Winds of Hope

The Colorado Sand Dunes, near Alamosa, in the San Luis Valley
Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

             Sometimes I go about pitying myself, 

             and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

             Ojibway saying

             adapted by Robert Bly from the translation of Frances Densmore

             ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
             Tell me, if you have understanding. 
             Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
             Or who stretched the line upon it? 
             On what were its bases sunk,
             or who laid its cornerstone 
             when the morning stars sang together
             and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

             Job 38

The Cost

Christ in the Desert Monastery, New Mexico

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call "life" which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau


Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 


Mark 8

I lift my eyes to the hills

Longmont, Colorado Vista

photo by Kent Mueller

I am struck by how often people select a landscape image to be featured on their Facebook Timeline page. A friend of mine from South Dakota, who is now living in Texas, selected a photo of an expansive, green grass, prairie and endless, blue sky.  A pastor from Massachusetts chose a photo of the rocky, ocean coastline. I selected a photo of Mount Meeker and Longs Peak, the "twin peaks" which dominate the skyline from Longmont, Colorado, my home town. Longmont is in the valley just beyond the farmlands.

This landscape was the backdrop of my childhood and youth--which anchors me, still, in place and time. Interestingly, the mountains didn't mean all that much to me as a resident there. But when I went away to college in 1980, then seminary, then two calls in Northeastern Ohio, the anchor of that landscape lured me back "home" in 1999.

Whether it be a mountain vista, or a meandering river, or an urban cityscape, the places of our childhood memory define who we are, what matters to us, and where we call, "home." When I "lift my eyes to the hills" I am at peace.

Kent Mueller
Director for Administration and Communication
Rocky Mountain Synod, ELCA

Wilderness and the Human Spirit

Photograph of Emma Louden at Dead Horse Point

There are likely as many answers to the question of what wilderness means to the human spirit as there are people who support the protecting and defending of Utah’s Red Rock Wilderness. For some, time spent in the wilds is recreational pure adventure in its most raw form. Others thrive on solitude that is only possible in wilderness. Some believe that wilderness should be allowed to exist whether or not anyone ever experiences it. 

For me, when I'm in a wild place my deepest, most true self (this is my definition of 'spirit' or 'soul') is easily exposed and I get a sense of all that I share with all life—that even now in all our modernity, we have an active role—and therefore, a true responsibility—in the vast and infinite evolutionary story.

Brooke Williams

Field Organizer

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

Since 1983, SUWA has been the only independent organization working full-time to defend America’s redrock wilderness from oil and gas development, unnecessary road construction, illegal off-road vehicle use, and other threats to the 9.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands that qualify as Wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. www.suwa.org

Wind, Spirit, Dust

Cabezon in the Rio Puerco Valley, NW of Albuquerque

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”

I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a house with five four-room apartments built by my German great-grandfather in the late 1880’s.  My sister and I shared a small room and a bed.  Like most of the windows on that side of the house, ours looked out at a brick wall twelve inches away.  In summer we heard soft voices of pigeons on the roof and animated conversations of families around us.  We were all related, or seemed like we were, as four generations of immigrants gave way to “real Americans.”  There was one empty lot on our street – 25 ft by 175 ft – the largest open space we could imagine.  Everyone called it the prairie.

Now when I pick up the morning paper I look east to mark the place where the sun rises over the Sandias.  I look west to a row of dormant volcanoes on the mesa and farther west to what we call Mount Taylor, a mountain sacred to the Pueblo and Navajo peoples who call it by other names.  Standing in the bright expanse, I think of the long slim patch of light I was just able see if I leaned out far enough from that first window and twisted left or right.  

The Windy City has nothing on spring winds racing across New Mexico.  My iron gate rattles.  Trees dance.  Juniper pollen fills the air.  Not everyone loves this time of year.  Wind has its own season.  God’s spirit too blows more forcefully than we want, shaping us in ways we did not anticipate.  Like Nicodemus, we watch our best efforts turn to sand, shifting with the winds.  We find ourselves moving into a future we did not plan, rubbing the dust from our eyes. 

