Last Thursday night Claudia and I went to the Tower Theater and were in the audience for Garrison Keillor. He was in town for one night and the joint was full…of geezers who remember A Prairie Home Companion on public radio every Saturday afternoon.

Back a few years, I had surgery for the “man cancer” so many guys get. After they yanked out the offending lower unit and a short stay in the most expensive bad hotel in town, a good friend gave me a ride home while Claudia was out of town helping our daughter who needed her mom.

Being a routine guy, most of my mornings follow a predictable pattern. I take lots of stuff for granted, and any given morning can stand as an example.

• I roll out of bed to a warm house

• First stop is the bathroom where a toilet flushes and sink water runs to rinse my face
  

Advent began two Sundays ago. Each of the four weeks holds a theme: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. As believers prepare for the coming of the Christ child, these ideas stand as part of the anticipation for when God himself will move into the neighborhood.

One year while teaching at Bend High, 147 years ago, I decided to ride my recumbent bike to school every day. We then lived out east of town, some six miles from BHS and the commute had its wonders, like spring smells of fresh growth, or mist rising off mowed hay fields, or stunning alpenglow mornings where I stopped and just marveled at how the mountains gleamed before sunup came to the lands below.

The other day I ran across a question while reading that made me stop and ponder. Simple, yet profound. Transparent, yet complex.

“If you had to use a single word to describe Jesus in his life and ministry, what might it be?”

Think of all the possibilities: Wise, loving, compassionate, focused, bold, and many others might come to mind. The article said that when posed that question, Dallas Willard, the USC prof and prolific writer, often on spiritual formation, immediately responded with…relaxed.

Claudia and I have been on a bit of a holiday.

As I write this we are far from home. It is just getting light, and I’m sitting at a worn oak table beside a window looking out on rolling French fields of mowed corn, harvested vineyards, nut orchards and woodlots. The November slate-gray skies and soaking rain make staying in today…inviting. And there’s close to nothing on the agenda.

Poet Jan Richardson writes these lines.

I am not asking you to take this wilderness from me, to remove this place of darkness where I come to know the wildness in me.

But send me tough angels, sweet wine, strong bread: just enough.

So, there I was, sitting in my reading chair early in the morning, tending to my knitting. My bible was open to Luke 6, cruising along, and suddenly I got ambushed by Jesus’ words from the Message translation.

Why are you so polite with me, always saying “Yes, sir,” and “That’s right, sir,” but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.

I love fall in Bend.

Warm-ish days and cold nights signal the change I always enjoy seeing come through the door. The trees around town and in our neighborhood will soon stand out as clownish, dressed in crayon-colors of reds and yellows and oranges popping against the ever-green evergreens.

It’s pretty common when a Jesus-follower is explaining their faith to someone who has yet to meet him, for him or her to drop into almost salesman mode. Describing a faith-life can come across as living without hardship, drama, major problems and where all is rosy. On top of that an impression can be left that life as God’s child is always sweet and following his directions easy and personal faults fade.

Hogwash.

You’ve seen it plenty of times: The older man sitting on a bench by himself who appears to be quite alone, or the woman hunched in the booth at the diner slowly eating at a table set for one, or the person of any age walking down the street looking lost.

Time flies but memories hang on with lessons learned.

It seems like just last summer, but it’s been ten years since I rode my bike across the country. Claudia kissed me goodbye in Yorktown, VA and four days into the journey I stopped to see her at her brother and sister-in-law’s place just west of the Blue Ridge. On Mother’s Day it was truly launch day for this solo trip I had imagined for so long.