my favorite hiking companions
a great man died tonight
A great man died tonight …
Lynn Nielsen was great by the only measure that matters, that so many of us loved him.
We loved him for his courage, living and dying with multiple myeloma. Eventually it claimed his life, but it could never diminish his vitality or his humor or his eagerness for what tomorrow might bring.
We loved him for his faith, unconventional and genuine and exuberant, a faith that understood that God’s desire for us is life in all its fullness, here and now.
But, above all, we loved him for his joy. Teaching was joy to him, that unique setting where teachers and students come together to challenge each other and grow each other and put personal gifts and skills to use to nurture the skills and gifts in another person. A most unselfish profession! His students, from Iowa and from all points of the globe, brought joy to him, and he to them. And he found and made joy in his colleagues, my wife among them. He was the one who brought my wife into the College of Education and the University of Northern Iowa family, and for that she and I are most grateful.
And he found joy in making beauty, extraordinary beauty for all of us to relish! He made beauty with his music, playing organ for worship or jazz piano for the delight of the patrons of Elms Pub at New Aldaya Lifescapes and for concert-goers at other venues including our church. He made beauty at his home on Tremont Street — lovely backyard gardens, an interior decor warm and inviting and eclectic and elegant. He made beauty with his parties! Good food, good drink, extraordinary dishes and desserts, all carefully prepared and arranged by Lynn, the consummate host, the consummate friend. Parties for laughter and for music and for bringing people together, for making new friends and for treasuring every happy moment with friends old and dear.
He was a friend, old and dear, to so many. We loved him, for many good reasons, but we would have loved him regardless, just for how he loved us and for how he loved life. No one can replace him. No one could. No one should.
It is grief for us to lose him. But what joy it was to share some of our life with him!
he swam!
Today we took two of our grandsons and our two dogs for a hike in the woods. On the way back home, Toby (our six-month-old Australian Shepherd) jumped in the pond that borders our house and swam after two geese.
I was thrilled! Because Stoney (our nine-year-old Aussie) does NOT like to swim. When I take Toby hiking in Maine this summer, maybe I’ll take him up Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park and he can swim with me in Sargent Mountain Pond!
kilauea erupts
heaven can wait
I don’t expect to go to heaven.
At one time I did. At one time, making myself worthy of heaven was the focus of my life. From early childhood, I learned what it meant to ask Jesus into my heart with the hope of spending eternity with him in heaven. I learned to live for the sake of heaven. I wanted to please God now, do what God wanted now, so that one day, when my life came to its inevitable end, I might enjoy that great reward, life without end in a perfect place.
That childhood faith became my adolescent faith and the faith I carried into young adulthood. By that time, my faith was more informed and articulate and nuanced, but the core of my belief remained the same: faith in Jesus secured for me, and for all who share that faith, the reward of eternal life in heaven.
I don’t believe that anymore.
The seeds of a changed mind were planted almost from the beginning. I never questioned the wisdom of seeking heaven first, of ordering this life for the sake of the next, but, even as a child, I didn’t find the idea of heaven particularly appealing. I knew heaven wasn’t about harps and wings and streets of gold, but it was not clear to me what it was about. Being with God, enjoying God’s company, singing endless songs of praise, something like endless church? Any heaven I could imagine was amorphous and ethereal, a strange and sterile and wholly unfamiliar realm. In contrast, the beauty and substance and energy and delights of this life and this earth seemed a whole lot more attractive to me!
My love for this earth was one of those seeds, a seed planted by my father. He taught me to swim and paddle and sail. He took me hiking and woke me up before dawn to take me birding. My father birthed faith in me, but he also birthed in me an abiding fondness for mountain and stream and lake and forest.
My mother read to me. She read aloud the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. The seven Narnia books were a seed, too, framing as much as the church did my early sense of Christian character and Christian hope. It was the last of these novels especially, the one entitled, The Last Battle, that planted in my imagination a vision of a “heaven” that was not foreign and uninviting, but familiar and compelling, a vision of a new world like this one — filled with mountains and streams and forests and familiar faces — a new world that was this one, only bigger somehow, somehow more real, more substantial, more alive.
But the most important seed of a changed faith was faith itself. I expected heaven, but I didn’t believe in heaven. I believed in Jesus. I loved Jesus, not for the sake of what Jesus might do for me, but because Jesus was worthy of my love. I wanted to follow him, learn from him, let him reshape my mind.
And he did. Jesus led me back into the story and that story changed my mind. As a philosophy student and seminarian and young pastor, I began to read the Bible more closely, more carefully, and the pieces of a new way of thinking began to take shape. I heard the creation story, as if for the first time, and its repeated refrain: “And God saw that it was good!” Yes! This is good: this world and all that fills it! This is what God loves! This is what God cares about! This is what God calls good!
I heard the Hebrews’ witness to God’s concern, not for disembodied souls, but for whole persons, for whole communities of persons. I heard the call to do justice for the poor, to welcome the stranger, and to care for the land. I understood that the human creature made in God’s image is an indivisible entity, spirit and body, not the sum of separable parts. I was enthralled with the biblical vision of “shalom, ” a vision of peace, but more than peace, a vision of fruitfulness and bounty and justice and harmony and fullness of life.
And I heard this: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” Coming down! Heaven comes down; we don’t go up! Those words from the book of Revelation were a revelation.
Of course! This is what God loves — this earth, these human beings. This is what God saves. We don’t go to heaven; heaven — God — comes to us, not to take us away to another place, but to make this place new, to make us new, to make “heaven” of this earth, to make this earth a place of “no more death, no more grief or crying or pain.”
I can’t wait …
irresistible
reminders of an (almost) perfect day
This is one of my favorite photographs from a five-mile hike over Penobscot and Sargent mountains in Acadia National Park. It frames the reflection of the Bubbles overlooking the north end of Jordan Pond. I like the way the photo turned out, granite mounds reflected in the still waters, framed by green branches and a half-submerged rock in the foreground.
Stoney, our two-and-a-half year old Australian Shepherd, accompanied me on the hike and we both had a great time that day. At least I know I did!
I had been anticipating and planning this day for a year. Each year for three years, Stoney and I have done a hike in the Jordan Pond area. Last year I heard about Sargent Mountain Pond and decided we needed to see it! The pond lies between the two summits and offers both unusually beautiful views and a refreshing rest stop mid-hike. Here’s a view of the pond …
As Stoney and I headed up the trail from Jordan Pond House, the Pond and the flanks of Penobscot Mountain to the west and Pemetic Mountain to the east of the Pond were engulfed in low-lying clouds. But the clouds gave way to strong sunlight as we made our way onto the summit ridge. The day was everything I had anticipated … and more. The climbing was challenging and exhilarating; Sargent Mountain Pond was a delight; and the views from the top of Sargent were an unexpected treat. It was an (almost) perfect day! And a day I will remember for a long time … at least until next year and our next hike!
(Click on any photo to see a larger image!)