What I said at Matins

In the biggest non-surprise in history, I spent my first go at leading morning prayer at Holden Village on Ezekiel 37.

"The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?'"

Good morning. My name is Katie, and I work in your kitchen, and by way of introduction I am one of those: conspicuously over-educated manual laborers Holden so attracts. You've seen us. Everywhere. We spend the morning splitting wood and the evening working through the upcoming defense of our American Studies doctoral dissertation. We are your Harvard-educated painter, the licensed Sociologist you employ at Garbo Central, the young man commanding degrees in art and art history, of late commanding mavericks. We have our fine arts degrees framed right next to the CDL licenses that let us drive the Village busses. We know exactly how many English majors it takes to put together a good burrito bar.

I am a Divinity School student. Or I was. Who, of a sudden sought a ship to Tarshish and found a ferry to Lucerne. That's my story, in brief. And I have my days when I can tell you what I was looking for, really. This morning isn't one of them. I thought, as we orient our thoughts and hearts toward the day ahead, this new day in our common life in Christ, I might tell you a little about what I've found, here, early in the journey as it is.

I made a list.

Work. Trees. Chipmunks. Mountains. Ground squirrels. Deer. Water -- colder than anything I ever would have put up with in Florida, which is where I'm from. A whole lot of new ways to go about hurting myself: mostly in the kitchen, where you would not believe the number of contraptions waiting to burn, maim, slice, or otherwise disfigure the unsuspecting. Friends. The good kind. The kind that let you lead the hike even though you lost the trail last time. The kind that run back and fetch you a towel because it was your first sauna and you didn't know. The kind that share the songs and poems that are in their hearts. That know about the Frisbee Golf course. That give even your obsession with Dr. Who a fair hearing. That know to catch you when you've struck, and been struck by, the last page of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for the first time. Bears. You see them a lot in the early evening, right after Vespers -- why, because they've figured out we're all in church and not looking, for all I know. And while we're on the subject, church. More church than I almost know what to do with. So much church, often of so high and beautiful a liturgy, that I have my days when I wonder as Richard Lischer did of daily chapel services at a certain seminary whether this beautiful, frequent discipline might not actually save even such a wandering soul as mine. And I have my days when I wonder whether salvation isn't exactly what I was looking for, getting into this boat with you.

But today it is my happy privilege to remind us that it's much too late, for such as I; there are no answers and no peace and certainly no salvation in these hills, because the only thing that matters transpired on one hill, centuries ago in this world's history and about as far away from this place as you can get without coming back, in the saving work of Jesus' death on the cross, which is for you, which is for me, which is done -- and there isn't anything we can do about it.

That's the boat. Let me leave you with Ezekiel's picture of the wandering.

We wander through this world's old age, through Ezekiel's valley surrounded by the image and evidence of death and posed the question by the Living God, "Mortal, can these bones live?" A question that's bewildering to the best of us, and yet in the divine wisdom we've spent a summer reveling in our inability to fathom, God has imparted the answer to us, and it's Yes. These bones can live, even these -- resurrection happens. Hurt is possible, heartache is possible, but love is possible, forgiveness is possible, reconciliation is here, is effected, between God and humankind, so stop thinking about it and go find that brother or that sister you've wronged. Haven't you heard? God means to bring the world back to life. For some reason, he chose you to know about it.

So whether you leave this day, or tarry here a while, I wish you the best of one another, and I wish you a day of wandering in the brilliant light of a God whose plan is equal to your ships to Tarshish, to your getting lost in the woods, to your capacity to be struck by the world's -- even the self's -- tragedy and hurt, whose plan, at last, is life.

Inventory of Items Presently in my Pockets

1. Two dollars, cash. In case I wanted to buy ice cream tonight at the snackbar. "One" scoop costs $1.50.

2. (folded) Print-out copy of an e-mail exchange between myself and a certain market in Chelan, WA, willing to ship me beer. Exchange includes list of imports and micros carried by said market.

3. My Visa card. Yeah, I made an order today. What?

4. A big bag of tea, including three (now two) pockets of Bigelow Vanilla Caramel, abandoned by some loser and adopted by me.

5. A slip of paper good for free ice cream, which I acquired by volunteering a morning earlier this week to some mavericks who needed a hand moving a bunch of crap. (And yeah, that's a pretty good description of what mavericks do.) For those slow at the math -- that's two hours of labor, traded for a slip of paper good for $1.50. And I'm happy about this.

6. (folded) Print-out advertisement for a job as teacher's aide in the Village's school. A parent handed it off to me hoping I would apply. I've agreed to inquire. This means talking to the same program director I earlier asked "hypothetically" just how much beer I could fit in a single shipment before the boat charged me extra for freight. Awesome.