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.