We've been home one week, as of tonight, from our four month Sabbatical, and our two months of overseas travel. Unfortunately, Loretta only spent the first of those nights at home. Last Wednesday, her labs indicated that she needed medical care, and she has been in Averra McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls since then. I thought I'd get to bring her home today, but the doctor wanted to keep her one more day. Loretta's blood chemistry was quite out of whack after the multiple infections she had on our trip. Thankfully, the doctors' search for other, more serious reasons for her blood abnormalities were all negative, and they too have concluded that it must be due to the infections she had. And her blood tests are becoming more normal daily without major interventions, others than some tweaking of her medications.
So this week I have been making trips to Sioux Falls daily to see Loretta and trying to find my way back into my work here as well. Sunday the church had a nice "welcome home" dinner for us. I'm sorry Loretta missed it. After dinner I was able to share a sketch of our past four months away.
It is so hard to believe that just a week ago we left the beautiful island of Crete. I cherish the opportunities I had to walk in the Cretan countryside this past Spring. The landscape of Crete, especially in this season, is breathtaking, as I've said before, with mountains and sea, olive groves and vineyards, flocks of sheep and goats. Despite being on a scale one can easily see, there is a vastness as well, especially in the vertical dimensions of the landscape. So I will hold in my memory the Spring of 2008, when I could walk the countryside of Crete.
I've written before about the landscape of home, and for the past week, I've also been enjoying the Turkey Ridge Valley, spread out before me even as I write from this computer. As I wrote several years ago, this is the landscape of home. When I see Turkey Ridge, I know that I am home.
It is quite a different landscape than Crete. It is far more vast of course. Here the dimensions are continental, and there is room for the landscape to spread out to the horizon. Yet in this Turkey Ridge Valley there is an intimacy as well. The vally brings into view the farms up and down the country roads. The valley defines a human space, a human community.
This intimacy I feel in both the Cretan and the Turkey Ridge landscapes are to me what make them both so special to me. Both are too big to grasp entirely, and yet living or walking there brings the landscape into human view, and highlights the connection between the people, the land, and their Creator.
I noticed that our congregation in its final Bible Study during my Sabbatical was reading chapters for Kathleen Norris' book, DAKOTA: A SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY. It is a book that has been influential in shaping my own view of the connections between land, people, and the Creator. These are connections I hope we can deepen and strengthen in the future.
Roy
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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