Tag Archives: MN

cellular

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It feels like cellular shift.

We are moving.

I have been appointed to serve as Lead Pastor at Christ Church in Rochester, MN. This will happen in mid June of this year.

We are moving.

This means many things. It means imagining the jostle of moving away from the city in which five of six of our children and Cooper’s mother live. It means being an hour and 1/2 farther away from our cabin and my mother.

And it means leaving churches with whom we have made life for eleven and nine years.

It is cellular, this shift.

We who are United Methodist agree when we are ordained that we will be itinerant. What that means is that “the world is our parish” as John Wesley saw it and we agree that we will be deployed in ministry by the Bishop and the Cabinet.

It means a phone call comes and we trust that God is in the midst of cellular change.

There is grief in it and a sense of such immense gratitude for the lives I have been blessed to encounter through these eleven years. I’ll have time to sort all of that out in the months to come. Tears flow readily.

And, there are adventures and learning ahead.

I was blessed to serve in Duluth. I am blessed to serve at Richfield. I will be blessed to serve at Christ Church in Rochester.

Blessing. It is cellular.

We are moving.

land forms

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My forebears came to this country from Scotland.

While visiting Scotland I felt at home. It was as if the land spoke the language of my soul.

After visiting Scotland, I understand why my ancestors settled in the Duluth area. Having spent precious growing up years in Duluth and having had the opportunity to raise my own children there, it is so very clear to me that northern Minnesota echoes with the rocky and chiseled power of Scotland.

Land forms us and helps us find our way.

After spending a tense three weeks navigating the emotional angst of having a very ill son, the coast became clear for some time away.

We headed for the north shore of Lake Superior and there the land held and blessed. We were able to clamber up rivers and sit in the flowing streams. The big lake soothed and the sun-warmed rocks leeched the tired and worn places of soul-clench.

My cells knew that I was home.

And so I am.