Walks with Barry - Profoundly Simple: A Walk Reframed

  Well, this settles the question. As I walked the streets of my neighborhood it was interesting to see that some houses still had out turkeys and other Thanksgiving decorations while others were full court press on to Christmas. I wonder where the line actually is on this important matter. Are they written somewhere, these rules that determine when and what goes up when and where? But ultimately it doesn’t matter at this house. The pumpkins are at the curb. The harvest celebrations has passed. The next season’s time has come. It is hard, at times, to roll along with the seasons. We can find ourselves so set in our ways that we fight against change on principle, even if the change is good. We may stand against change because we are too tangled up in personal relationships that we are blind to the bigger picture of what is needed and what is best. Sometimes we just like things like they are and we want to stay awhile. Truthfully, most of us suffer from all of the above at one time o...

One of the things I’m thankful for this year is a wonderful group of middle schoolers whom I have the joy of visiting with on Wednesday afternoons after school. They gather for a small group study and usually make something interesting as they meet. Then they somehow get into my office and leave little surprises for me to find, hidden about the room. I have found, among other things, rocks with ghosts expertly painted on them, personalized buttons made on a machine, and doctored pictures of myself. As the Thanksgiving holiday approached, I found these little turkeys scattered about. Each one made me smile. These gifts are special to me because each one of the young people who made them are special to me. They make me laugh snd keep me young. They have interesting insights into whatever topic is up for discussion. They are, each one, unique creations of God. They give me energy for the rest of my week. These wonderful friends are a reminder to me that the greatest gifts in my life will ...

Early one morning I happened to spend a moment in our sanctuary and my eyes were drawn to the reflection of the stained glass on the hardwood of the chancel floor. In order to do some recording for the Advent season, we decorated a little early. The red of the Poinsettias and the greens of the tree and wreaths only heightened the vividness of the colors provided by the windows. The reflection on the floor inspired my own reflection. On this Thanksgiving day, I imagine we all will be challenged as we reflect on the year that 2020 became, and what then became of our 2020 routines and plans. Thanksgiving has arrived, but we celebrate differently. We are perhaps apart from those loved ones who would normally add some blessed chaos to our home and life. We may not be able to go where we always go for dinner. Our holiday outfits now come with a mask and our togetherness is bit less together. If we remain among those fortunate souls who have our jobs, we haven’t been working in the same way o...

I had to be at work earlier than usual, so I missed my walk this morning. But I am most fortunate; I work in a beautiful place. There are a group of people who serve faithfully, volunteering a tremendous amount of time to keep our grounds beautiful. It is a simple, yet profound, pleasure to be greeted in the early light each morning with such colors and such a sense of beauty and calm. The friends who provide this gift have no idea what a difference it makes in my life and in the lives of so many. They go about their work quietly and with no fanfare, their motivation is their love for this place, for flowers and plants, and for beauty. In the heat, in the cold, in the rain - it matters not. They serve. It warms my heart to see them work. Some might wonder in this broken world of Covid and upheaval and bitterness, why they still toil away for the sake of beauty. I can’t speak for my friends, but I know I am glad they do. As author Gift Gugu Mona writes, “Each day presents you a good opp...

  This morning I came upon one exceptionally large whistle. Surely you would notice if you lost this item along the way. I wonder how loud this whistle would be if one really cut loose on it? Does it produce a high pitched note or a low pitched note? What range would it produce? A couple of houses? A block? All the way across the park? Who knows? It is one exceptionally large whistle. When I was a little boy, I loved whistles. The louder, the better. The higher the pitch, the better. I would blow a whistle as a signal with my friends as we played out in the woods. When we pretended to be police officers, you had to know your way around a whistle. And, of course, when you wanted to annoy your siblings, nothing quite compared to a sneak whistle attack or to pulling out the whistle as they tried to read or do homework. Whistles are your friend. Their sound cuts through all other sounds and rings clear. Sometimes I wish all messages in my life were as clear and distinct as a whistle. T...

