shouts of joy

Why does this all feel so familiar?  As I forced myself away from technology today it all felt so familiar. Not the fact that I had escaped my phone or computer, not the days realization that my phone and computer are the only things connecting me to the ones I love, it wasn't even the dragging of my feet, or the ache in my right knee. After a day has come and gone with a morning voice that never warmed up, it's no place I've ever been, nor would I like to take off my coat and stay for long. But it is familiar. It's cold out there. Winter is here again. And that voice sure knows how to sink itself deep like the sharp stabbing needles of a frostbite. When does the winter melt away? When will we see a harvest? It's hard to believe anything grows in a season of ice. As I begin my season of shoveling through the familiarity, I'm blessed with this memory from some time ago: "There is One who calls you the beloved. You must constantly go back to the truth of...

The space in between two peaks lies a distance that seems dream-shattering. We look for the trail, the bridge, some kind of escape, but there isn't one. Our human eye can only measure a mean distance. The space is so far, the trek is so long, the goal seems out of any man's reach. But with time it won't matter, because it's the time that will bridge the distance, providing us a season to climb down from our peak, into the valley, through the abode and back up the next peak. It was just yesterday I sat in church. As I sat there I fought to hold in the bursts of laughter that wanted to escape during the reverence of the song service. How ironic that I, a lone high school teacher from Salem, would be sitting in a sanctuary in Portland in a row of seven of my own classmates from college. The boy on my left: a fond, old memory of camping trips, rock climbing, long weekends spent at Priest Lake, and a cousin of my best friend. There on my right: another kind of fond memor...