Our youngest grandchild is two months old. As I held the sleeping baby last evening, I once again had the opportunity to marvel at young life. The feeling of holding a baby is unlike anything else in the world. As I held him, I was thinking about how significant two months is in the life of a young one. Since he was born he has learned so much. He can hold up his own head now, a skill that was beyond him at birth. His hands still surprise him. Occasionally, however, a hand makes it to his mouth and he will suck on it for a moment and finds the sensation to be not unpleasant. He responds to familiar voices and can make what seems like a smile to those of us who watch his face as much as we are able.

From his point of view three months is more than a lifetime - a truly monumental span of time.

I am near 69 years old. Three months go by so quickly that I wonder what I have been doing. We are closing in on six months of living in our new home and it seems like just yesterday that we were moving in.

I remember being in elementary school when three months of vacation from school seemed to offer a world of possibilities. But I also remember going back to school in the fall feeling like the summer vacation was all too short for all of the adventures and activities I had planned.

I am trying to think about how three months feels to people of various ages because today we are sending off our lead pastor on a well-earned sabbatical. The three-month adventure for her and our congregation will be marked by travel and study and family for her. As she adventures, the congregation will experience an interim pastor, do some planning of our own, and continue the work of our mission and ministry. The sabbatical break does not quite line up with the academic summer break, so different members of the congregation will experience breaks for rest and renewal in their lives in different ways.

Over the course of our journey as pastors, we experienced several sabbatical breaks. Different congregations provide for sabbatical in different ways. The academic model, followed by many congregations is for a sabbatical every seven years of service. In academia, sabbatical breaks tend to be longer than those in the parish. Some universities offer six months at full salary or a year at half salary for sabbatical. The use of grants and other funding sources for sabbaticals is common. In the parish ministry, three months is the standard, with the opportunity for sabbatical coming at five, six, or seven year intervals, depending on the congregation. Our pastor has served seven years without a sabbatical and is excited and ready for the break. Like the sabbatical we were able to take in 2006, this one is funded in part by a generous grant from the Lily Foundation. This daily journal is a direct outgrowth of that sabbatical. It has become a discipline I have kept since that time.

As ministers of faith formation, part of our responsibility is helping the congregation to understand and learn about faith from the experience. Pilgrimage, or travel away from and return to the congregation is a long-standing spiritual discipline and there are many teachings about pilgrimage in the history of the church. Some of those teachings are relevant to the sabbatical journey of our pastor and congregation.

It seems easier, somehow, to interpret the sabbatical journey with adults than with children. I have been wondering if that challenge occurs in part because of the differences in our perception of time. Does the sabbatical seem like a bigger break to those in our congregation who are younger? One of the adventures of continuing in ministry after many years of experience is the discovery of new elements and new perspectives.

In a strange way, the on-again, off-again blog called “The Adventures of Edward Bear” on this web site has been a way for me to reflect on journey. I started the journal as a kind of report to our grandchildren of our travels. When I was working as a pastor, a few members of our congregation found out that it provided a daily travel journal when we took a vacation or were on sabbatical. I write a blog entry for each place that we visit, and my discipline for writing has varied over the years. The last entry in the journal was made at the end of a 6.000 mile journey last summer when we towed our camper to South Carolina for a visit with our daughter and her family.

I have been thinking about the blog because It is a discipline of trying to think about travel and journey from the perspective of our grandchildren, whose ages span from newborn to ten years old. The ten-year-old, of course, can read the blog posts himself. The parents help the other children check out the blog when we are traveling.

Of course, I do not expect our lead pastor to write to the children of the church for each place she visits in her sabbatical. The children won’t know too much about her adventures, studies, and family activities. They will mostly know that she is gone and that there is another pastor leading worship for a while. Still the relationship between pastor and congregation is a relationship that involves the entire congregation. The children are part of that relationship and some of them will change a great deal in the time that Pastor Sharon is on sabbatical.

I am thinking of trying to keep some sort of abbreviated journal about faith formation activities at our church to present to our pastor upon her return as a report of how we have been growing in faith while she has been growing in faith. When she returns we all will have changed and the precious bond of pastor and congregation will have shifted as well. In our experience as pastors, sabbaticals have strengthened the bond between us and our congregations. I expect this journey to do the same. I want it to be meaningful and understood by the children as well as the adults in the congregation.

Today that adventure begins. It seems like a good day for Edward the Bear to visit the church. Maybe he will make some notes in his blog about the adventure.