campus back to my car to spend the night at my Aunt Cheryl's house in Napa.

When I returned to the campus in the morning, I was delighted that the first face I saw at PUC was that of my mentor, Professor Widmer. We met up later in the morning to catch up and to get some advice on various matters. While I was in the Religion Department to talk to him, I was overjoyed to run into Dr. Sheldon, and visit with her as well. I loved all my teachers at PUC, but those two stuck out more for me than others for some reason. I joined the Pastoral Ministry class, and tried to comfort my former classmates as they faced the massively dreaded conference interviews the following week.

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon continuing my research on Walter Rea. I looked through his papers in the Heritage Room, and asked questions of my librarian friends. It really helped me get a better picture of what the Adventist church looked like at that time. I had taken for granted that everyone has access to almost all of Ellen White's writings nowadays. It's weird to think of large chunks of her work being restricted and kept out of sight. No wonder so many people from that generation grew to resent her; they were not getting a well-rounded portrait of who she was. Just a caricature.

A good deal of the counsel I received from different corners of the campus also had to do with my book. I hate to admit it, but I've been pretty stalled on publishing arrangements for it. I guess I got discouraged. Whether or not it ever gets published, I still believe the creation of the book was an inherently useful act, as the ideas in it can always be used in a different way later on. It still forced me to engage with themes I deal with as a pastor all the time now. Still, I'd like to see it published.

I spent a delightful evening meeting with the other members of the board of a fledgling non-profit, Message of Grace Media. In this meeting, it felt like we finally figured out what we were really all about, and actually got things done. I also really, really enjoy their company. I don't know if Christian Edition has anything to do with this, but I've always sensed that there's a need for a community not comprised of people you work with to which you contribute your time and creativity. Message of Grace Media fills that need for me. It has almost nothing to do with my regular pastoral work, and for that, I find it utterly refreshing.

After that, I stayed up dangerously late with my buddies in Winning, playing drinking games using soda and generally getting in the girl time we all needed. I stayed past midnight to wish them a happy Mardi Gras, then reluctantly drove off the campus, wondering when I'd get a chance to visit them again. I slept like a rock at my aunt's house, and took the time to visit my great grandmother in Yountville before starting the long trek home. While I was at PUC, I took Sabbath afternoon lunches with Grandma Anabel for granted, and now I treasure each one. Like my visits up to PUC, I don't know when the next one will be.

The trip was short, but so intense and squeezed between so much activity, that it made me sick. I had a terrible fever the day after, but I went to work anyway. Even though my body was right to tell me to slow down, I did not regret the trip. I will always treasure the memory of that little jaunt up to PUC. In some ways, I feel like I did college too fast and entered the professional world too soon; for those few short days, I actually felt okay with being my own age.

Thank you for being patient with me at whatever age you met me. I wish you the very best, and hope you have had a happy Easter.