I am most thankful for the things that I did not learn as a child and refuse to accept as an adult. I did not learn to be fearful of anything and so fear has rarely held me back. I did not learn that failure means I am not good enough and that gives me the confidence to try again. I did not learn to mistrust first and that has allowed me to see the good in people. I did not learn to simply accept things as they are and it’s made me willing to question and to work for positive change. I did not learn to doubt myself and that’s made me confident enough to stand up and to deal with adversity. I did not learn just one way of thinking and that gave me the tools to discover how to think instead of just what to think. I did not learn to hate and that only left the option to love. It may be strange to think this way, but I am more concerned sometimes with making sure my daughter doesn’t learn those things than I am with what she does. I think that once you learn something it’s pretty hard to unlearn it and children pick up on everything they see. If we don’t stop hating, if we don’t stop mistrusting, if we live in fear, If we doubt ourselves, and if we simply accept things as they are then the next generation will learn to do those things too. For me the best way to avoid those things is to never teach them in the first place. I am a seeker of knowledge, but I am very glad for those things I never learned.

My watch broke a week ago and yet I feel more constrained by time now than I did when I actually knew what time it was. I used to think that there was a certain freedom in not knowing (ignorance is supposed to be bliss), but instead I find myself thinking more about time and worrying that I will be late for something. I never want to be the person who spends all day looking at their watch. I remember one Sunday when I was in high school that the pastor pulled out his watch as he began the sermon and said, “if you are wearing one of these, take it off and put it in your pocket because this may take a while.” I actually don’t remember the sermon, what I remember was the point that if we are worried about time we may miss the most important messages and we can never really focus on anything.

The other day I was playing hide and seek with my 2 year old and she kept telling me where she was going to hide. At first I told her that she should just hide and not tell me, but then I realized that she has a total grasp on the actual purpose of the game. We are not supposed to hide and not be found, we are hiding so that we can be found and her favorite part is being found. Isn’t this really what we do with God. We hide, it seems like all the time we try to hide, but in the end we are really just hoping to be found. How often do we run away or stay away thinking we just can’t don’t need God or we just don’t need our church or Mosque or Synagogue, or that what we really need is something else? How often do we play this game with each other trusting that others will always be there no matter how long we hide? Yet each time (once we are ready) what we really want is to be found. When I was in graduate school the first paper I had to write was on Psalm 139 where it talks about playing hide and seek with God. There is no darkness, no high place and no low place where we can truly hide from God, so I wonder why we keep trying. I guess I realized in playing with my daughter that sometimes we hide because it is good to be found. What I mean is that sometimes I am not even sure we realize that we are hiding until we are found and we rejoice at being found. I suppose the other side of this is that in the game (and in life) once we are found we are meant to be the seeker. When God find us our response needs to be that we turn around and renew our quest to find God. I believe that we are meant to be seekers and I believe that God wants to be found. My two year old understands this so maybe one day the rest of us can see the wisdom in letting everyone know where we are hiding so that we will never fail to be found.

I think that whenever you experience something outside of your routine it changes you. If that something is profound it changes you even more. It’s not about changing the things that are fundamentally you (though even this is possible), it is about the sometimes subtle changes in your heart and mind. I don’t think you can realize until after you have returned to the routine how you have been effected and affected by the other. I am home now from five weeks of extraordinary experience and I am excited to see for myself how I have been changed. I left with an open mind and I return with perhaps an even more open one (though not in the way I might have expected). Perhaps my greatest learning was to be able to listen to the closed minded and to feel their struggle. It is important to be with people you don’t agree with and to be open to how their experience might change you.

You learn a lot about yourself when you spend a month with people who don’t know anything about you. Everyone might come with preconceived notions about the others. Certainly my external persona is that of a White Mainline Protestant Male Pastor and assumptions are always going to be made because those are indeed a part of who I am. I cannot nor do I want to hide these things, but the questions is, “will I let these things be all that I am?” How much of myself am I willing to show beyond the surface? The other question is, “can I be myself or should I put on some kind of mask so that I will be more acceptable?” Most of us wear those masks even more often than we think. We don’t trust in the reactions of others so we tell them what they want to hear or only as much as we think they can handle. The second questions has never been a problem for me as I tend to be more honest than I should at times, trusting in the reaction of others even when perhaps it has gotten me into trouble or hurt someone else’s feelings in an unintentional way. I try very hard to be authentic because that is what I expect of others. I don’t like superficial questions with superficial answers and I struggle to find much appreciation for disingenuinous people. The first question is crucial for me not because I don’t want to be known as more than a surface level persona, but because a part of who I am is very reserved emotionally. I rarely show emotions and yet I consider myself emotional. That means that being me is being reserved in that way, but how do you get that across. After a month I feel known at least by the people who wanted to know me and I feel like in some ways I shared more of myself in those four weeks than I have had the chance to share in years with a church. It was a freeing experience even for one who tries to be open and honest in all things.

