Exodus 24:12-18 † Psalm 2 † 2 Peter 1:16-21 † Matthew 17:1-9

When you are out in the wilderness and you see a big cloud coming, you start to look for shelter. You don’t need to be an expert hiker to know this. You feel it first. ​

​This is especially true when you are up high and exposed. Conditions can change in an instant, and if you are not prepared, you can find yourself in danger far more quickly than you would imagine down here near sea level, among the trees.

“I’m drawn to places,” writes Eric Weiner, “that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again.”[i]

Exodus 34:29-35 † Psalm 99 † 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 † Luke 9:28-36-43a

“I’m drawn to places,” writes Eric Weiner, “that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again.”[i] He is speaking of what we’ve come to know as thin places.
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Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. The ancient Celts used the term to describe places like the wind-swept isle of Iona where Julie Kae will have an opportunity to spend some time this summer as a part of her sabbatical.

Genesis 25:19-34 † Psalms 109:105-112 † Romans 8:1-11 † Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
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Franklin and a team of researches visited the scorched slopes of Mount St. Helens after the volcano exploded with the force of multiple atomic bombs in 1980.

William Dietrich tells the now familiar story in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Final Forest.[i]
The blast laid trees over like a giant comb, burning off the needles and covering the mountainsides with logs like matted brown hair. Ash covered the duff of the forest floor. Humans and large animals caught in the blast were suffocated and roasted. But scientists were surprised at how many small creatures and plants survived the searing heat and began immediately to repair the ecological fabric. Fireweed poked through the ash. Ants scuttled across the gray powder. Gophers burrowed to the surface, beginning to mix the old soil with the new deposits. Insects and seed began to blow across the moonscape.

Ezekiel 37:P1-14 † Psalm 130 † Romans 8:6-11 † John 11:1-45

​You’ve maybe heard me say this before, but I loved fairy tales as a child. They contained for me a power, a kind of terrible fascination, that I have revisited as an adult. I am pretty sure that big bad wolves, wild hags, shoemaker elves, ugly ducklings, good fairies, taking animals, and savvy children abandoned in forests populated my childhood dreams. They provided for me very good company.

Now I am not talking about the “handsome prince rescuing the helpless damsel”  kind of fairy tale, although those are always fun too. I am talking about the fairy tales that help us look at the terror and the hope in this life.

I remember a long list of little stories – sometimes called fairy-tales, folk-tales, or wonder-tales. Maybe you know some of these. ​