Starting Again

There’s a writer in me trying her best to cut a path through the saturated rain forest of my everyday life. I’m 53 and this has been going on about 40 years. This writer in me is getting more irritable, and a bit more frantic. So, I take my keyboard in hand like a machete and begin to slice.

Did I say my life was a rain forest? I meant a desert. Somehow it often feels like both or either on any given day: sometimes frenetic, overgrown, and slogging –And at other times, parched, crusty and thirsty. I’m a pastor of a small urban “mainline Protestant” church trying to cut that path to the promised land. I think these days, most of us are lost. If it’s a rainforest day – we’re stuck in the mud of the millions of details and demands of trying to be pastor/CEO/monk/non-profit director/marketer/first-responder/building supervisor/justice advocate/easy-going pal. If it’s a desert day – well, we lay our heads on our stone pillow at night and wonder where God is.

This blog, I hope, will offer some reflections and images helpful for both kinds of days, maybe some “living water,” if you will. I write from a pastor’s perspective, but also as a spiritual pilgrim through a weary land. I’d love to have some company along the way.