My family, like so many others, has a great history of getting together on the 4th of July. One of my favorite places to gather is on land where our family first settled in Texas in 1851.

My brothers and I are stewards of the remaining acreage. One brother built a solar powered home on one portion, and the other brother lives in the home my parents built nearly 50 years ago.

Having a place to call home is a deep American value. I feel so privileged to have a place to rest my feet where my ancestors have walked and farmed and harvested and shared meals and prayed and laughed and argued and lived and died for nearly 200 years.

My brothers and sister in law are marching in the local (McKinney) parade. I declined to join them, sadly, because of the heat. However, their church, First Methodist McKinney, has a huge welcome ministry each year for the parade with hot dogs and snow cones and an air conditioned prime viewing area, and I’m in my comfy chair waiting for the parade to begin.

As I watch the pre-parade gather of red, white, and blue, and brown and black and pink and tan, mostly hatted, pulling carts with children, and carrying tarps and flags and blankets and water bottles, for me, this is America.

Everyone who is here has come from somewhere else. Whether their people walked across the Bering Land Bridge 15,000 years ago or came across the southern border five years ago, all of us are from away.

Seeing this parade of color and joy is the best reminder of the America I love. Oh. And the hot dogs and snow cones, too.

Atlanta knows how to celebrate Juneteenth. As God would have it, I am here in the midst of it.

It started with my best friend wanting to see the Amy Sherald exhibit at the High Museum. And since we were here, why not add a WNBA game on the next day? And somehow missing in the midst of the planning the significance of our travel dates.

So here we are. In these days of America pausing to reexamine the truth of who we are in our 250th year.

It may be fighting cages on the lawn of the White House. It may be corporate sponsors of national events. It may be about starting a war costing billions of dollars and with more lives lost than we can count instead of funding health care.

In Atlanta, I was reminded of what else the truth of America is.

It’s a city full of people wearing a diversity of shirts celebrating the sin of “owning” people finally being abolished when all had been informed of the law’s enactment two and one half years before.

It’s a museum offering free admission for all and filled with people in colorful dress. My very best friend and I were almost the only pale skins in a rainbow sea.

It’s viewing an exhibit of art created by a woman from a small Georgia town honoring the people too often overlooked.

It’s people pausing with deep emotion to view portraits of our former First Lady juxtaposed with one of a woman murdered by police when they entered the wrong house.

It’s going to a women’s basketball game where the players have epitomized what it means to be strong women and who have worked to make sure those opportunities are available to all, particularly through voting.

It’s singing Lift Every Voice And Sing after the National Anthem.

America. The Beautiful.

I have a friend that when he calls he almost always first asks if I’m in Iceland. Others ask what is it about Iceland that draws my best friend and me to return and return yet again.

There is the obvious:

So. Much. Beauty. (Insert 5 million photos from my phone here)

Puffins, of course.

The coffee and the food. (Insert several thousand photos from my phone here)

The respect for the world we’ve been given. Clean air due to thermal power. Naturally pure hot and cold water from the tap. The culture of reuse, recycle, repurpose.

The people: almost all that we meet are friendly and ever so wanting to help. Give a moment, and we launch into delightful conversations. The children are taught English in school, and that not only makes it easy for those from away to get around, it’s also part of the culture of openness and adaptability that thrives here.

It’s not my home, but Iceland is a place that allows me to center in order to face the challenges of home when I return to the United States.

I had a sense of the healing this country gives me on this trip.

When I was here after Hurricane Harvey, I was battered and bruised. Something about the sound of the rushing water at Godfoss broke open a locked place inside me, and I had quite a melt down.

Yesterday, I went and stood in the same place where I had fallen apart in 2017. I felt peace-filled joy, and gave great thanks to God for God’s healing—given with generosity in so very many ways, including this place in God’s own creation.

This is part of the “why Iceland.”

Eastertide travel has begun:

Sewanee, Tennessee

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Kingwood, Texas

Sugarland, Texas

And now Baltimore, Maryland, on my way to my

Seventh! Trip! To! Iceland!

My first trip was in 2016, just days after my home flooded in the Tax Day flood.

My second trip was in 2017, only days after Hurricane Harvey, and my newly restored home had flooded. Again. The parish where I was serving encouraged me not to plan another trip to Iceland.

My third trip, 2018, entitled, “Not Iceland,” were shorter stays bookending my first visit to the Faroe Islands.

The fourth trip, 2021, was another bookend to my return visit to the Faroes.

The fifth trip, 2022, was the one where I learned about Icelandic hospitals as my trip home was delayed due to Covid.

The sixth trip, 2024, was the one where my flight from Chicago to Keflavik was cancelled after a lengthy delay, and a new way had to be found two days later out of Minneapolis on a different airline.

I’m waiting for my very best traveling friend to meet me here in Baltimore. Our flight to Iceland leaves this evening. Of course, it being Iceland, nothing is certain until it actually happens.

But somehow, it’s always wonderful.