          Anne Morawski

          Campus Pastor

          University of New Mexico

All things connected...

Denver, Looking West

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

I’ve lived in inner-city Denver for over 25 years now.  Not necessarily the kind of landscape that first comes into our minds when we think about “landscapes of faith”.  The cityscape, though maybe not the place where I go to “find God”, is definitely the place where God finds me and calls me to practice incarnational living.  

Often I’ve heard people say, “I don’t have to go to church to find God, I can find God in nature”, to which my response is, “That’s easy, anyone can find God in nature; it’s finding God in the midst of humankind that is the real test of faith”.  It’s not nature that needs redeeming (or healing), it’s us, so if one wants to be where God is about the work of redemption/healing, you have to be where the brokenness is. There’s not quite anyplace like the inner city to encounter our broken humanity and the God who is steeped in it.  That’s one reason why it is significant that Wartburg College, a college of the church, saw fit to begin an urban education program called “Wartburg West” in Denver back in 1985, and which my partner and colleague Bonita Bock and I have been coordinating since 1991. 

Actually-- to correct my earlier statement-- according to the apostle Paul, the creation does need redeeming/healing, too, but that healing can only be accomplished in conjunction with our own (Romans 8:18ff).  The very cosmos can only fulfill its destiny, says Paul, when “the children of God” are revealed, i.e., when we real-ize our true purpose/identity as that creature in the web of life which has the capacity to consciously live in awe, wonder, gratitude and reverence for the sacred gift of creation, to conscientiously exercise stewardship of (“tend and keep”) it, and to share its bounty with all our neighbors, human and non-human alike.

Speaking of stewardship, for the past several years I’ve had the privilege of serving as an advisory member and liaison to the Rocky Mountain Synod for the Four Winds Council, a ministry by and for Native Americans which has for over twenty years operated out of a former Lutheran Church at a particular location in the urban landscape--the intersection of 5th Ave. and Bannock St. in Denver’s inner-city. Four Winds serves a population which, due to a legacy of centuries of dispossession, displacement, oppression and discrimination, are among the poorest of the poor and who, among all populations in this land, have the highest rates of incarceration, suicide, mortality and morbidity from various health problems, and the lowest rates of educational achievement.  

It is to the credit of the Rocky Mountain Synod that this ministry has continued for over two decades in response to the 1991 resolution of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly declaring the year 1992 (the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the “New World”) as a “Year of Repentance, Remembrance, and Renewal” regarding the relationship of the ELCA to American Indian people, and pledging support for their ongoing efforts at self-determination and reclaiming their heritage and identity as the indigenous occupants of this land, and to be an agent of healing and reconciliation between Indian people and those who subsequently dispossessed them and occupied the land, including that land at the intersection of 5th and Bannock.

So what does that have to do with stewardship?  Just this—that the property which legally (according to the western Christian legal tradition) belongs to the Synod is now realizing its purpose and identity as a sacred space where justice for Indian people, reconciliation with the rest of us, and redemption for all of us can begin to become real—incarnate, if you will. As much as anything else, that is what it means to be the church, the body of Christ.  

Pastor Nelson Bock
Wartburg College West
Denver

A Prayer for choosing a Bishop

CHOOSING A BISHOP 

We begin by asking God’s Holy Spirit to guide us.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, Holy Spirit and fill the minds and hearts of your faithful people! 

Kindle in us the fire of your love, 

And enlighten us with your wisdom.

Give counsel and insight, O God,

And guide our discerning, in Jesus’ name.

You are both sun and shield, Most Holy God,

you give your people grace and glory.

No good thing will you withhold from those who walk with integrity. 

O Lord of hosts, happy are they who put their trust in you!