  In the 28th chapter of Genesis, Jacob has a dream and sees a stairway leading to heaven. He meets God and hears words about his life and future. Though it was good, it was beyond his experience and he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven." For an old fat guy walking the pandemic away, this chalked instruction left over from Halloween brought this verse to mind. The word “CANDY” and big arrows pointing the way? That looks like the gate to heaven to me! But it did cause me to ponder a bit on exactly what those things are that seem to bring heaven close to my world, so close that it can be both wonderful and overwhelming at the same time, just like Jacob and his rock-pillow fueled dream of a stairway that led to God. Sometimes the unexpected beauty of the sunrise or sunset can spark such an experience for me. I am blessed by the reminder of the beauty of creation, but overwhelmed by the sense that...

The neighborhood leaves are falling as November races past. In the early morning light I noticed this stark contrast between lawns. One, meticulously groomed and leaf free; the other, well, the other not so much. I’m not judging, let me be clear. The leaf covered yard seems totally appropriate for November 20th. Who can blame it, or the homeowner? But the difference is distinct. These two lawns look a lot like my life. Some days I am all together and neat as a pin. Other days, I am a bit of a mess. Some days I look like I planned to look. Other days things are just what they are. I’m beginning to understand that on both kind of days, we are okay. After all, there are days when the wind just keeps blowing and blowing and the leaves keep falling. When life is like that, relentlessly bringing obligations and challenges and responsibilities, it is appropriate to be seen with our leaves down. The lawn is still good underneath. All is well. The day will come when the leaves have all fallen a...

  It seems a long, long time on my morning walks since I have happened upon a random and interesting item dropped by someone along the way. Over these now 9 months I have found gloves and hats and glasses and socks. I have always wondered how the owner never missed them, or at least never came back to look for them. This one really stopped me in my tracks. What happened to the baby? They weren’t even finished with their breakfast! Didn’t the baby cry? Didn’t the family arrive back at home and wonder what happened to the bottle? Did another passerby see the lonely bottle and also leave it alone, thinking the family would soon return to claim it? What about the baby? One of the images of scripture that speaks to the growth process of the spiritual life is found in 1 Peter, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” I like the matter-of-fact ways the Bible speaks about life. Life is a journey. We are born, we spend time as a baby...

  Each morning I pass this reclining Buddha as I round one of the first corners on my walk. The image is of the Buddha during his last illness, preparing to leave this world behind. He seems to float just above the ground, especially in the dim light of the rising sun. It is a reminder to me each day that life runs its course for us all. The famous and the ordinary. The rich and the poor. The happy and the sad. As a pastor across these decades, I have learned that every life has its share of heartache, regardless of outward appearances. Each life knows disappointment. I pray that each life knows some joy as well. As I think about my own life, and the course I have run and am running, I am fortunate to say that my life has known more than my fair share of joy. Oh, I have seen the other side of life for sure. I have lost those I love in various ways. I have seen my life roll by without accomplishing a few of my dreams. But I join Douglas Adams in saying, “I may not have gone where I ...

This morning brought me the secure feeling that only comes with stumbling upon a safe as the sun comes up. Why does one replace a safe? Did it not stay locked up tight? Does the owner no longer feel any of their valuables are, well, valuable? Do they need more space because of a recent windfall? This sight left me curious. But it also made me consider what I value the most and what I might hope to keep safe in my life. I have a few treasures, though they only have value to me. A picture or two of those I love and miss terribly. A few odds and ends from my father- a Bible and some cuff links. A few really old books. I certainly couldn’t fill a safe this size with these treasures. I was reminded that the things I treasure most aren’t things at all. I treasure some memories that remind me of my journey thus far, moments of great joy and beauty. I treasure some people that loved me well and made a difference in my life across the years. I treasure a dream or two, because even though I kno...

The sun rose on this most interesting sight, and I have been intrigued ever since. Standing tall, all alone, was this big file cabinet. What happened to all the stuff that filled these four drawers? Was it shredded and placed at the curb on some recent Monday morning? Did someone take the time to scan and digitize the content that now resides on their laptop? Are these drawers still filled with files? I’ll never know the answer, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering. This encounter with the file cabinet also made me wonder about what people do with the pasts we carry around in our heads and in our hearts. Every experience, good or bad, is filed away. Every decision, good or bad, is filed away. The things of which we are most proud and the things of which we are ashamed reside side by side in our “files”. As the years go by, these files fill up more and more drawers. They take up space and they are heavy and bulky and difficult to move, these file cabinets filed with our life. To thro...

