Minilogue - September 2007
Journey of Our Lives
By the Rev. Bruce Johnson
My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Lindgren, was locally famous in our small town for taking exotic summer vacations, and for sharing her adventures with each incoming class the following school year. The summer before I entered fourth grade, she had travelled from Minnesota to Maine and brought back many stories as well as a few artifacts, including an old-fashioned, weather-beaten wooden lobster trap, which sat incongruously next to the fish tank near the window throughout the year. She managed to make connections to her experiences in Maine, not only in social studies and history lessons, but across the entire curriculum. We calculated the number of blueberries in a gallon pail and potatoes in a bushel basket, for example, and drew pictures of loons and lobsters in art class (we had plenty of loons in Minnesota, but no lobsters). By the end of the year, I thought that Maine was just about the coolest place in the world! I can’t help but think that when the opportunity came years later, to attend college in Maine, my early exposure to that great state through Mrs. Lindgren predisposed me to accept the invitation. One thing led to another, and that decision determined many aspects of who I am today, including the fact that New England has become a kind of second home for me. Who knows what course my life might have taken if Mrs. Lindgren had gone to, say, Colorado the summer before I entered her class?
This past summer, I spent several weeks in Turkey, first visiting with my younger brother, who has a home there, and then striking out on my own to explore some sites of religious and historical significance, including Konya Catal Hoyuk, Cappadocia, Tarsus, and Antakya (ancient Antioch). I didn’t bring back anything like a lobster trap, but I did collect lost of images, impressions, memories and stories, which I hope to share over the course of the year in sermons, and classes. Like Mrs. Lindgren, I want to share my enthusiasm and try to make connections between my experiences and the resources of our religious tradition. I’m sure you’ll let me know when you’ve heard enough about Turkey, already!
When we look back on the journey of our lives, most of us will discover that we have a “Mrs. Lindgren” somewhere, a person who engaged our interest in a topic or place, and set our life in a direction it might otherwise not have taken. Sometimes it’s a teacher, a couch, a mentor, or friend who steers us toward a new horizon. Sometimes it’s not a single individual, but a is interested program. My younger brother, for example, went to Turkey as a foreign exchange student just out of high school. He fell in love with a country, and never looked back. Other journeys unfold more gradually, or become clear only in retrospect. However complex the branching pathways of our lives may become, we have reason to remember with gratitude those who have influenced our choices and expanded our sense of the world.
Bruce