Dear friends, Susan and I are traveling for the next ten days. I should be able to publish my journal on schedule, but we will be in a couple of different time zones so the time of publication may vary by an hour or more. If you are interested in knowing where we are, you can check out The Adventures of Edward Bear. It is a playful part of my website designed to tell our grandchildren the stories of our travels as if they were seen through the eyes of a Teddy Bear that we keep in our camper.

One of the things that I have heard over an over agin is how some people find the connection with God when out in the wilderness to be so deep and meaningful that they prefer wild outdoor places to worship God over church buildings. I don’t disagree with much of what they are saying. The experience of the glory of Creation is awe inspiring and fills one with reverence. I love to do all kinds of things outdoors and I have witnessed God’s presence on ski slopes, mountain tops, rushing rivers, quiet lakes, ocean shores, old growth forests and countless other natural outdoor paces.

The awe-inspiring moments of awareness of God in creation can be a bit deceiving for Christians, however. It can be tempting to believe that all we need to do is to be close to God. After all Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry and frequently sought out lonely places to pray. Being Christian, however, is more than experiencing God for one’s personal inspiration. Being Christian is following Jesus’ example of reaching out to those on the margins of society, the widows and orphans and outcasts. It is serving others, providing comfort and food and clothing and whatever else is needed. It is sharing grief with those who mourn, seeking peace with those who witness, and pursuing justice with those who cry out.

One of our professors was fond of saying, “You can’t be the body of Christ all by yourself.”

I am acutely aware that the responsibilities of a life of faith are so awesome that I deeply need others. I need others to help me discern God’s call. I need others to help me do the work of justice and peace. I need others to support me in times of grief and despair. I need others to help me believe in moments of doubt. I need other people to share the stories in our generation that they can be shared as genuinely after our time has passed as they were before we were born.

I need others.

I worship with others because I cannot do it alone. I worship with others because personally fulfilled is not the aim of my life. I worship with others because together we can worship with more authenticity and joy than an individual alone.

Today, however, we are making an exception. We are camped by the shore of Lake Chelan. Lake Chelan is glacial lake on the east of the Cascades in central Washington. It is the third deepest lake in the United States. It is long an narrow, wedged between the mountains. It extends for 50 miles, but averages only 1.5 miles across. The towns on the east end of the lake are reachable by car, but those on the west end cam be reached by ferry only. They are deep in the wilderness.

The wilderness of the North Cascades, however, is a pretty scary place to be right now. Yesterday, as we neared Washington Pass, we were escorted through a fire area by a pilot car. We could see the firefighters working and the flames burning in the trees right next to the highway. The mountains are filled with smoke. A bit farther down, after we had turned south alongside the mountains we saw an other fire close enough to see the crews working and a helicopter dumping water on the flames.

So in addition to experiencing the awe of a lake that was carved out by the last ice age and is filled by melting glaciers high in the cascades, we will pause to pray for safety and stamina for weary firefighters. We will pray that we might find ways to reverse the effects of the past hundred years of ecological exploitation that have resulted in these seasons of disastrous fires all across the west. We will pray for the climate refugees forced from their homes by fire and storms, by floods and other severe weather that is associated with human caused climate change.

As we do so, however, I am aware that we are not alone. Even though we are not worshiping with our home congregation and are not even visiting another congregation today, we know that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Later this morning I will participate in a text message chain of more than a dozen people who greet each other with the peace of Christ each Sunday morning wherever we are. I know also that we are in the prayers of others just as they are in our prayers. We feel the presence and support of the community even when we are not physically present.

To speak with a bit of theological jargon, Christian community is transcendent. Differences of time and space are overcome by the love of Christ. When we share communion, we share not only with those who are physically present in the same room as we, but also with those around the globe who share the same sacrament. We also share with people in every time who have been connected through the loaf and cup. I have been especially aware of the connections to community when we have faced grief or crisis. When I cannot find the words for my prayers, I know that I’m not the only one praying and the prayers of sisters and brothers has lifted my spirits and made me whole.

So today we will worship in a wonderful wilderness setting, but we will also accept the responsibility of sharing this experience with others and returning to our community to reconnect and to worship together.