I Wish I Was Still Standing By the Stone Arch Bridge

Yesterday was our 10th wedding anniversary. Because ten years seems like a pretty big deal these days (not just for us, just in general), we decided that we'd have a more significant celebration this year. Besides going again to Lord Fletcher's on Lake Minnetonka for dinner, we spent the night in the same hotel (though not the same room) where we stayed the evening after our wedding. Since the pre-refinish-the-hardwood-floor disarray is increasing in our home, it was a welcome respite.

In the morning, we briefly contemplated ordering room service, but decided to indulge in the breakfast buffet. We then visited briefly the Grand Canyon of Malls, where we picked out Anniversary presents for one another.

By a wide margin, however, the favorite activity of the day was our visit to the heart of Minneapolis, and to the Mill City Museum. At the site of the Old Gold Medal Flour Building, the museum includes the ruins of the old mill, as well as lots of interactive and educational displays, a simulated flour explosion, and two separate shows, one about the Mill (shown in an old freight elevator), and one about Minneapolis. The Museum stands next to the new site of the Guthrie Theatre; both are along the Mississippi River, and close to the historic Stone Arch Bridge.

Minneapolis began and flourished as a Mill City, and the Mississippi River was the heart of the Mill. St. Anthony Falls provided the power for the mill, which ran day and night until 1965.

I felt it somehow, standing on the cobblestone streets, wandering through the displays at the Museum. There is something substantial, something life-giving, something vital here.

Perhaps it was the power of the river itself, the power of water -- the power of flowing water through a community. Perhaps it was the sense of building and growth -- the growth of the city, the creation of industries and products that fed people and created jobs. Perhaps it was not just the river but the stones, what was left of the old mill, the cobblestones of the streets, the stones on the old bridge spanning the river.

All I know is that I wish I was still there, where I stood this afternoon. I wish I was standing by the Stone Arch Bridge, just getting ready to walk across the river, feeling warm breezes, watching people walking and talking. All I know is that I wish I was still there tonight, where the stronge stone bridge holds and where the swift strong water flows underneath.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked

or take the path that sinners tread;

or sit in the seat of scoffers....

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

and their leaves do not wither. --Psalm 1.

In Honor of our Tenth Anniversary this Weekend...

.... we are starting a project we have never before attempted (though we have often talked about it).

We are getting ready to have our hardwood floors refinished.

There, I said it. It is just one simple sentence, ten words. And yet, this project seems much more daunting than anything we have attempted yet. We re-finished the basement. We painted the living room, kitchen and bathroom. We constructed a shed in the back yard (I think that the boys were actually more involved with that than I was).

Ten simple words, one sentence, but here is what our project involves: pulling up 1970s style green carpet from living room and hallway. Cleaning and re-organizing porch and basement. Sweeping, tossing, and organizing in our garage. Taking almost all of our furniture out of the upstairs and finding temporary new homes in other parts of the house, porch or garage. (This involves both brainwork and brawnwork.)

Tonight I spent about an hour in the garage, just getting started: getting rid of a bag's worth of leaves, styrofoam peanuts and other miscellaneous items from the floor.

What is it Confucius said? The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step?

What did he know, anyway?

This weekend we are going away overnight to celebrate our tenth anniversary.

I figure, we might as well have some fun while we still like each other.

Anniversary in Paris

Actually, today is our anniversary (#9), but my husband tells me to tell everyone, "We went to Paris for our anniversary."So, that is what I am doing.

However, tonight we did go out to a nice restaurant, Lord Fletcher's on the ritzy shores of Lake Minnetonka. We sat by a window and watched the motorboats go by.

I had walleye. (I had to say that, because I have heard that it is a fish unknown outside of Minnesota. However, it is delicious!)

Have a romantic evening -- on me!

Ten Year Anniversary thoughts....

On Sunday, my congregation celebrated my ten year anniversary at this church. Ten years! It's hard for me to imagine. We had coffee and cake between the services, and people shook my hand and said nice things to me. My parents, and husband and step-son came as well.

There was a basket for cards on the table, but one man wanted to give me his personally. It was a book, wrapped up, with a white rose attached to it. The rose was in one of those little plastic tubes of water, and he wanted to make sure that the water didn't leak out. As he put it in my hands, he said, "This is from (his wife's name) and me."

His wife died this past winter.

They had been married for over fifty years. She contracted polio in the epidemic after World War II, and had been in a wheelchair ever since. Ever since she was a young woman with two small children, she had lived in that wheelchair. He had had the house re-done so that she could do everything from her wheelchair. He had found more lucrative work, as an engineer rather than as a professor, so that he could afford the care she needed. He had spent most of their married life lifting her into and out of the wheelchair. He walks permanently stooped over from all those years of lifting and carrying her.

At her funeral last winter, I saw a captivating black and white picture of her, standing in the shallow part of a river. She was turning and smiling at the camera, and I thought, "I never really knew her."

On Sunday, as he put the book in my hand, he said, "This is from (his wife's name) and me."

The book was The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis.

I could tell you about the highlights of my ten years by telling you about the programs I have started, by the worship services I've designed, by the Bible Studies. I could tell you about Faith and Fiction, my book group, and the Bag Lunch Bible Study, and the Contemporary Worship Service, and the Empowering Couples Workshop. I could tell you about my favorite Lenten Series (Practicing our Faith), or the Biblical Monologues I wrote one year. I could point to the Animal Blessing Service last fall, or the Prayer Knitters Group.

Or, I could tell you about the failures: the young adults groups that never got off the ground, the Bible studies with three people in them, the Drama Group that I could never get enough people interested in, the time I invited High School students to Faith and Fiction to discuss the book Holes, and nobody came.

But to me, the ten years are all about people: the stooped-over man who teaches me about love; the young couple who got married and moved to New York; people who argue with me in Bible studies and people I run into at the grocery store; a shy woman who is beginning to become a leader; a young boy who laughed when I washed his feet "because the water was so cold!"; a 10th grade girl who carried the candle at Easter vigil and the boy who said he wanted to be a pastor; the woman who stood in the river long ago, and who lived in a wheelchair for so many years.

And the ten years are all about God's faithfulness in this place, among these people, and to me as well. They are about a God's faithfulness to us in our joy and in our pain, in our failures and in our successes, in the past, and as we lean into the future ... with fear and with faith.

Picture is from ten years ago.