Learning the Landscape

I love to go on hikes in Marin. I feel like I'm always learning something. This is because where we live is filled with hills, ridges and valleys that go in unexpected directions. I can look at a map and piece together the relationship between, say, Sleepy Hollow and Terra Linda, but it's a very different experience to walk along the ridge that separates those two neighborhoods and realize that, as the crow flies, to a resident of Sleepy Hollow the Northgate Mall is a lot closer than downtown San Rafael.

As I walk around Marin, I feel like I'm slowly putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the place where I live. Some places have come together clearly in my mind; Sorich Ranch to Loma Alta, the trails around Phoenix Lake, Cataract Falls. Others, I have some familiarity with but am still learning in depth; the south side of Mount Tam, the area north of Bolinas, Point Reyes. I look forward, over time, to making the land of Marin more and more my own.

I feel the same way with scripture. There are parts of it I know well; the Gospels, the letters of Paul, Isaiah. There are parts I am familiar with but have much to learn; Proverbs, Daniel, the Book of Revelation.

In the fall, with the Wednesday morning Rector's Study, I began to explore some territory of the scriptures I hadn't visited in a long time. We have been reading what scholars call the Deuteronomistic History. It begins with what scripture gives as the last words of Moses, the sermons that make up the fifth book of the Bible, Deuteronomy, and then continues through Joshua, Judges and the books of Samuel and Kings. The same people who created Deuteronomy collected a wide range of historical material and then hung it all on the sturdy frame of the theological perspective we get in Deuteronomy.

So, through these last months, as we have been strolling through over eighty chapters of the Bible we have been challenged and amused, confused and moved, angry and inspired. All along we have had the voice of the Deuteronomists, explaining to us, not always convincingly, why God has cursed or blessed his beloved people.

Slowly, steadily a deeper, richer picture of God's ways with us, we fallen humans, is emerging. I love reading the Bible with you, the people of St. Paul's. Together, I can feel us slowly making this rugged landscape of the scriptures our spiritual home.