Sunday afternoon drive

I have participated in 10 evaluation/consultation interviews with pastors in the last two days, and last night I had a 2 hour Staff Parish Relations committee meeting with a church who will be receiving a new pastor this year. I also have picked up my son twice from his father's (who is sick as a dog--father, not son) and taken my daughter to Barnes and Noble. Today's interviews were held in Lexington, which is a little over an hour drive from my apartment.

These interviews are with all pastors under appointment in my district; the evaluative tool is new this year. This year, many of the pastors are speaking to me truthfully, some with laughter, some with tears, about the beauty and the bane of their lives and ministry. The first question on the evaluation is, "What is the state of your soul?" followed by another about how the pastor is incorporating the means in grace in his or her life. Today, Barron Willer, who, thank you Jesus, is in my district at First UMC Braymer, spoke to me about how he studies scripture...he has permitted me to use here a phrase that he picked up someplace that describes a practice of reading scripture that is like a Sunday drive. Read the scripture like the experience is a Sunday drive. I know what that means. I know what that feels like. My parents and I sometimes would drive the back roads around Carbondale or Makanda on Sunday afternoon and meander and meander and enjoy the scenery, and sometimes get a little lost, but often wind up someplace they had been before, but just not by that road they had travelled that day. I loved sitting in the back seat, the secure feeling of my dad in charge, not knowing what would be over the next hill. There never seemed to be much of a hurry to get to where we were going, because we didn't know what the destination was anyway. Open windows, green 55 Chevy, a tank of gas, the love of parents, and the road ahead.

I wish I studied scripture like this more. It often feels in the morning when I read the snippet from The Message that I do it not in a Sunday afternoon kind of way, but a Monday morning deadline kind of way instead. Okay, I have my pen, I have my journal, I say to myself, I open up my devotional book by Eugene Peterson, and my gosh, I'm going to read that scripture and that devotion and I sure as heck am going to get something out of it. And sometimes despite my dogged, over-deliberate attitude, I actually do "get something out out of it" only by the grace of God.

I wish I read scripture like a Sunday drive, expectant, yes, but not myopically result-driven. Meandering through Ephesians or the story of Joseph and his many colored coat or even the Revelation of John, not caring so much about where you end up with it, but more about the ride along the way. Ontological instead of teleological; the making of cookies rather than the eating of the same. Here's to courtship, and finding the right baby afghan pattern, and buying the yarn and learning the pattern and holding the needle; here's to planning that district pastors Christmas party, just as much as the experience of the evening itself; here's to walking the four floors of River City Antiques searching each booth, looking for that Danish Modern coffee table, and even though it is a very nice table, what I look forward to next time I have a free afternoon (hah!) is the anticipation of that next booth, never knowing till I'm there what new mid-century marvel has been waiting for me to find it; here's to stopping just now and looking at Caleb's latest drawing of himself, broken wings, third open eye, I ching in hand, dreadlocks (he says he always envisions himself in dreadlocks, though his hair right now is not even an inch long) instead of another conversation about where he will go to college; and here's to green chevys, and and the green hills of southern Illinois and of Caldwell County Missouri and to slowing down enough to meander with the spirit through the word of God. Thanks, Barron.