Going Home

 

Judy and I just completed a 3,200 miles road trip to the places of my roots, and where Judy was born too, though she doesn’t like to admit it.  While the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history was raging, and drought persisted, we headed toward Minnesota in early June. 

Driving from the West of the United States through the Texas panhandle and the great plains of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa, we viewed the progression from drought and the arid lands of the Southwest to the increasingly verdant and lush green landscapes of the Midwest.  In Minnesota and Wisconsin, the roads are often lined with trees, like walls of green as fields of grass, row crops, and wooded meadows are displayed around us. I am always amazed at the transformation from desert and mountains to the humid foliage of the Midwest in summer; even Oklahoma starts to green up about halfway through, though dry land farming seems to be suffering this summer in Western Kansas and Nebraska.

The large cities continue to extend their urban sprawl as houses and commercial developments are built on rich farmland, sealing up that soil forever.  We drove many miles of blue highways going and returning, passing through small towns with scattered evidence of a better life in the past; shuttered motels and stores, along with Trump signs and flags, pointing to the divide between urban and rural America that we have read about. 

In Iowa you don’t see livestock on the pastures anymore.  Pigs, chickens, and cattle are grown under huge, enclosed buildings in animal factories, while in states further West thousands of beef cattle are confined in large feedlots under the blazing sun. It was 107 degrees the day we drove through Kansas coming home.  On our return trip we fought high winds all the way from Minnesota to New Mexico, which, some say, is an indicator of global warming.  

A trip home always prompts many memories.  This is especially true when I visit the place where I was born and grew up, a small farm near Kenyon, Minnesota.  I was born on that farm in 1938; in the same house my grandmother, Ellen Solberg, was born in 1880.  Judy and I returned to live there for a dozen years after we came back to the States from Ecuador.  We later we moved to Montana to give Judy a chance to live in the State of her youth for about the same length of time. Equity, I guess.  We built a new house, now almost 30 years ago, and planted trees that now extend 60 feet up toward the sky.  A veritable jungle has overtaken the old farmhouse, and the people who bought our acres and the adjacent farm are in a constant battle to keep ahead of mother nature, mowing the grass and undergrowth that continually tries to take back the land.  So far, mowers on small tractors are winning the fight, though in the “woods” where I played, and we grazed the cows in the summer, trees and brush have completely taken over. 

Nostalgia invades our minds as we reminisce about the good life we had there, with the next sentence being “well, we just couldn’t keep up with it, could we?”  I think about the place as well as the people who lived there when I grew up, and we remember the neighbors and our connection to Holden Lutheran Church and the rural life we enjoyed during the years of our return.  A quote from one of the audio books we listened to on the road caught my attention; home is not just a place - it is the people we choose to love. 

We visited some of those we love; spent quality time with my siblings and stayed with Judy’s sister in Minneapolis.  At an Aaker cousin’s reunion, we joked about how we all now look so old, sharing stories about our most recent health issues as well as memories of our grandparents and parents.  With sadness we found that one cousin has Alzheimer’s.  And though we are astounded at how quickly life has sped by, there was much joy in spending time with four generations of our progeny: daughter Lani, granddaughter Leslie, and the “cutest kids in the world” great granddaughters, Zalina and Lyonna.

We made a visit to our friend and former pastor, Mike, who is dying of cancer, and is determined to live well in his remaining time in the assurance of his faith and die knowing he was a faithful servant.  We stayed a night with Ken, a house mate at Luther college decades ago.  Now 90 years old, he has just gone through the tribulation of losing his wife, Deanna, who succumbed to the awful disease ALS. Those conversations were 80% listening.  As it should be. 

Some day we will return home again, to where many loved ones lie in the earth in Holden’s cemetery.  

We have already picked out the place

Gazing up at the window of the bedroom
of my youth.

                                   The “new” house we built, and trees we planted - a worthy legacy.

 Vern, me, Lois and Jean sharing memories
of growing up on the farm.

Waiting for the Will of God

We have finished a five-week discussion of my book A Spirituality of Service, and the last session was on the chapter titled "Waiting for the Will of God".  Participation of members from St Luke Lutheran in Albuquerque was lively and enriching, making it easy and fun to be the facilitator.  I am reminded that a chapel talk I gave at Luther College ten years ago was based on this theme and story.  This was the first post I made on this blog when I started it ten years ago.  So, because this topic is fresh in my mind and it elicited such enriching discussion, I am reposting it along with a very gracious comment from a longtime friend and colleague, Greg Rake.   

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning (Psalm 130:5, 6).

As we came into this beautiful building today those of the class of 1962 and before may have tried to orient ourselves as to where the old C. K. Prues gym/multi-purpose building stood, the one that burned down 50 years ago during my senior year. The floor of the auditorium stood almost exactly on this spot. It was the place where we attended daily chapel. Try to imagine about a thousand folding chairs on that gym floor filled with students and faculty every day for chapel. 

 I probably listened to about 4-500 chapel talks during those years. I don’t remember any specific details of those meditations, but I do recall the deep commitment to faithfulness and the passion for service to church and society that was expressed by those many pastors and teachers who shared their knowledge, wisdom and life stories with us students, often in chapel talks.

