It doesn’t surprise me that our lives have become very busy. The pace of our lives and the list of activities has always gone up for us as Christmas approaches. Even when we were students and our school took a break for the holidays, there were many things that we had to do. We often traveled for the holidays, going from Chicago to Montana and back so that we could celebrate with family. There were gifts to purchase and prepare, a challenge on our students’ budget, and it seemed that there wasn’t quite enough time for all of the things on our list.

As pastors, the increase in special programs, concerts, pageants, and other activities during Advent is exciting and fun, but it takes a lot of behind the scenes work. This Sunday is the children’s pageant at our church. Although the actual event looks like a wonderful “come as you are” event, where people of all ages are welcome to show up, put on a costume, and participate in the pageant, there is a lot of advance work to be done. For many years, Susan has written fresh scripts for pageants and this year’s pageant was a challenge to write. There were a lot of people to please with their suggestions of songs and their memories of past pageants. Like other congregations, there are a lot of really good memories of past years, and those who remember often don’t fully understand the differences in the church today and the way the church was in their memories. In order to be fully inclusive, the script has to have room for those who have not invested time in rehearsals. In addition, the event is an opportunity to teach children about liturgy and worship leadership, so we work very hard to make sure that we respect tradition and create worship that is genuine.

That means a lot of behind the scenes work, sending extra emails, making individual invitations, writing and re-writing the script, recruiting readers for key parts, coordinating the work of musicians, checking in with parents, etc. Then there is the work of unpacking and arranging costumes, setting up displays, working with those who are promoting mission and special offerings of the season.

We love the excitement and we are grateful to be immersed in the joy of the season. We are fortunate to have the work that we do, but it is a busy time.

In the midst of the busyness, we have been a bit less creative in our daily walks. Instead of seeking out new paths and exploring new places, we often walk the same path from our home to the beach and back each day. Our commitment to daily exercise remains an important part of our lives, but we find ways to keep that commitment without investing too much mental energy deciding where to walk. We have done the same when we have lived other places as well. Although we appreciate special days when we have time to drive to a new location and explore a new place, we find it important to live in a “walkable” neighborhood where we can go a couple of miles by stepping out our front door.

Walking the same route, however, is far from boring. The view that we see as we walk along the beach is different each day. The birds that are on the surface of the bay change with the seasons. In the summer we watch herons and eagles. Now we watch ducks and loons and geese. Sometimes we see transient birds that are migrating and only stop for a few days. There are humming birds who winter in our neighborhood - something we did not see when we lived in South Dakota. And there are always gulls - sometimes a lot of gulls, sometimes just a few. The gulls are terribly noisy some days and nearly silent other days.

The view from the beach is constantly changing. Each tide brings in new seaweed and shells. The logs on the beach are rearranged by the changing water.

I grew up near the mountains and know how some days they seem incredibly close and other days far away. A similar phenomenon occurs with the islands in the waters off of the coast. Some days they appear to be very close. Other days they are completely obscured by clouds and we cannot see them at all. If a person were to visit the beach only once, that person might not even know that there are lots of nearby islands. Or that person might think that the bay is a lake, surrounded by land. The view changes each day. The change is part of the joy of living in this place.

I’ve tried to capture the things I see in photographs for all of my adult life. I’ve owned several very capable cameras and the camera in my cell phone has the advantage of being accessible. I have it with me nearly all the time. But cameras have limitations. They capture images that remind us of what we have seen, but they don’t capture all of the things we see. They don’t record all of the colors our eyes perceive. They have a limited depth perception compared to the combination of our eyes and brains. Even though I have access to good cameras, I don’t always take photographs. Sometimes I simply want to experience life without thinking about how to “capture” the moment.

When I was learning to fly, I was taught to think of the atmosphere as a fluid, like water. There are waves that form when wind blows over uneven terrain. Even when the land below is flat, air currents form waves and eddies, some of which can be seen in the shapes of clouds, others of which are invisible. Flying an airplane is a process of directing a moving object through a moving media. The air through which we fly is in motion, just like the current of a river or the waves of the sea. At the beach this become evident. Sometimes it is hard to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. They are part of the same reality.

This constantly moving relationship of sea and sky is endlessly fascinating. I’ll never get bored, even if I walk the same path each day for the rest of my life.