Almighty God, giver of all good gifts, 

look on your Church with grace 

and guide the minds of those who shall choose a bishop, 

that we may receive a faithful servant 

who will care for your people and equip us for our ministries; 

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

From the Office of the Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

by Rev. Jan Erickson-Pearson, 2006

Litany adapted from Psalm 84

Observations and Instructions

Photo by James Drury of the Wedge in the San Rafael Swell

Observations and Instructions

You drive through a desolate landscape of high desert, strange rock formations (we call it Dinosaur Poop  acres, very rare rock formations), where colors range from tan to brown to slate with occasional flashes of green. In March you might see Bald and Golden Eagles as you drive beneath a migratory skyway meandering over the Desert Lake Waterfowl Management Area. If viewing luck is with you, you might spy antelope.  

The gravel road continues to rise gradually as you drive through these long rolling hills which give way eventually to a dense pygmy forest of Pinyon Pine and Utah Juniper. About thirty minutes into the drive, passengers are beginning to wonder. “Where in the world are we going?” At forty minutes they are sure this is a fool’s Errand, a Trip to Nowhere and a Colossal Waste of a Good Afternoon. 

At about the fifty-five to sixty minute mark, they are usually speechless for some few seconds because the road has risen up in front of them exactly at the place where the world drops away to reveal The Wedge Overlook, Utah’s Mini-Grand Canyon. When speech returns you hear:

“Stunning. Incredible. We had no idea there was anything like this out here in the middle of this nowhere.”

The San Rafael River carves its way 1200 feet below you. The eons of erosion reveal geologic history in the several sandstone formations, Carmel, Navajo, Kayenta, Wingate, Chinle and the oldest of all, the Moenkopi. Ledges, cliffs, tumbled-down boulders the size of trucks, shale fields, the multi-colored revelation stretching three miles above the San Rafael River in its rolling green switchback journey which eventually wanders out to join the Green River.

This is a place of surpassing beauty, vistas that can make your heart skip more than a few beats and fill your eyes with tears. This landscape surprises you at every turn if you are willing to give yourself over to rocks, sparseness, emptiness, desolation, petroglyphs and pictographs in unexpected places. Yet, once given up, you find yourself filled by wonder and awe, your breath like incense rising on the anticipation of the holy. 

Is there a lesson here? Poet Mary Oliver clearly says yes.  Instructions for living a life:  Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

The Psalmist also knows. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace… Isaiah 52:7a.

Instructions for sharing the landscape of our faith: celebrate our giftedness in Christ. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Rejoice together in all things.

James Drury

Price, Utah

The Landscapes of Electing a Bishop

The Landscapes of Electing a Bishop

To elect a bishop is a matter governed outwardly by the mechanism of the Rocky Mountain Synod’s constitution.  But inwardly it is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Four "Landscapes" are recommended for the sake of bringing integrity to the process.

The Landscape of Prayer

To establish the proper ground of our election process, that the Holy Spirit may be our center; for the candidates who have been named that they may be faithful in attending to their own awareness of call, and for patience and care as we each consider where God is leading our synod.

The Landscape of Listening

To give due regard to what the candidates say in giving account of themselves. To calm the voices around us and be attentive to what wisdom is within us.  To listen to one another’s insights across the whole community.

The Landscape of Discernment

To be open to different perspectives about the candidates;  to properly balance the needs of the whole synod with what we feel most drawn to personally; to weigh justly the merits of each candidate.   

The Landscape of Mutual Conversation

To be accountable to one another for what we know and believe about the synod, the candidates, and God’s leading in the process; to allow our discernments about these things to be justly tested; to be persistent in forming the election as an endeavor of the whole community.

--Pastor Beth Purdum

St. Luke Lutheran Church, Albuquerque, NM

The "Wow" Factor

Niagara Falls

Photograph by Kay Gillespie

I am new to this blog and new to the discussion of "landscapes of faith" as a theme. However, I am not new to thinking about God's power and love and magnificence as manifest in our environment.  In fact, the "wow" factor of amazement at God's creation for us has probably been a part of my soul since words came into my little girl's mind.

