It’s great to be back!  My sabbatical was both restful and fulfilling, with the thousand kilometre walk along the Camino in northern Spain undoubtedly the highlight.  But, more of that journey later, as the year unfolds.

It sounds as though you’ve also had a great time in my absence.  You listened to a fascinating array of speakers and preachers, have cared for one another, and have continued to reach out into the community as concerned and committed citizens.  You’ve grown into some of the roles that until now I have performed.  In the upcoming year, we’ll be paired in a new dance together, as we shape some different ways in which we will work together.  These transitions are positive and one of the healthy outgrowths of a sabbatical time, for both minister and congregation.  More of this journey later, as we together create this growing vision of UCM.

Recently I’ve been staring at a set of footprints that my grandson Mason danced out in fingerpaint last year.  They’re not as exciting as watching him in person as he moves around a room.  Since he’s nearly 800 kilometres away though, and I usually see him when we Skype, these printed steps are my visible piece of him.
What fascinates me about his foot-painting — aside from the immediate images of Mason that come to my mind — is the energy and vitality that leaps from this print that he created.  I admit it; I often forget about these lowest appendages of my body.  They’re just there, stood on and walked on, generally silent until I do something absolutely stupid, and they finally say “no more.”  As a runner and a hiker, I should know better, but it’s an ongoing lesson.
Mostly when I look at this foot-painting, I remember all the energy embodied in our feet.  I see three-year-old Mason leaping from a chair and springing to the floor.  I watch him circling his yard, running as if there were no tomorrow.  I remember the bounce in my step when I’m feeling fully rested.  I recall the refreshment of a thirty kilometre hike where, though tired from the exertion, my body and mind feel alive and full of anticipation.
While on the Camino, I began to combine my meditation time with the walking.  I discovered that each enhanced the quality of the other.  My meditating helped me to be more conscious of my steps and the ground that I was traversing.  The physical exercise of the walking shifted my meditating into a less analytical space.  With the summer’s business, I’ve lost some traction in this serendipitous discovery, but with the near arrival of autumn I’m working to reintegrated these two activities.  I’ve also relearned something I’d known years ago: I’m now running again without my mp3 player.  I’m concentrating on the act of jogging itself and on my surroundings.  It’s surprising; in the midst of all the traffic, I’ve found a new level of serenity when I eliminate the electronic noise and distraction.
In his poetry Joseph Stroud often voyages through places and times, observing the details of daily life, as he seeks the miraculous.  The ending lines of one of his poems that I learned while walking the Camino has that feel for me:

We need to take the time to discover the “grace,” the “miraculous,” the energy, and the vitality that our lives have to offer.  It’s in our feet.

It feels good to be back — with energy . . . and with love,