Openings

 Last week we headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior for a one part of my sabbatical.  Most specifically, our destination was my friend Anna's retreat, called, "The Spent Dandelion", a place she created to offer respite and reflection time to clergy (and others, I suspect; we all need respite and reflection).  Her place is right on the border of Two Harbors, Minnesota, in the forest and close to the greatest Great Lake.  Besides reflection and respite, one of the virtues of Two Harbors in the summer is a break from the summer heat.  It rarely gets above 75 degrees Fahrenheit and almost no one has air conditioning.

When we drove in Sunday afternoon, Anna was standing in the driveway, waving her arms and pointing us to our designated parking space.  Her husband and their four dogs were also there to welcome us (their cat, not so welcoming).

Almost the first thing Anna did was apologize, though.  It was not 75 degrees.  It was unusually warm for the area that week, and was around 90 as we spoke.  In fact, we had been commenting as we drove north, that we were expecting it to cool down any minute, and it didn't.  Like everyone else, they didn't have air conditioning, but all the windows were open and the fans were going, and they were expecting some "weather" that would cool things off.

Living just north of Houston as we do right now, we are used to hot weather, but also to air conditioning.  So it was a slight disappointment, I'll admit, to go to bed hot, with the fans on and the windows open on both sides of the apartment.  Only the dog didn't mind.  She delighted in looking out the window, and curled up on the bed to sleep.

But during the night, something magical happened.  Indeed, it was just as my host promised.  Some kind of weather came in (although not a huge storm), and the breezes coming through our open window were cool and refreshing.

I remembered this experience from childhood, although I had not felt it for a long time.  In our house growing up, there was no air conditioning, and I remember the windows open at night, box fans in the windows, sleeping with just a sheet on those steamy night.  Then, sometime in the night, the wind would turn, and the air coming in would  be cool and refreshing.

These days it seems like we keep the windows closed most of the time; in the winter, to keep it warm, and in the summer to keep it cool.  I didn't realize how much I  miss the feeling of air coming through open windows.  I didn't realize how much I needed cross-ventilation.

We keep the windows closed for many reasons -- excessive heat and cold, certain noises, the highway is too close, we are distracted by the neighbors, their music and their conversations.  (I remember hearing through the wall a very loud telephone conversation in the middle of the night in my first apartment.)  But I forgot how much we need fresh air, not just cross-ventilation, but cross-fertilization, to be stirred up by the breeze or the music or conversations that float through the air (well, some of them anyway).  I forgot how much I needed fresh air, open windows, open eyes, and ears.  

The open windows reminded me of something else too:  they reminded me of a childhood enchanted with God's presence, in the mysteries of the world, of nature, of all the things I was thirsty to know, and didn't yet.  They reminded me of the stories of scriptures, and the stories in fairy tales, and the stories from the books that I was starting to learn to read.  When did I close the window and learn to live in artificially comfortable temperatures almost all the time?  

I am thinking about this.

I just completed a course on spiritual direction.  Theoretically, I can go and be a spiritual director now.  I am still learning what that means, though.  I am by no means an expert.  I need spiritual direction myself, someone to remind me that the Spirit is out there, and in me, and to open the windows that are closed in me and catch the breeze.  I need someone to remind me to be open to the enchantment that is already in the world.

I think, in its most basic form, this is what spiritual direction is.  It is to remind each other to open the windows in our lives, open the windows to the voice of God in scripture, to open the windows that point to God's presence in tears and shouts, in maple leaves in fall, in red-tailed hawks circling, in the wind.

Turn

 We haven't been up on the North Shore for ten years, I think.  I moved down to Texas in 2015, and although we have visited our family in Minnesota, there hasn't been the time to drive north.  But we used to go, every summer, for three or four days, and take our dog along.  Part of my sabbatical this year was one week on the North Shore at a theological retreat center run by my friend Anna.  It is a place to unwind and relax and get inspiration from the forests and lakes and the cool breezes.  

Of course, it was 90 degrees when we arrived on Sunday afternoon --with no air conditioning, because no one has air conditioning around here.  They promised that the weather would change, though and sometime during that first night, coolness rolled in through the open windows.  It was a feeling I hadn't experienced since my childhood, pre-air conditioning.  Fans in all of the windows, my mom coming into our rooms late in the night and changing the direction of the fans so that they would blow the cool air in instead of blowing the hot air out.  

On Wednesday we had planned to go to Grand Marais.  We had so many good memories there -- hiking trails, eating at restaurants (with our dog), the local artists, the World's Best Donuts (really!).  But some of the places we remembered weren't open (although the fabulous Drury Lane Bookstore was).  However, I couldn't decide which book to buy and ended up leaving empty-handed.

On the way home, we kept looking for places to stop and hike and get good views of the lake.  Inspiration.  That was part of the reason I came, right?  As Anna's tagline goes "Retreat Reflect Restore".  But retreating reflecting and restoring is not a straight line.

We stopped at Tettegouche State Park but decided that wasn't the right place, at least not on Wednesday.  So we continued driving, debating where to stop, until we remembered a Scenic Overlook close to "home", at Silver Creek Cliff.  That is where we stopped, and that is where we walked.  We walked part of the way up and back, because we were already tired.  There is a tunnel there, but it wasn't there until 1994.  Before that, the narrow road ran right along the cliff.  There were spectacular views, but with some unfortunate downsides -- for example, sometimes falling rocks would close the road for days (or perhaps longer.  I don't know).  The tunnel opened in 1994 as well as the walking path, so you can get close to the edge of the cliff (without rocks falling on you).

I walked with my camera out, because I always want to take pictures of what I am seeing, but I was disappointed in every picture I tried to take.  They just weren't spectacular enough, I guess.  But the walking was good, and I did see a monarch butterfly and some milkweed.

Then we got to the part where we decided to turn around.  I don't remember if it was right away, but in my memory it seems like it was.  I turned around, and there it was.  The Lake.

All I had to do was turn around.  Which doesn't seem like such a hard thing to do, but, at the heart of it, that is what repentance is.  Turning.  Turning around.  Returning.  I don't know about you, but when I usually think of repentance, I think of it in my head.  My brain.  My heart. Thinking, or feeling, differently,  But somehow I think that repentance, like faith itself, is really a whole body experience.  No offense to Paul, but we don't just change our minds.  We turn our heads, our bodies, our lives, in a different direction.  

Turn.  That is what Jesus asks us to do, and not just once, but every day.  You never know which moment it will be, when you will turn, and see something different, or see something, or someone, in a different way.  We will be astonished by beauty, by vastness, by grace.  

That is what repentance, that is what turning, does.  It is re-orienting ourselves to God.  But not just our minds.  Our faces, looking up into rain or sunshine. Our backs, leaning over a garden.  Our whole bodies, our whole selves, repent.  And it seems to me that this turning is also at the heart of our lives.  Again and again and again -- we turn.

The Kingdom of heaven has drawn near.