I am inspired by the relationships that I formed and I am changed I believe for the better because of those relationships and this experience.

if you are following my other blog this will be a repeat, but I wanted to put it here as well since it is a continuation of my travels. I was in London’s Heath-Row airport for only four hours, but one of the things I did was to find the “interfaith chapel” so that I could pray. I am a constant prayer. I believe that I am always in prayer of one kind or another in an ongoing conversation with God and in my own consideration of the grace in creation. Most of the time it is just a moment of focused thought or a whispered word of gratitude for the moments and opportunities placed before me, but I find myself praying more formally these days (perhaps it is the morning prayers we had at Bossey, my heightened appreciation for the devotion of Islam or maybe just my orthodox friends rubbing off on me)and I felt compelled to go to the chapel. I happened to enter the chapel just as the second of the five prescribed Muslim prayer times began. I sat down and prayed my prayer as the four Muslim men went through their own ritual of prayer. It felt natural and it made me wonder why we seem to make it so difficult that we need conferences to learn about each other and to learn to get along. We were all praying (and in this case we were all praying to the same God). They didn’t seem to mind that I was there and I actually appreciated that they were there(it somehow made the room feel more sacred and it legitimized the room as a room for prayer). The room has no adornments, but there is a cabinet which holds mats for praying and it looked like there were other things like Bibles and crosses in there too. I noticed the sign outside advertising “Anglican ecumenical services” open to all Christians several times a week and I wondered what it would be like to conduct services there in that little room for weary travelers seeking some spiritual sustenance as they continue on their journeys. I wonder who attends and I wonder what they are really looking for. It made me think of my own position and to ask whether what I do in my church is any different. I seek through God to offer something for the journey. I see the weariness of life and I feel compelled to offer service in the name of a God that I feel has served me and continues to serve me. I see the joy of life and I am compelled to offer praise and to share that joy so that it can spread. I see seekers thirsting for knowledge and I look for ways in which we can discover that knowledge together. I see God in people and I seek to know their story. I see that interfaith chapel at the world’s busiest airport as a microcosm for “parish of the world” as John Wesley would put it. We have so much to learn, and yet sometimes it can be as simple as sitting in a room together as we each pray our prayers and acknowledge the God who made us.

There is a room at Versailles that is supposed to depict the history of France and struck me that every painting is about a war. It’s interesting that the entire history of a country can be captured in a history of the battles in which it has fought. As I walked through the halls I found myself recalling the wall around the Red Cross Museum with it’s listing of all the conflicts and wars every year since its inception. Here was an even longer depiction with the same theme; only this time it was about defining a nation, not demonstrating how necessary humanitarian aid and medical care are. This time it was celebrating the Kings, Saints, Popes, Generals and yes even the “Emperor” Napoleon himself (with George Washington thrown in to represent the French help in the revolution and their “unwavering commitment to freedom around the globe”). I am not trying to be critical of France or the French, in fact I am more appreciative than I ever had been for the contributions of the French to the world, but it saddens me that war is how we tell our histories and how we define ourselves. I did appreciate that beneath each massive painting was a photograph or some story depicting a more recent conflict and pointing to the paradox of war and peace, the atrocities of hate and to the continuing struggles in the world. I guess I prefer a history that does not deny war, but focuses rather on the results. I am reminded of a famous painting of the American Revolution that depicts not a scene of conflict, but rather a signing of the Treaty of Versailles which recognized the sovereignty and independence of the United States or of the signing of the Declaration of Independence which lead to the Treaty of Versailles. We can not forget the brave people who fought for the ideals of their nations (on both sides of every conflict), but we also must remember what they fought to achieve; otherwise all that war is even more tragic than war in general already is. I for one have had enough of wars.

