Yesterday’s five hour drive from Reyjkavik to Akureyri in the far north of Iceland ended up taking my friend and me nine hours–not for any reason except that we get easily distracted and like to stop and look. This time, jet lagged as we were, we also had to pull over for two fifteen minute naps along the way. 

Today we decided we would have a walking day. We spent most of the day walking hilly Akureyri, jacket hoods up and down depending on the rain, doing the same kind of easily distracted traveling that we usually do in the car. 

Walking with a friend, that means there is twice the stopping and starting.  With the extra stopping, more not so tiny treasures get found. 

A place to stop and draw in an art museum. 

Painted sidewalks. 

Stoplights reimagined after the 2008 financial crisis in Iceland. 

Stopping meant an interesting extended conversation with a shopkeeper. As is often the practice, Icelanders want to know where you are from. When my friend replied to the shopkeeper’s query that I was from Houston, and that, yes, I had flooded, five feet worth, his look of deep compassion was unexpected. He began to talk about how distressed the Icelanders were with the devastation;  he was even more distraught about the response of Pastor Joel Osteen to the flood, as had been reported in the news in Iceland. Iceland!

This gives me pause. I don’t know the whole front and backstory of Pastor Osteen’s actions. As clergy who has made her own pastoral mistakes, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, I am struck how viral such actions of perceived neglect from a person of enormous wealth and professed faith are noticed and remembered.  Especially when there was so very, very much more extraordinary responses offered, some of which the shopkeeper did speak also. 

Still, this is why we Christians must always strive to be known by our acts of love, so that is the Gospel that is always preached. People near and far notice. 

I ended the day praying LiveFeed Compline with my friends at St. Mary’s.  Revd. Alan will post it seven hours afterwards in St. Mary’s Compline hour. In the midst of the sunset outside my hotel window, a rainbow shone. 

In the morning, I’ll walk down the hill to the local church for Sunday worship; I understand it’s their version of “Rally Sunday.” That should make for a lively beginning of the day. 

Meanwhile. I’ll end in Icelandic for good bye:  Bless Bless. 

7.30 on Friday morning. I’m having coffee at Keflavik airport. 

Wednesday morning, I awoke to an email invitation to participate in an online study called, “How to Travel Like a Pilgrim.” How could I not say yes?

As I’ve journeyed and waited and journeyed and waited, I’ve spent time reading and listening to the excellent resources written by Lacy Clark Elman.  
Lacy invites each pilgrim to select a theme. Mine is thresholds. 

A threshold is the place where we go from one space to another. Metaphorically, it can represent a time of transition.  Lacy writes, “Those who wait at the threshold are at the cusp of great change, aware that things have shifted……”  The massive flooding in Texas will do that. 

I feel immersed in changes right now, and so as I travel from one place into another on the Icelandic vacation now become pilgrimage, I’ll spend time pondering and praying about doorways and passages and doors open and doors shut and doors that have floated away. 

But now I am very jet-lagged. So I’ll simply be present with my latte and the voices of people from all over the world. 

At this very moment, I was scheduled to be on a plane to Iceland.  Except I’m sitting on a couch in the Miller’s home writing this.

As  I walked through the days after my second flood in less than two years, a place of joy  was anticipating the trip my friend and I had planned several months ago to go again to Iceland.

The last time I went to Iceland, it was only weeks after the Tax Day Flood.  My friend, whose home is in Georgia, had been visiting me when during that storm and had gone through the flooding with me. In Iceland we found healing and beauty and rest.

We planned this return trip to Iceland sitting on the couches of the Cuellars’ home, my temporary housing this past year.  We would go to the places we hadn’t visited the last time, and we would celebrate my return home to the beautifully restored Rectory.

Then Hurricane Harvey changed everything.

In the days after the flooding, I began to replace items destroyed by five feet high flood waters.  I quickly ordered a new coat, suitcase, art supplies, and shoes to replace those destroyed in this second flood, and I had them delivered to my friend in Georgia since mail service was uncertain in Houston.

