Sabbatical is almost at its end. We are bursting with thanksgiving and appreciation for all of you who prayed and loved and supported and journeyed with us!!!!! We can’t put into words what an amazing, life-giving adventure this has been. But we did try to put a few words to the questions you sent us. Here they are:

[Also, please know you are invited to come to a lunch following the 11:00 worship service at Ascension Lutheran Church THIS Sunday, August 2. The lunch will be in Pedersen Hall and we will be sharing some reflections from the sabbatical journey. Tim will be preaching the next two weekends at Ascension. Chamie resumes her preaching/retreat schedule on August 9.]

1. [How did you answer] Jude's question about how water stays in lakes?

My quick take on this was that while water does evaporate from lakes and oceans there is so much water in them that it takes a lot of time to do so. And that they get filled back up with rain and rivers before all the water disappears. I think it was after that that Aidan and Jude started singing the “evaporation, condensation, precipitation” song that they learned while studying rain one day in mommy school. I’ve discovered that so much of parenting consists of staying one step ahead of your children so they don’t think you are completely ignorant. I’m sure we will have to think of a different strategy when they become teen-agers.

2. I want to know about your sabbatical rhythm (work-rest-play-pray-study). What did it look like specifically? How well did you keep to this throughout the sabbatical? I mean, was it as regimented as "when the noon bell tolls, we celebrate midday mass," (kind of monk-like), or was it more fluid than that?

Our rhythm was not regimented, like stopping everything at noon for prayer. Admittedly there were days that felt chaotic - traveling with its time changes and long hours on a plain or in a car, is sometimes especially unfavorable to establishing a rhythm - but having the goal of daily worship, study, work, rest and play kept us more accountable living that life. So I guess we would say our days were more like different songs, but the same artist and the same instruments. In other words, different days brought different songs, but our days always included resting and re-creating… we emphasized, for instance, the importance of a good night’s sleep and I think that in itself helped keep us all healthy. We also rested/recreated through some sort of daily physical activity, be it running, swimming, biking (our bikes went with us everywhere minus Europe). We made it a point just to free-play everyday – which was sometimes a game of tag at a rest stop or a game of Uno on the train. We had to “work” in the sense of tending to our daily needs and schedule-keeping. We (as in Tim & Chamie) also read books every day as a part of our study. The most “set rhythm” was lighting the prayer candle nearly every night and there was no place that candle did not go!

3.What is one thing that you wish you had taken with you... and one thing that you wish you had left behind?

We can’t think of one extra material-thing we would have taken with us (but a nanny would have been nice for a free evening)… but we realize we could have left behind more clothes. We could have traveled with 3 outfits instead of 4! We traveled VERY LIGHTLY. We absolutely loved the SIMPLICITY of it and NOT once did the children whine for their toys or say that they did not have enough. It was beautiful. We found this lightness so inspiring that this week at home, we spent three days cleaning closets and the garage and giving away boxes and bag loads of toys, clothes, and random stuff. It felt great and our prayer and hope is to continue to travel more lightly and gently and simply in this world.

4.Based on your sabbatical experiences, what specific changes do you plan to make in your family life?

It is hard to summarize in words, for the experience itself has led us all to view the world in a different way... it is not so much what changes we will make, but that we have already become different people. We plan on adopting some "fun" rhythms to help us remember through ritual and remember that rhythms are truly important... so every Wednesday, we're doing "Taize-breakfast" - baguettes with chocolate butter knives (our table is open, so come join us)! We also plan on being very intentional about adopting monastic rhythms... practicing "family monasticism" (and we invite others to join us in this venture, too, through Raising Micah... you can learn more in the weeks to come)... and one of the things we will do each week is to have a "family meeting" like the brothers/sisters before us... a meeting in which we will set our weekly rhythm. We've already begun the process of letting go of a lot of "stuff" and plan on living with less in our closets. We are also expanding our garden and the ways we eat in rhythm (we're already "community-gardening" in our backyard with the Woodward's).

Good Questions

As we were traveling across the lonely countryside, Jude asked, "How does the water stay lakes?"

"What?" we asked.

"How does water stay in lakes?" Jude asked again and then gave further explanation. "When I dig a hole for a puddle and fill it with water, the water gets out. How does it stay in the lake?"

We love his question-asking, his good-thinking, maybe of which came alive because there is not necessarily a lot to do when driving and driving and driving and then driving some more. As we worshiped last Sunday, Jude asked another fabulous question. We were with our friends, the Foster's, staying at Glen Eyrie Retreat Center, and we were following the path through six various prayer stations. The first one was in the garden. We read the scripture and talked. And then Jude asked, "Who made the weeds? Does God make weeds or does Satan?" We sometimes wonder where he comes up with these things, but we loved the great discussion that it sparked.

So... good questions... we invite you to ask some. We've been blogging about our journey and now we invite you to post your own questions that you may have been wondering about in regards to sabbatical. They can be logistical questions about how one survives for hours in a messy van with three kids... or theological questions about the different places of ministry we have visited or... or... YOU COME UP WITH THE QUESTIONS... just enter them in the "comment" area and we will respond with another blog answering what we can.. and maybe we should say "want" - it is still sabbatical, after all. You have just a few days... we will try to answer the middle of next week. Only one week left of sabbatical. We thank all of you for your prayers and support... and now questions...

The Right and the Left

Written by Chamie... with words from Tim, too...