I took this particular photo at Niagara Falls, which is certainly one of the more impressive and striking natural features in our country -- among many such.  It is a sight that engenders fear to some degree -- "May God's angels keep me from falling in!"  It is a sight that engenders awe -- "My goodness, how can this be, it is so mighty!"  It is a sight that engenders worshipful silence -- "Words fail me in this moment!"  And it is a sight that engenders humility -- "God, I am so small, help me in my smallness!"

These emotions can overwhelm us temporarily when we experience the mighty and awesome aspect of our creation; but such feelings are balanced at other times my our delight and our growing joyful feeling of faith when we look at the tiny aspects of our environment such as the wildflower peeking out from behind a rock, the tree seedling taking root in a mountain boulder, or the wee crocuses (croci)  now coming up in our yards.  Thank goodness for this balance -- we probably couldn't endure spending all our time being overwhelmed by that which is mighty and awesome!

Dr. Kay Gillespie, 

Member, Board of Directors, Lutheran Campus Ministry, Colorado State University

Professor Emerita, Colorado State University

Colorado Confluence Conversion

Photo by Jeffrey Louden

I HAVE BEEN TO WHERE the Colorado river begins its life near the crags of Longs Peak. I have walked in the first waters of the Roaring Fork as it begins to gather itself on Independence Pass and Hagerman Pass and McClure Pass. All rivers begin at boundaries. These ribbons of water come together at Two Rivers Park, two rivers of the stuff that makes life possible, a miracle we hardly ever notice. Just a few hundred yards east of this confluence, the Glenwood Hot Springs flow with their water warmed from earth’s tensions as the continents collide and the core of our planet reluctantly gives up some of its primeval heat. Truly we live in an amazing place of beauty and mystery.

Now some of the Baptist preachers in town baptize in the Hot Springs pool. Tourist and locals watch and gawk. Talking slows down and someone is pushed under three times for the Trinity. I’ve told some of my Baptist friends that if they had guts, they’d baptize in the river. But I never thought I’d be given that task and gift. Nor did I think it would be in October.

Many things come together in a person’s life before God becomes present, right there, up front close, in one’s midst, so that one can’t avoid God anymore. A confluence of events gathers momentum, like the waters which come together in the mountains giving prolonged birth to the Colorado and Roaring Fork Rivers. Conversion takes time. A stream of happenings, half-remembered events, people and places form a watershed which channels the spirit of God into a mighty stream. Finally one stands Moses-like at this baptismal boundary and dies.

After worship we drove to the mortuary and began the liturgy there. From death to life. Cold and threatening to rain. The sponsors promised to lead him in the ways of life. We heard the stories of water and promise. The Roaring Fork flowed outside. We walked along the cement path in blustery winds and 55 degrees across the bridge and down to the Colorado. No strangers were watching as Bob took off his socks and shoes, only thirty odd members of his church. He waded in barefoot and slipped on the round rocks. I walked in afterwards in my Tevas and dress pants, wearing the cross made by John Rupley, the pastor who baptized me. Some of the small kids threw rocks into the river. Bob was wet to the waist and I poured water from several western watersheds over him three times as ancient words were spoken. We leaned on each other for support. The sign of the cross in oil marked his forehead. Water and oil do mix. They are a sign of the kingdom. Neither one of us was too cold. The sun broke through the partial clouds and we walked back for homemade chocolate chip cookies at the mortuary.

Jeffrey Louden

Taken Out of Context

Cholla Cactus at Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

Out of Context


Area of the Rocky Mountain Synod    421,829 sq miles
(Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and El Paso, Texas)

Population of the Rocky Mountain Synod    11.2 Million
Oldest known human habitation site  Clovis, NM (11,500 years BP)

Number of cities over 100,000   13

Number of ELCA Lutherans   71,390
Percentage of Population that is ELCA   .6%

Number of Congregations   165

Number of Mission Congregations   3

Number of active clergy   185

Number of Associates in Ministry   8
Number of Diaconal Ministers   5
Number of congregations served by ecumenical partners   6

