Glacier National Park, June 27, 2016

Yesterday, we arrived at Glacier National Park. It is more spectacularly beautiful than I could ever describe in words. We are camping at Two Medicines near the river with the same name. No internet access so I’ll post later in the week.

After setting up camp my body sighed in relief—finally, nothing I have to do. It is so rare that I allow myself the luxury of doing nothing. And my brain usually has so many thoughts rattling around and banging into each other that my head might explode. I’m at a loss for words this morning. Ahhh….

Ernesto, Dreamer, and I canoed the length of Lower Two Medicine Lake while Benjamin and Elena hiked up to Two Falls. Beautiful day!

Glacier National Park, June 28, 2016

Big storm through the night. I reminded Ernesto that it was good that I pushed to buy the really expensive tent with a good rain fly. This was 12 years ago when we gave up backpacking for tent camping with our kids. The tent is still going strong!!

Benjamin and Elena took a guided trail ride where the guides told them the Native American legends of Glacier. I was jealous. I was writing my Thinking Theologically paper. Almost done.

Another beautiful day! More later….

OK, I have to backtrack a bit. Reflecting on my last post, I realized what I said about our bodies being suited to a geographic area, might be construed as having a Trumpian bent. I could see Trump use this geographic excuse to keep Mexicans in Mexico, and Muslims in the Middle East. Just to be clear—that is NOT what I meant. I could never agree with Trump’s racist views and hate rhetoric. And I don’t think that God has a grand plan for us that calls for us to live in a particular geographic area.

I wanted to express that my relationship to the environment is much more complicated than I’ll ever be able to understand. As Christians, we have cultivated a mindset that we are separate from the environment. Maybe this stems from the first creation account in Genesis where we are told to have domination over the earth. Yet the second Genesis creation story mentions no such thing. Plus, why would dominion mean control, as we’ve interpreted it, rather than care?

For a class I read an article by Jonathan Balcome called fish have feeling too (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/fishes-have-feelings-too.html?_r=0). In this article, Balcome, a scientist that studies fish, discusses the goby fish that can swim over a rocky tide pool at high tide and memorize, in one try, the layout of the rocks for up to 40 days. The goby fish has clearly developed a relationship with those rocks that protects it from predators.

As we drive through buffalo country I am reminded of how this prairie land and the buffalo lived in a symbiotic relationship. Or closer to home, my backyard chickens that eat my compost, which turn into eggs and chicken poop. The latter fertilizes my garden and the vegetables and fruit that we eat. It is a complex symbiotic relationship. Why do I not live a symbiotic relationship with God’s creation? How could I live this way? How do I adapt on a cellular level according to the environment in which I live? When I lived in Berkeley, it took me about four years to figure out the seasons, subtle as they were, there was a pattern to the weather and my body adjusted. How could we as a Christian people explore our relationship with God’s creation and promote creation care based on a symbiotic relationship rather than control?

It’s construction season. Every highway has heavy equipment that eats up roads and spits them out into dump trucks that haul millions of concrete bits to who knows where. Ernesto comments, “Those are machines that only Jules Verne could have dreamed up.” He recounts how he recently stopped by a construction site in Minneapolis to discover how foundation beams interlock to form a wall. Ernesto’s curiosity quotient is bigger than the state of Montana. Just one of the reasons I love him.

We’re driving north on highway 13 towards Wolf Point, Montana. For miles the telephone poles are snapped off like toothpicks and the lines fly in the wind or writhe on the ground. The gas store clerk in Circle told me that a big storm came through last night. Must have been some winds that chopped off the poles like a knife going through butter. I am reminded that we can’t always control and tame nature—wind is wind; God is God.

We have seen only open ranch land and farmland, with the exception of the Badland of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, since we left Bismarck, North Dakota. Lots of imagining in the car about what it would be like to live in nowhere land with houses 20 miles or more apart. I feel lonely when I imagine it. I think it is the lack of trees that bothers me. Trees are my friends. Elena would like to have five lives so she can experience living in a number of places. Benjamin wants to ride his bike through it but expressed no desire to live here.

I stocked up on paper maps before getting on the road. I love paper maps. My phone is convenient for getting me around town, but I’m always a little frustrated that I can’t see where I am going in that tiny little screen. I like to spread out a map and pinpoint my destination and look for routes based not on efficiency but on interest.

Interesting things today:

• Clouds so low we could touch them (Benjamin)
• Baby cows that are so cute (Elena)
• Crazy road construction equipment and open landscape (Ernesto)
• Wild land formations (Badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park) and buffalo pies—evidence they are still on the plains (Julie)
• That cute dog I wanted to play with at the rest stop (Dreamer)
• The intense rain storm we drove through with bright blue skies in the north and menacing storms to the south (everyone)

And God saw that it was good! (Genesis 1)

We did it—we got out of the house and on the road about 7:30 yesterday morning. Before I go into that, a few confessions.

1. I haven’t figured out how to post photos on my blog site. In terms of technology, if I can’t figure something out right away, I get frustrated and give up. I’ll keep working at it, but in the mean time, I’m on Instagram, which I love. I am jujuannlulu because julieluna was already taken (can you imagine two of me out there?). I sometimes post on Facebook and I think you can find me there under Julie Luna.
2. I don’t like small confined spaces. Traveling with a dog, two adults and two adult-sized teenagers, and a whole carload of camping gear is a bit claustrophobic for me. I was pretty grumpy and agitated when we reached Mandan, South Dakota.
3. I didn’t write a paper for my Thinking Theologically class before we left. I was hoping to get it done last week, but it was crazy getting the garden and house ready to leave for such an extended time. And that is probably the real reason that I’m grumpy—I need to write this paper on the road. And having to bring along extra books for research doesn’t help with the claustrophobic factor. Lucky for me, Ernesto likes to drive so I can sit in the passenger seat with my laptop. (I’d rather listen to the book on CD that Benjamin brought.)