I am beginning to feel like this has turned into a tourist’s guide, and while that’s not my intention I guess it is. I was bothered by this at first, but then I realized that no matter what I write, if it’s true, then it is a travel guide of sorts. Life is a journey and we are all traveling through it. Everywhere we go and everywhere we have been informs where we will go next. Traveling is about gaining knowledge through new experiences in new places or about returning somewhere to find what you missed or maybe what you lost the last time you were there. I myself am a traveler. I have been away from home for nearly five weeks and yet I don’t really miss it. I guess I have always been this way since at the age of 6 I went with a friends family on vacation for a week and made my mother very sad because I didn’t miss home. I miss people, but only to a point because even then I have an unwavering belief that if I am meant to see them again I will and we will make up for all the missed hugs and loss of time. I guess I could also say that I carry home with me in the vivid memories of the people and places which are special to me so it’s hard to feel something missing when I hold it with me. I hope I never loose my will to travel, because if I do I fear that I will have lost myself and my sense of wonder which keeps me going. I crave what is out there and I believe we are all meant to leap into the river of opportunities that flows constantly before us.

Last night I saw the Eiffel tower up close. It’s one of those things that you kind of see all the time from all over the city, but it’s pretty incredible to see it up close. At sunset walking down from the north I had no idea that it had this big “national mall” like lawn with a park including these grand steps up to a museum on one end and the “school of the military” on the other. It made me wonder about how we frame things. Here is this giant tower next to a river that lights up and can be seen from all over the city. It is an icon familiar to people all over the world and it is treated as the pride of the city. It’s not a monument to anything or anyone and it didn’t symbolize anything when it was built, but here it is one of the most recognizable structures on the planet. It was built to be seen, it was built to become what it has become(so I guess it’s a resounding success). It has been framed not just by the landscaping, but also by the propaganda of regional pride. In Seattle we have the space needle (not quite the Eiffel tower, but still), but it doesn’t have any of the prestige, pride or “framing.” It was built for the world’s fair and has become somewhat lost in the landscape of a growing city. They are both tourist places, but i was surprised when a diplomat from Switzerland mentioned the Space Needle and I would never be surprised by someone’s mention of the Eiffel tower. Anyway I guess my lesson learned today is that it’s all about how you frame it.

I am becoming more and more aware that I have a negative physiological reaction to crowds and confined places. The Louvre is huge, but has many small rooms and small corridors and many, many people. It amazes me that the Louvre actually has more Italian art than it does French and actually more Italian art than Italy seemed to have. There are lots of big name artists on display, but the place is like a frustrating maze with lots of not so impressive pieces that kind of hide the really good ones. Yes, the Mona Lisa has a depth to it, a three-dimensional quality that I couldn’t find an any other painting, but other than her I prefer the paintings at the Orsay. There was one landscape by Karl Lessing called, “The Ruins” that I appreciated for the way it captured light and shadow at that incredible time of day when the world just glows beneath a canopy of trees. The other thing that occurred to me was while I was walking through the section dedicated to Flanders I recalled the book, “The Flanders Panel,” by Perez-Reverte. There was one painting that kind of reminded me of the book cover (based on a fictional painting). It is an incredible book about a mystery associated with the hidden messages within a work of art. It made me wish I had the time to just take one painting and really search for all that’s there and it also made me appreciate that in every painting there is more than we can see (especially at first glance). I think it’s the same way with people and any created thing. If we take the time to search and to appreciate then there is something fascinating about every person and every work of creation. There is a story behind them, a reason they are the way they are and a purpose for their (or its) existence. We should all spend more time letting ourselves be fascinated.

The best thing I have seen so far was a painting by Munch (famous for “The Scream”) of Rodin’s “Thinker.” The actual “Thinker” was just outside and has always been very symbolic for me, but somehow the painting brought a dimension to the figure that somehow sitting in the garden on its plinth was lost on the actual statue. The statue is great, though I think this is the third of the 13 authorized copies that I have seen; it is nice to see it here at Rodin’s workshop. The painting is bright and colorful and seems to open the thoughtfulness to the beauty of the world instead of the self-introspection of the figure alone. I guess I love the balance of the two perspectives. It is one thing to be thoughtful and alone (which is very important), and it is another to be thoughtful and aware. The figure is the same, faithfully reproduced in the painting, but its world is different and you can see all the colors of creation; I guess it just makes you think.

I have seen a lot of history and a lot of art representing the creative energy of God’s creation. I remain in awe of humanity and even more in awe how much God has given to us. I have a few more things to see, but my only hope is remain open to what the world has to teach me.