Memories of encounters with those and other caring and questioning mentors along the way influenced me then and continue to do so to this day as I have tried to live out my life of faith and service in the world. It was during those college days when questions about what to do with our lives and what kind life we wanted it to be were spinning around in our heads. And, indeed, there seemed to be such a wide-open expanse of time and possibilities ahead. The question then was this: What is God's will for my life?, and certainly that question, the discernment of God's will for my life, did not get resolved in one fell swoop! No, it continued on throughout my career and journey of faith and service and showed up in the most unexpected times and places around the world.

And now we can hardly believe it - 50 years have sped by. And so I think back on and remember some of those I met along the way here at Luther and others whom God kept putting in my path to remind me to watch for the will of God.

Some of those people on the path were long-term relationships - others were brief momentary encounters. Let me tell you of one such fleeting encounter many years ago.

One sunny morning some years ago I was walking on a trail in the Cuchumatane mountains in Guatemala. As I walked through pastures and fields to visit farms and homes of the Indian families who participated in a sheep project that had been of much benefit in this area I came upon an old woman sitting on a stone wall. Her deeply wrinkled and leathery brown face displayed the effects of many years exposure to the direct sun of this high altitude.

Buenas días, Señora, Como está usted? “Good morning, madam, how are you?” I asked.

She smiled, showing her few remaining teeth. “Buenas días, señor! Estoy esperando la voluntad de Dios!” “Good morning, sir. I am waiting for the will of God,” she replied.

I was curious about this greeting and stopped to chat. She told me that she lives alone. “My husband died three years ago, and I have no one to take care of me now.”

“What about your children?”

“I have none,” she said. “I live up there,” as she pointed up the steep slope behind me, “on the other side of that crest.” And I could imagine the humbleness of her abode.. very little of the material things of this world, a dirt floor, a thatch roof, adobe walls.

She carried a piece of kindling wood and a small bag of food. She told me that she was out looking for food and I supposed that this old widow went around to her neighbors each day asking for help in her old age. And surely her neighbors would have shared with her as is the custom in that Mayan culture.

As she spoke about herself and her life, tears welled up in her eyes. “I am 83 years old, and I’m waiting for the will of God,” she repeated. In Spanish the word esperar means both to wait and to expect. I wondered for a moment if she was actually expecting to be called by God that very day—but I rather suspect that her attitude was just an openness to the Spirit of God every single day of her life.

Then she looked right at me and said, “Dios es Grande!”

I agreed—“Yes, God is Great.” I felt comforted and assured that the Spirit was right there hearing her real and sincere supplication to God—to take her to be at God’s side—or just waiting to see what was God’s will for her that day, a habit of a life time.

I was warmed and touched by that brief and poignant encounter on the path that day. Was it because her tears were so authentic and not intended to solicit my pity? She was not asking anything of me—not begging nor preying on my guilt and asking for sympathy. No, instead she was giving something to me—something deep within her—a simple and primitive campesina faith in the goodness of God.  

 As I departed I said, “May God bless you,” and she responded—“And to you-Gracias.”

Walking on up the path that morning I thought about waiting for the will of God in my own life, thankful for her testimony; a reminder to me. And since that brief encounter on the path her image and witness to me has come back into my consciousness many time over the years, perhaps the prompting of the Spirit.

The old Mayan woman had shown me her faith that morning and I am sure I was more enriched by her than she was by me in that chance encounter on a cool December morning.

When I am on a trip, I am not always on the move. There are many pauses and stops along the way. Sometimes I become impatient with the pace. I found this to be especially true in Latin America with regard to time. Politeness and relationships are more highly valued than promptness and the achievement of an agenda. Taking time to chat, to listen, to be quiet and to wait patiently are important values.

This was not easy for me. But the prayer of waiting for the will of God may be just that—sitting still in the presence of God, allowing the Spirit of Jesus to pray within me—watching for the will of God.

In writing about waiting prayer, Sue Monk Kidd said:

[Waiting prayer] has little to do with petition and intercession and getting God to fix things. . . . We place ourselves in postures of the heart, in the stillness that enables us to become aware of what God is doing so that we can gradually say yes to it with our whole being. . . . Attentiveness is vital to waiting. The word wait comes from a root word meaning “to watch.” To wait on God means to watch keenly for God’s coming. Watchers and waiters were nearly synonymous.[i]

Earlier I said that I do not remember the specifics of all those chapel talks I heard as a student here at Luther, but that's not quite true.

At the conclusion of each of his talks, campus Pastor Gordon Selbo always finished with this question: “And what about you?” He wanted to bring the point of the message and the Scripture text right back to us and challenge us to ponder its meaning and application to our lives.

So, I leave you with that same question. What about you? What about you as you wait and watch today, these days, this year and the years to come for is the will of God for your life?

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[i] Kidd, Sue Monk, When the Heart Waits, San Francisco, Harper, 1992. pp 129, 130. Used by permission.