Our first stop was Breezy Point, Minnesota to pick up Elena from figure skating camp where we saw a show by all the young women that skated and learned that week. It was fabulous! Then we drove to Mandan, SD, which is just outside the capitol Bismarck.

The effects of the oil boom and bust are palpable here. Lots of new construction that has halted to a dead stop with large construction equipment scattered about like overgrown Tonka trucks and streets intended for homes that dead end into farm fields. I feel for the people here that waged their bets on making a living for their families and were let down. Being here I am haunted by

South Dakota is quite flat and desolate. When I walked Dreamer this morning she chased tumbleweeds. I am reminded of Willa Cather’s description of the vast plains of the Midwest being oceans of grasses flowing in the wind. Cather found this landscape comforting. I suppose what we call home, our homeland, is what we ultimately find comforting. Is it just what we are used to or are we meant to be part of particular landscapes and eco-systems? I’m convinced that God’s creation is much more complex and complicated than I will ever understand. Perhaps I am meant to live in a certain geographic area because my body’s response to it will cause me to want to care for this creation? When I moved to Berkeley, California in August, the dry season in the Bay Area, I dreamed (literally) of thunderstorms every night for weeks. It was as though since they were not physically present, my body was going to recreate them for me because they were so ingrained in my Midwest rhythm of seasons. And I never got used to earthquakes—I’ll take tornadoes any day!

Need to get back on the road…blessings to God’s creation and a prayer for our care of God’s creation. Thanks be to God!

I’ve lost track of the date—an unsettling, but good feeling. The last few weeks, since I finished my first year of seminary, have been crazy, but fun. Two days after the kids were done with school, we took a road trip to Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario to visit my family. These are the places where I grew up, my homeland as it were. Each time I go, in some small way, I reclaim parts of myself that I tried hard to leave behind when I left there and moved to California after completing a Master’s degree. My spiritual journey has included moving away from and returning to many places that I claim as homeland.

As I prepare to leave for a family road trip, with San Francisco as my final destination, I am reminded of many Biblical journeys—Abraham and Sarah leaving their home in search of the promised land, the sojourners in the wilderness after leaving Egypt for freedom in Canaan. In no way is my impending journey an epic adventure like these, but is perhaps more akin to Naomi and Ruth returning to Naomi’s homeland. Despite the nature of my trip, I ponder the Scriptural themes present in Biblical journeys that tug at me—leaving home; being a stranger in a strange land; welcoming the stranger; finding food and shelter; fear of the unknown; trust in myself, others, and God; being lost (physically, spiritually, and emotionally); finding the way; hospitality; being present to God’s pull toward adventure; and staying in touch with the longing and desire to reach the unknown.

San Francisco and the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years prior to moving to Minnesota, are not my true homeland, but in many ways it is the place where I grew up. Not literally grew up, but grew up emotionally and spiritually, and where I learned to love myself and learned to know what makes me happy and gives me life. Moving to Berkeley, California, right out of a Master’s program to start a new job, was not an easy transition. I had one acquaintance in Berkeley, but other than that, knew not a soul. It was a clean slate from which I could build a life in whatever fashion I wanted. I explored and practiced different religions, made new and interesting friends, had romantic relationships, lived in a tiny, rent-controlled apartment with a view of the San Francisco Bay, went hiking every chance I got, and sat and listened to the ocean for comfort and joy.

A few years into my stay (I called it a “stay” because I never intended to settle there) in the Bay Area, I met my husband, we had two children, and then we moved to Minnesota, my homeland of the Midwest. Hence, I’ve done this before—moved away and returned to a “homeland”. Each time I do, it is a marker of how I’ve grown and changed. I anticipate my returning to the quasi-homeland of San Francisco will be one of these markers in my life.

Last week I completed an intensive class called Thinking Theologically Confessing Publically where we spent quite a bit of time discussing what it means to be a religious person/community in a secular age. This feels especially pertinent to me as I prepare to leave for San Francisco, which in my experience is one of the most secular cultures in the U.S. When I first moved there my immediate impression was one of materialism and lack of spirituality. This was unsettling for me, but afforded me the opportunity to explore religion and spirituality and come to my own conclusion about how I wanted to embrace them in my life. I am looking forward to returning as a religious person to see if my initial impressions have changed and if not to be strongly challenged to live as a religious person in a secular city.

I am returning to San Francisco for a month to be present in a church community called St. Gregory’s of Nyssa. I do not yet know what I will do when I am at St. Gregory’s; my main goal is to watch, listen, and learn from this open and progressive Episcopal community. When I left the Bay Area, I had already returned to Catholicism, the religion of my childhood, but I was not satisfied. I return to San Francisco as a devout and practicing Episcopalian and as a postulant for ordination to the priesthood. I am much more grounded and secure in my faith life and religious practice than I was leaving San Francisco. It will be interesting to see what manifests for me when I participate in a lively and life-giving Episcopal church in a place where I doubted the validity of religious practice.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my yard, with my dog at my side, watching a few of our chickens roam, while I intermittingly try to get some gardening done before I leave. I’m a homebody! I love being at home—this is my idea of a perfect day. Yet I am drawn to adventure, drawn to return to San Francisco, one of my homelands, to learn about a church community, but also to reclaim parts of myself that I may have left behind. I ask for God’s blessing on this journey, for peace, comfort, and safety for me and my family as we travel. I ask for God’s grace to be open to all that I am to learn and in all the ways in which I will grow and be transformed. Amen!