Kindness. What a great word to start any day! A simple word. A simple concept. A world-changing practice. Henry James wrote, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” If only we would. I was taught kindness in kindergarten. I was taught kindness in our Sunday School and church. I was definitely taught kindness at home. I have seen kindness modeled by others. I have been on the receiving end of great kindness throughout my life. So why is it still a challenge to be kind? In the letter to the Ephesians we read, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” Jesus was the model of a life characterized by kindness. All we have to do is follow him and we will find our own path to be a path of kindness. As I say to all my little friends at church each week when we have our chat on the steps of the chancel, “it doesn’t matter how big w...

  It was still dark, but I couldn’t miss this statement written in chalk on the still sleeping sidewalk on this early morning. I had to stop for a few minutes to contemplate the deep meaning: “God loves you - maybe”. Now that grabs your attention! I must admit, I wasn’t prepared for the “maybe”. Of course, it is good to know that, since love seems to be so up in the air, we are prayed for by the artist. We live in a world of “maybe”. Maybe the weather will be nice for our weekend plans. Maybe we make it through the pandemic without our family getting sick. Maybe everything gets back to normal soon. Maybe my team wins it all this year. Maybe we get a dog. Maybe. From the simplest things to matters of life and death, we live with “maybe”. That is why the constants mean so much, why they are essential to our sense of well being. These “non-maybes” may be few, but they are powerful. The sun will come up, and we have another chance at this wonderful gift called life. We are able to choo...

Today is Veteran’s Day. I was greeted these past few mornings with flags waving proudly in the breeze. During the last several months, neighboring yards have had quite the battle with Democrats and Republicans staking their claims with signs that ran the ballot top to bottom. The day after the election was decided, those signs disappeared. And now, each yard displays the same flag, the one flag, of the United States of America. Somehow this scene gave me hope for our troubled and divided land. As strongly as we may disagree ideologically and as vehemently as we may argue our cause during the election, the campaign signs are put away and the flag comes out. Somehow this is fitting for Veterans Day. Thank you to all who served and serve our country through the military. You have sacrificed for the common good. You have made possible the continuance of this life we too often take for granted; this life where our partisan colors shine through each election but the flag endures. May the sy...

On a day when my outdoor morning time was flipped to afternoon, I beheld this lovely sunset as I looked across the west parking lot of the church I serve. The sinking sun painted this red swath in an instant. It was a mesmerizing sight, as if God drew a brush across the sky for the sheer beauty and joy of the doing. When looking at the diversity and wonder of creation, it seems to me that God does exactly that sort of thing. And we are the ever fortunate recipients. In times like these times, when emotions run high and ideologies test the extremes, when spirits are weary and hope is dim, it is often our tendency to pull away and turn inward. When living in such a space we miss the wonder of this world in which we live. Diversity, instead of being a revelation of the nature of God, comes to be seen as an enemy. Ser endipity passes unrealized as we lower our head under the burden of our anxiety and fear. Sunsets and hot air balloons and ridiculous holiday decorations, all are lost to us ...

On this bright morning I discovered Autumn. It was an unexpected and most pleasant surprise. I turned the corner and it seemed that all the world was focused on this tree, glowing in the morning sun. The entire tree, every single leaf, appeared to have turned over night. Against the blue of the sky it was a natural work of art beyond words. In a time full of unexpected surprises that are often not so pleasant, this was especially powerful. Beginning in March, life feels to have been a bit off the rails. For all of us the pandemic brought everything in our normal routine to a halt. But just for a couple of weeks, right? Surprise! Okay, maybe for a couple of months, right? Surprise! And here we are, nine months later, still very unpleasantly surprised. I suppose that is what makes this tree such a gift. It takes nothing, it only gives. The only disruption that came with this surprise was the moment I paused in awe at its beauty. I carry the moment with me, not only in a picture on my pho...

