Acres of Oak

Nearly fifty years ago, as a newly-minted minister with a wife beside me and our first child on the way, I met the first of what would become a nearly constant part of our lives for the ensuing decades … my parishioners. I cannot say who was the more astounded, they or me, but the journey that began in the Nebraska Panhandle would continue in churches in California and the Upper Midwest, including an unexpected detour to Maui, and now continues a half-century later in our retirement on the California coast. No small accomplishment, navigating the sometimes perilous, always challenging, and ever so significant waters of pastoral ministry, but wherever our personal journeys lead, navigating life presents for all of us any number of inevitable turning points, their signposts sometimes clearly marked … sometimes not so much. Over the years, I have reflected on scores of such markers, signposts alerting us to changes in both the cultural landscape ahead and our own personal circumstances and how we might find a path forward. Rethinking the grand drama of life itself and how faith and even the church might still intersect the earthly sojourn … the project of a lifetime.