In the Gardens of Earthly Delights

Yesterday, Friday (6/19), I took my first field trip into central Florida. After morning coffee at 7-11 with Marge (the day-time clerk), I headed west on Old Dixie Road, under I95, and on until it crossed US Hwy 1. I headed north on Hwy 1 toward St. Augustine. I’ve been traveling between my home and work in Palm Coast by I95 most of the time. The traffic on that road just makes you want to push the speed limit and just“get there.” Hwy 1, while a major highway, says, “Take a look around. Enjoy the scenery as you travel.”
Other than a few small farms and small homes in the woods there is nothing of great tourist wonder to see people living their lives. This is such a change from the Florida we knew when we had only visited Orlando—the land of concrete and faux-elegance.

The distance to St. Augustine is about 40 miles, a nice drive. About 8 miles south of St. Augustine I passed “Lambert’s Nursery.” I did a quick (and probably illegal) u-turn and stopped in the middle of the nursery. I was immediately welcomed by a pod of calico cats and an old black lab, all of whom soon scattered to the shade again.

Around me were plants I had only seen in the “Indoor Plants” areas of Minnesota nurseries but here there were pots and pots of them just sitting around outside. And many were HUGE. I rambled through the shade-covered flats and around the 3-gallon bush area, then it hit me. I felt like a kid in a candy store but one filled with candy I had never, ever tasted. I hope the pictures I’ve posted here will give you some idea of Lambert’s and the wonders of Florida horticulture.

I soon got to St Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited “European” city in the western hemisphere (1565). They had to add “European” because Mexico City and other Central American cities are older.

My first taste of St. Augustine was at the San Sebastian winery. There, you get to see a 20 minute movie about the company and wine-making, a quick tour of a small bottling area, and then the real reason for the stop—wine tasting. The tour group tasted six or 7 wines, with suggestions for parings with food and such. I learned that Florida wines mostly come from a native grape that has been domesticated and in some cases crossed with other varieties. For the most part, the wines are on the sweet side but are not like Concord grapes.

The historic part of the city is really quite interesting. It’s history starts from the 1560s of course, but there are some interesting buildings from the late 1800s when Flagler (the Florida version of James J. Hill) built his railway into Florida. I walked the “old-town” shopping district that was a good blend of real historic value and pure American commercialism. I walked around the famous fort that dates from the early Spanish times and was used by the US Army until 1900.

From the fort, I meandered through an old neighborhood that stretched north between Hwy 1 and the ocean. In many ways, the house reminded me of the garden district of New Orleans. There were some huge mansions surrounded by brick walls and garden and just a street over were some small, houses close together with porches and lots of old trees and vines growing everywhere. Both the mansions and the small houses seemed rooted, part of the land.

I drove Florida Hwy A1A south to get home. It winds its way along the shoreline and presents the whole range of housing—from gigantic houses on stilts to the shabby mom-and-pop motels to pristine, uninhabited costal landscape.

Serendipity is the Holy Spirit's Middle Name

Yikes! I like the Southeastern Minnesota Synod but who would have thought that my next interim church would be in the southeastern United States—Florida! I am being considered at Palm Coast, Florida, which is on the Atlantic Ocean, 30-some miles north of Daytona Beach.

Just over a week ago my sister Jill and her husband returned from visiting her nursing school (Mary and her husband Tom) in Palm Coast, FL. Mary told Jill that their church, St. Mark by the Sea, was looking for a full-time intentional interim pastor and Jill told me. I sent an e-mail with my resume and ELCA mobility papers to the Florida-Bahamas Synod Bishop on April 17 after I returned from a non-meeting in Rochester (MN).

After a long phone call this past Tuesday (4/22) and some back and forth e-mail messages, the bishop is recommending me as the sole candidate to St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church church council this Sunday.

The bishop’s assistant, Bob Schaefer, said they will probably fly me down for an interview next week just in case they might find me to be a real dork or something. He was amazed that I just dropped in on them and he kept talking about the Holy Spirit’s working in this. The synod has been looking for an experienced, full-time, intentional interim pastor for three months and then I appeared. Amazing.

This sure is much more exciting than the small rural congregations of Red Oak Grove (Blooming Prairie, MN) or Harmony, MN would have been as interim sites!

On top of all this, Mary and Tom have offered me their home for the first month this summer when they are in Minnesota. They have a very, very nice 2 bedroom home that is biking distance from the church AND THE BEACH. In that first month, I'll be able to find my own place.

Sue and I are talking about her coming down for most of the winter—after the heat. She can do her telephone coaching (2 days/week) from Florida as well as here.

Truly, "Serendipity" is the Holy Spirit's middle name.

The church has about 330 members (160 average worship attendance) and has experienced some pastoral leadership issues for the past six years—as well as a theological schism..

St. Mark by the Sea is a two-year term call with the possibility of it to becoming a regular call. And we are seriously thinking about making it a regular call until I retire in 8-10 years.

Rocks in the Font

This is an old article but since it summarizes my faith journey so well, I thought it would be a good introduction to my first blog.

There are rocks in the baptismal font! Not water but rocks! And so it shall be for a time.

It is Lent and the church is on a pilgrimage, a journey of faith. We have left the safety of our well-traveled roads and have been led off into the wilderness, the desert, to confront our own devils. The quiet pool in which we usually splash the heads of infants with clean, warm water has dried up and we all are dusty, our mouths are dry.

Generations and generations before Jesus, God’s people were led out into a wilderness wandering. Set free in the horrible night of first-born death, Moses led the people into the wilderness, the desert. There they confronted their own devils—their faithlessness, their constant complaints, their rebellion. For forty years they wandered from one dry wadi to another seeking water. But it was God who provided their water of life. Moses touched the rocks with his staff and fresh spring water flowed and the people were refreshed. Forty years of wilderness and desert and God to lead them into the Promised Land through the flowing waters of the Jordon River.

Generations and generations passed and a voice was heard again in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Make the rocky places smooth and the rough places a plain!” And John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, the desert, and all the people came out to face their devils — their faithlessness, their constant complaints, their rebellion. In the wilderness, in the desert, John preached repentance and judgment. And all were baptized by John in the Jordon, confessing their sin. Jesus was also baptized by John there in the wilderness, the desert.

When Jesus came up out of the water, immediately the heavens were torn apart and a voice from those ripped heavens spoke to him: “You are my Son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased” — the same thing any father would say to a favored son. Then the Spirit descended on Jesus. She was in the form of a dove but she sunk her talons into his head and still wet from his baptism, she drove him into the wilderness, the desert, to confront his own devils. For forty days and nights Jesus was in the wilderness, the desert, tempted by the devil.

Each Lent, still dripping wet from our own baptism, the Spirit drives us out into the wilderness, the desert. For forty days, from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday, we confront our own devils in the desert—our faithlessness, our constant complaints, our rebellion. The safety and the security of the ever-flowing baptismal font is behind us, dried up. Our lips are parched, our spirits withered, and we know that the only way back is through Jerusalem, through the rocky Kidron Valley to the Rock, the Place of the Skull, the way of the Cross, through our own death with Christ.

Yes, there are rocks in the baptismal font. They will stay there for a time. We are still in the wilderness, the desert. We still have many of our own devils to confront — to repent, to be reconciled with God and one another, to be renewed, to be washed clean once again in the waters of Baptism to be raised again with Jesus on Easter morning.