Largest Congregation   Bethany Lutheran, Denver

Oldest Congregation     First Lutheran, Longmont 1878

States with Legislative Advocates   Colorado and New Mexico

Most recently installed pastor      Dan Barwinski (March 4, 2012)

Types of landscapes:

Plains, canyons, foothills, mountains, valleys, riverbeds, calderas,
gypsum deserts, dunescapes, tundra
Largest living organism on the planet    Aspen Grove near Fish Lake, Utah

Highest point + Mt. Elbert, CO 14,440 ft

Lowest point + Redbluff Reservoir, NM 2842 ft
States where atomic bombs have been detonated +  
New Mexico (1945) and Colorado (1969)
Year El Paso, Texas was established   1850
Place the Margarita was invented + Tommy's Place Bar in El Paso, 1945
Length of the Colorado River  1450 Miles
People served by the river  25 million
Number of National Parks    14
Longest serving Bishop in the ELCA    Allan Bjornberg  (1994-present)


compiled by Jeffrey Louden

To Love What Is

This was more than 25 years ago. I was serving in Yuma and Akron, Colorado, out on the eastern plains. With a group of other clergy from the front range I was traveling home from a pastors’ conference in Kansas. We were driving north on US 385 from Burlington to Wray, which goes through some beautiful, rugged, terribly scarred hill country. I looked out the window of the van: sandy ravines carved out by high winds from dust-bowl days in the 1930s, or earlier, still so barely held on to low green shrubs, cottonwoods, yucca. 

I sighed: “I love this country.”

One of the other pastors said, almost before I got the words out, “The church needs men like you.” He said it so fast I almost recoiled … but he’s right. And not just the church needs men and women who care for this tough, dry, beautiful and unforgiving country: this world needs people who love this country simply because it is what it is.

It is not benign. A woman who must have been in her mid-eighties told me of using a garden hoe to kill a rattlesnake coiled up between her and her child’s stroller one summer morning on the farm she lived on with her husband. Another woman told of using damp handkerchiefs to to cover the faces of her babies while they slept, in order that they wouldn’t suffocate from fine dust that would blow into the best-sealed house: which hers was not. Take a look at West of Last Chance, with texts by Kent Haruf and pictures by Peter Brown, if you want other glimpses of the plains and their history.

But I do love the eastern Colorado sand-hills. After living away from them for twenty-five years I found I still love them as much when I watched the sun go down over them in July 2011 as I did in July 1982, when I saw them for the first time. Maybe even more: because more than ever I see them as a place with a hard and terrible beauty and grace: but a place nonetheless, of a beauty and grace which endures, and in which one also encounters God.

Bruce Allen Heggen teaches in the Writing Program of the Department of English of the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, where he also serves as pastor of the Lutheran Campus Ministry.  From 1982-1987 he served as pastor of New Hope Lutheran Church, Yuma, Colorado, and of Peace Lutheran Church, Akron, Colorado.

Staking a Claim

One difficulty with a theology of sacred space is the human tendency to try and “confine” God to one place or another, as if God has a GPS location. This can happen to us when we frequent a space, such as a church, that we call “sacred”.  We expect the sacred to be present when we call out, to be in places that others have told us about, or to be where we have known God to be in the past. The concept of a “Holy Land” or “Holy Place” can be dangerous when it becomes a way of staking a claim to God in a land that belongs only to “me and mine”.

Years ago I read a story written by Annie Dillard entitled “Living Like Weasels”. She talks about a walk one evening at sunset when she goes to a pond near her house. She is watching the lily pads and the carp in the water when a bird flies behind her. When she turns around to see the bird, she startles a weasel in the brush. She has never seen a weasel wild before. She is stunned into stillness and, so is the weasel. She and the animal share a moment, their eyes locked in intense engagement, and then the animal runs to the wild and vanishes. She waits, motionless, but the animal doesn’t return.

