When I left off, I had just been quoting from page 1 of Walter Brueggemann’s, The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, and we noted on the walk of the Christian faith, we are not the only ones in places of exile. We left off saying that we can least afford to lose the promises we’ve been made which connect who we are with where we’re bound — the three things our stories are to remind us of while we’re in exile. We’re intent on remembering who we are, which connects us with our story and the promises made to us — and in connecting with the past, we are assured of a future. Part of that is illustrated in our interconnectedness with our family. Somewhere there’s a photograph when I was an infant, with me and my mother and my grandmother and my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandfather that was printed in the newspaper under the heading “Five Generations.” Things like this were once taken note of, especially in smaller communities. We’re down to just three generations now, but someplace we have photographs of my kids with their great-grandfather. We have old family photographs copied, someplace, with names written on the back as best anyone could remember who they were, knowing that if we didn’t write them down now, they’d be lost. (Not this photo!) And we have some stories. Connecting with the past is important for a people in exile.

I’ve been working up to this all week, and I doubt I can cover it off in a single entry, but let’s see what we come up with, shall we? Just piecing together some themes following the Seabeck Gathering sponsored by Allelon, I have begun to consider The Role of The Rule (and other disciplines) as part of The Subversive Nature of the Ordinary in helping to keep us on the path during a mapless quest or an aimful wandering — a Peregrinatio. Len picked up a theme from me of covenant renewal, which I commented further upon, saying I didn’t plan to hit the theme until today, that I was just foreshadowing. Well, the pressure’s on.