Sabbatical has been diverse.  It has included exploring family spirituality within many different venues.  When speaking of the places we’ve visited, we have sometimes gotten a rise out of people.  For instance, when mentioning that we would be worshiping at Solomon’s Porch (www.solomonsporch.com) in Minneapolis, someone commented, “Oh, really” in that tone that says, “I’m not sure you should that.”  I asked, “Why do you say that?”  The response was, “Well, I hear they are rather liberal.”  On another occasion, I mentioned our visit to Focus on the Family (www.focusonthefamily.com) in Colorado Springs and was met by a gasp of horror.   “But they are off the chart on conservatism!” someone exclaimed. 

Interestingly enough, during our travels, an old high school classmate who is now a Southern Baptist pastor posted a blog about the “death of the emergent church” and lambasted Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch.  Then we got to Focus on the Family this past Friday and I found it rather ironic, amusing, and intriguing that they were lambasting “the left” who had claimed “the Christian Right is dead.” 

I must say that I’m rather tired of all the “dead” talk.  Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”  What might it be to honor those who give life, be it on the left or the right?   Tim and I saw a lot of life at Solomon’s Porch.  We sat with one the largest group of younger adults I’ve seen gathered in one sanctuary in the U.S. (that wasn’t a campus) in quite a long time, people who were passionate about their faith and walking in the way of Jesus and serving the community beyond their church doors.   That is life.  We also saw life at Focus on the Family as the tour guide shared that their trained counselors talk to 300 people a day who are in crisis… suicide, depression, domestic violence….   I imagine that many lives have been transformed because there was someone to talk to and guide them to help.  That, too, is life.

What might it mean to honor ministries that give life?  I will tell you honestly that the thought of even walking into Focus on the Family made my stomach turn.   I jokingly, yet nervously, wondered if they had a radar at the door that would mark me as “female clergy” and/or “registered Democrat” and get me immediately imprisoned in a small room where staff members would perform an intervention, maybe even an exorcism.   Either I fooled the radar or they didn’t have one.  Focus on the Family is not where I personally find life, but it does not mean that I do not honor others who have found life in their ministries.

Our family mission statement is Micah 6:8 which is “to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”  I think one of the tenets of humility is not to be so arrogant as to claim that “your church” has THE ANSWERS.  Humility, I believe, is bold enough to claim the truth of one’s own life without forcing those truths upon another.  My prayer is the right and the left could be humble enough to respect the life-giving love of God that by grace is available to all human beings.

Notes from Minnesota

Written by Aidan Delkeskamp

Well we’ve been doing FANTASTIC!!! Oh and Lisa, if you read this tell Laney that I miss her and tell Sawyer I miss him and try to work out a sleepover with Sawyer and Laney and me. Anyway, Sunday we had to drive an hour I think, to this camp called Wapo. We went to church there. [It was outside]. Then it was communion time and I served it. Then me Jude and Hannah all went to a dock and Jude and Hannah played in the water. Mom and I sat in a swing and swung. That night we went to another worship service. Monday we went down to the park to play soccer with dad. Then we went to a malt shop with the creator of the movie Up’s parents for lunch. It is a good movie. You should see it. We even got an autographed kids book of UP, just to us. Oh, we had met them, Dave and Rita [just like my aunt and uncle, isn’t that funny] on the train to Dijon, France. But they live here in Minnesota. They went on sabbatical with their kids when they were little, before their son made movies. Then we went with them to a place where we went boating. My mom said it was not good to leave here without boating. I guess there is something like ten thousands lakes.

Messy Spirituality

Written by Chamie

Our van seems to get messier with each passing day. It is also making strange noises and is scheduled for the mechanic tomorrow morning. Our guest room at Stub Hall of Luther Seminary is scattered with clothes, books, snack items, and sheets from the children’s fort-building. Our nicely-printed schedule for this leg of the journey has scratches, scribbles, cross-outs, and adaptations. In the middle of “boat-in worship” this morning at Wapogasset Lutheran Bible Camp, a service held out on the beach, it began to rain. We agree fully with author Wendy Wright in her book SACRED DWELLINGS that family life is not exactly the serene, orderly life that one imagines in communities of faith like... well, monasteries or the homes of the desert fathers and mothers. Life is just plain messy… with many unexpected twists and turns, some joy-filled and some painful.

Just three weeks ago, my cousin, who was engaged with plans to get married later this year, found out that her dad has stage four lung cancer. Knowing that I would be in the area and could officiate, she wondered if it was possible to pull off a wedding in three weeks – and have her dad walk her down the aisle. That is the messiness of life. But Kate made it happen, and she made it happen beautifully. She even made her own cakes, so gorgeous and professional looking that I believe she could make hundreds of dollars selling them to other brides. She took the “mess,” per say, of the situation and made something good out of it.

And I would say that is one of the reasons that I love Jesus so much… he loves each one of us with a wide and deep love – right smack dab in the middle of our messiness. And he shows us how to take the messy, chaotic pieces and create something good and true and beautiful.

South Dakota

Written by Aidan Delkeskamp

We spent the 4th of July weekend in South Dakota. We went to a place called Crazy Horse. We also went on a family vision quest at a holy mountain of the Lakota. My mom lived with the Lakota for a little bit. After that, we went back to a monastery. I really saw God at work when I went bike riding with my dad at a trail (I biked 7 and a half miles). We also stayed at my great grandma's house. Now we are going to Luther Seminary.