What a gift to lock eyes with such a free and unconfined creature! She cannot claim it; she can only revel in it. And so it is, it seems to me, to meet God.

We need wild places and creatures to remind us that God is not our possession. God is a wild thing, free and uncontained! This makes the promise of God ‘s claim on us such a welcome surprise instead of an expected entitlement.

Kari Reiquam

Growing a Garden Grows Faith

I think this is the way the church, a faith community, is supposed to work.  People started paying attention.  They paid attention to the needs of the community and they paid attention to the resources and gifts they had.  What should we do with the big open space by the church where the grass never really took off?  To be truthful, it is an eyesore, growing more weeds than anything else that have to be mowed down.  What about using the space for a garden and donating the food to the local food bank?

            

There were all kinds of reasons why that would not work.  How are we going to get water to the garden?  How are we going to get enough volunteers?  How are we going to pay for the materials to construct the garden beds?  What about a fence?  Those were all practical concerns, but the concern to do something was stronger (or perhaps the Spirit working in the community was stronger?!)

            

And so people donated money and showed up on a Sunday afternoon to build garden beds.  The engineers in the congregation figured out the watering system.  Even the Boy Scouts got involved, constructing more beds as part of an Eagle Scout project.  Lo and behold, we had a garden!  And people noticed; people driving by; people walking in the neighborhood; people throughout the community.  They noticed the church doing something!

            

We were living out faith in such a simple way – growing food for the hungry.  As the vegetables grew so did the faith of those who worked the soil and harvested the vegetables and took them to the food bank; so did the faith of the community seeing that we can make a difference.  Isn’t that what the church is all about?

Susan Candea, pastor

King of Glory Lutheran Church

 Loveland, CO 

Boundaries

NOVEMBER 2000 + ITS EASY TO CROSS from El Paso to Cuidad Juarez. You don’t need a passport or even a drivers license. Just walk across the bridge that spans the Rio Grande, pay a quarter to the person hidden in the dark booth just over the Mexican side and then walk into the Mercado of the city. What’s harder is coming back. Then you need papers in order. But we were headed to the Mercado on foot to see firsthand the streets of Juarez.


The border is artificial. The two communities depend on each other. They share the same water, the same polluted air, the same history. What is new is the politics. In the old days the river flowed wild, sometimes changing its course and thereby changing the boundaries of Mexico and the U.S.A. Now the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo to the Mexicans) runs in a concrete channel. Sometimes it doesn’t flow at all, because all the water has already been used.


In nature exciting things happen at boundaries. The same is true here. Hence we have come to hear the stories of people who live on this boundary. We walk through Juarez. Except for the street merchants hawking their wares to us, everything is in Spanish. The smells seem richer, the houses more dilapidated, but also more alive. The first church we visit is open with many people wanting to see the “milagro” that took place there. We see our first beggars. Then we see the woman ahead of us, sitting at the boundary of the wall and the sidewalk. She asks for nothing. She is still and quiet. We all prepare to walk around her. Ahead of us an older, small, crunched over Mexican woman, sees the woman, stops, kneels gently and touches her face, both cheeks, with the sides of her hand, slowly.


Her action stops us. “Did you see that?” I said. They nod. “It was a blessing.” We continue on wondering what other blessings God holds in store, wondering where we will be asked to stop, to stoop and to reach out.


Jeffrey Louden

Mountain Music

Mountain Music

I marvel at the jagged peaks

the Bookcliffs throw up against a morning sky

wondering what they might sound like and

I want

to lay over them manuscript paper

to notate Bruin Point to Mount Garfield and beyond

begin to see this melody shape in itself

one hope

that when I mark bass clef lines and spaces

we might hear creation’s first chorale

a symphony this mountain music brings

for life

(Poem by Pastor Jim Drury, Ascension St. Matthew's Church, Price, UT. Pastor Drury serves a joint Lutheran Episcopal parish at the base of the Bookcliffs. Joint ministry with the Episcopal Diocese of Utah and others is also part of our landscape.)