The Book SCHOOL OF THE PILGRIM

This morning was an incredible dawn. Outside my front door was a package. Neither the dogs or I heard the sound of the postal service. But there was the gift, wrapped in a plain brown paper padded envelope. And inside of the envelope was the six years-in-the-making project: THE SCHOOL OF THE PILGRIM: THE BOOK!

I was beside myself, tearing open the package, laughing, and soon dancing with the dogs (who were also excited by my joy), for this gift of the morning.

I went on to amazon.com, watching the book move a little bit more, being bought by people who have not seen or read the insides of the book. Amazing!

April 12th is a day of celebration! For this book (which I had begun to have doubts if it would ever be published) is now out in paperback!

Pilgrim Peace, Brett

From Lenten Pilgrimage to Eastertide Pilgrimage

Yesterday, after celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ at 6:30 A.M., in the middle of the cemetery at Ernest Myatt Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the temperature was 22 degrees (!), and after a moving worship of the risen Christ at 11:00 A.M., our Lenten pilgrimage as God's people had come to our destination: Easter Sunday! For forty days we had been in the period of time known as Lent, and on this holy pilgrimage looked forward to the great festival day of Easter. With a wonderful new treat of celebrating an Easter picnic amid the members of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, followed by a small, intimate dinner with family that evening, good fun was had by all.

But awaking on Monday morning, the next pilgrimage began! Eastertide's pilgrimage had begun as the Church enters fifty days on a holy trek toward Pentecost. It hit me this Monday morning that we are forever on pilgrimage as God's people, following Christ, our Pilgrim God.

The pilgrimage is afoot!

Pilgrim peace, Brett

Inching, Crawling, and Walking Toward Jerusalem

During worship on Sunday, while preaching about the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, I kept mixing the description of this Sunday, between "Passion" and "Palm" Sunday. As a child, I looked forward with great excitement when the staid Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in which I grew up would, in a very real sense, let its "hair down," allowing children to nearly trot and skip down the center aisle with palm branches that were almost as tall as I was. Palm Sunday was all about the palms.

Now as an adult, who has tasted the pilgrim life, this Sunday is all about the Passion of this week. I don't mean in a Mel Gibson kind-of-way. The Passion I am talking about are the swirling, conflicting emotions that I feel inside of me--inside of all of us--when it comes to understanding our relationship to the Divine. After all, what is it about us and our forbears who can sing "Hosanna" on one day of the week, and by Friday shout angrily "Crucify him"? Both of those emotions--adulation and destruction--are embedded deep in the human psyche...no, the very human self, mind, soul and body.

It is Tuesday. I await with hope, fear, and faith the coming days of this week-long pilgrimage of faith.

Pilgrim peace, Brett

Lenten Pilgrimage

It seems like only yesterday and not almost-forty days ago, that many were smudged with a thumb-full of ash on our foreheads, with the haunting words, "And to dust you shall return." It is humbling, in a world of superficial glamour and glitz, to be reminded that we are a strange, mysterious composition of dirt and water. What gives us life? The One who made the waters dance and the rivers sing; filled the air with dervish-like clouds and vee-formations of geese.

Christians now enter into the "home-stretch," the last few miles and days of our Lenten pilgrimage. Through the joyous sound of "Hosannas!" we turn the bend in the road, down toward Maundy Thursday. The entire Holy Week, our Passion Week, is a paradigmatic design of our earthly pilgrimage: entrance; first steps; journeying onward; drawing to an end; reaching destination...yet moving onward.

In this time of year I am always left wondering, "How will this Holy Week be different than the other weeks of life?"

Pilgrim Peace, Brett

Another first step

Pilgrimages in life are filled with many "first steps" as we branch off and try different avenues and pathways on life's pilgrimage. Today is another important "first step" for the School of the Pilgrim: a blog spot! It is my hope that this blog spot will be another important way of enabling others to understand and perceive that the life we live as people of faith is part of an extraordinary pilgrimage!

Pilgrim Peace, Brett