This morning I happened upon this troubling sight as I made my way around the neighborhood: an empty leash. For the rest of my walk I kept wondering, “Where is the dog?” “What happened to the dog?” Then I added to those concerns, “What kind of dog was it?” “Was it a big dog or a little dog? Then, “What color was the dog?” “What breed?” “Did they have a lot of energy and a big personality?”. I’m a dog person, so the empty leash set my mind off on a wild ride. During times as anxious and as difficult as those which greet us these days, it is easy to let one thing cloud all our thinking. It is easy to become so consumed with one thought that everything else around us fades into the shadows. This can lead us to seek out only that which feeds our obsession and to become deaf to other voices and blind to the reality of things. This spiral leads us further and further down a path that becomes more narrow day by day until, in our mind, there is room for little else. This is seldom, if ever, a ...

As the sun rose on this yard, I was surprised to see a sea serpent breaking the surface of the calm sea of lawn. I thought it could be Nessie from the famous Loch Ness. By the time I had walked past, I had made up my mind that this was a cartoon character from my childhood, Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent. I loved that one as a boy, and it made me smile to have this surprising memory after all these years. So many things can quietly come into our life and trigger a memory. I consider this a good gift to us. I can hear a certain hymn, and I am standing beside my mother while she plays her piano and sings. I can go to a garage to get an oil change for my truck and my dad is suddenly beside me; the smell of the place is like the smell of the garage he ran for 42 years. I can taste a certain food and it’s a long ago Christmas, complete with the gift I received that year. Touching a particular texture can remind me of a favorite childhood article of clothing. All the senses offer us this g...

Well, I’m a little sad that Halloween has passed because that means all the strange, funny, scary and wonderfully creative decorations are slowly disappearing. This big green spider that has watched silently from this roof will be sorely missed. It is even lit up at night, with glowing red eyes and a pulsating light in the body. The house will look very dull and uninteresting when it crawls away until next year. That is the nature of all of life, all life long, isn’t it? Nothing remains the same. But, we too often forget that this truth runs through our life in both directions. We all can easily think of the changes In the good; we feel so strongly the loss of love, of health, of youth, of our dreams. We have to adjust to new routines, learn new patterns of behavior. We ask ourselves, “ Why can’t things just stay the same?” It would do us well to remember that the same is true for so much of the “not so good” in our life. There have been many times that it seemed we wouldn’t make it, ...

  What a beautiful sky greeted me this day as I walked these familiar streets! Such a dramatic scene it was, what a striking image. Skies like these always take me back among memories of childhood conversations about heaven and that popular doctrine of the day, the Second Coming. I think clouds like this gave the young me the impression that the sky was opening and something big was about to go down. As I recall, I alternated between excitement and fear at such thoughts. As I write, I have a funeral on my mind. A good person who lived a good life that did much good in the world. It will be a celebration - a celebration with tears - but a celebration nonetheless. The life that will be remembered was a life that touched countless other lives through decades of teaching, through a life committed to family, through a life given to service and hard work. I can remember my father, upon being asked about the Second Coming, giving an interesting reply. “All I know about it is that, wheneve...

As Election Day has come and gone, it is a good time to pause and remember that the values by which we are to live do not change, regardless of whether an elephant or a donkey is grazing on the White House lawn. We are like any other group, there are different opinions among in this divided time. But we will not let our politics divide us. We will continue to let Jesus Christ unite us in love and mission. We will continue to be true to our calling to love God and neighbor. Joshua 1.9 says, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." This is how we live. Always. Peace, Pastor Barry  

  As I walked the neighborhood today I laughed out loud as I chanced upon this scene. This poor skeleton was out for an early morning walk himself, only to become the target of a skeleton dog whose owner does not obey the community leash law. I suppose a dog is a dog, and a bone is a bone, and that dogs miss out on the idea of irony. I couldn’t help but wonder if the skeleton felt like we can at times, wondering “why bad things happen to me” when all he was doing was minding his own skeleton business. Perhaps he even knew the skeleton dog, and was always kind and friendly to it as he rattled around the neighborhood each day on his walk. And now this! Or, worse yet, maybe it is his own skeleton dog! Wasn’t it King Lear who said, “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!” ? I suppose he would know. Life, especially life in these crazy days, can unfold in ways that make us feel that, no matter how hard we try, the skeleton dog is eyeing our bones. My father ...