Then Hurricane Irma began it’s own destructive path. Weather projections placed its route through Georgia about the time we were scheduled to fly out of Atlanta.

This morning, after a day and night of Irma’s torrential rain and roaring winds in the Georgia mountains, my friend has awakened to downed trees, blocked roads, and no electricity.   Even though Irma has passed, it is not likely she could have made it to the airport.  Thankfully on Sunday we had been able to change our travel plans and are on a flight to Iceland on Thursday.

With two extra days in Houston, I can continue to  prepare to move into my new temporary house.   I’ll have two extra days to make sure things are well in the parish before I leave.

God has brought me in safety to this new day.  The birds are singing.  I’ve had coffee and eaten breakfast while enjoying the hospitality of friends.  Soon I will get in a car generously loaned to me by still other friends and go to a job that I love. I have hope and possibilities and resources beyond measure.

There is a prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book that Rev. Katie+ prayed during a Facebook Live worship.  It’s a prayer that we can all hold on to in the midst of the changes and chances of this life.

God of the present moment,                                                                                                            God who in Jesus stills the storm
And soothes the frantic heart;
                                                                                                        Bring hope and courage to all people in uncertainty,
                                                                  Bring hope that you will make us the equal of whatever lies ahead.                                      Bring us courage to endure what cannot be avoided, for your will is health and wholeness;  

You are God, and we need you.
       AMEN                                                                                             

 

 

 

And so it begins again.

Thursday, we were able to get back into to the Rectory via a make shift bridge over a gully. A group of two adults and three teenagers began the reclamation process of St. Mary’s rectory.

Thanks to the hard work of a group of parishioners early this past Sunday morning, all of my furniture except a couch was safely upstairs.   Many other of my personal items had been carried upstairs or placed on counters which we thought would be high enough to avoid flood waters.  I’d placed a few important clothes on the top shelf of my closet.  Strong folks had put my car up on risers.

We had been as prepared as we could be.  But we were not expecting five feet of water to enter my home.

This time, many of my personal items, everything we thought was safely placed on counters and in closets, were taken by flood waters.    These were things perhaps most important to me which I had kept downstairs to be near when I moved back home this summer. Things I thought had been made safe, but this second time around didn’t make it through the flood.  These were things that had less financial value but ever so much more heart value.

When people say they have lost “just stuff”, it is true.  It’s important to know, however, that each item of stuff holds a memory–some small, some very, very large.

Remember that.  Every memory will need a moment to have it’s time of grief and a word of good bye.

Remember that if you are someone who has lost precious items.  They represent a part of your life that you must grieve.

Remember that if you are one of the extraordinary people who is helping to clean out ravaged homes.  Each item tossed in the front yard or placed in a garbage bag or put in a dumpster is a little good bye for the person you are caring for.  When you drive by people’s homes with their front yard covered in what to untrained eyes appears as trash and refuse, remember what that is was once not trash or refuse.  It represents a life.

For me, it’s a tote bag of yarn.  The tote bag was given to me to hold my knitting by a man in a shop on the Isle of Iona.  It contained a scarf I was knitting as a memory of my trip to Iceland.

Another  tote bag that was given to me as a souvenir of the Four Voices concert in June.  A famed photograph of my father and me.  A framed photograph of my extended family at Thanksgiving.  A water color of a priest baptizing people in a river.

Over four hundred books.  Books written by my daughter and my father.  Books given to me by friends and family.  Books I use to write sermons and to prepare for ministry.  Most of my cookbooks.  The Bible given to me at my ordinations.

Art created by my grandchildren.  The plants I’d saved and restored after the last flood.

The monetary value is small.  The heart value is beyond measure.

This is what you or the people you love have lost.

It’s just stuff.  Indeed.  But it’s stuff tied back to a place in their heart.  My heart.  Your heart.

Yes, we are alive.  Thanks be to God.  Yes, much can be replaced.  For people like me, of resources and privilege.

But there are heart wounds that will take time, much time to heal.