This Week's E-pistle

Farnham & St. John's

The Weekly Message

“Traveling Mercies”

Got my bag, got my reservation and I’m excited about the traveling ahead of me, at least at the time I’m writing this reflection. I’m humming the old 1940’s Doris Day tune, “Sentimental Journey” although the “all aboard” will be for an airplane, not a train when I “take off.” I’m headed to New Mexico for a week and am looking forward to renew the acquaintances, now friends, I met at Richard Rohr’s “Living School” last Fall – ones I met from all around the world. Maybe there’s also a piece about renewing some older memories that were forged in the Southwest several years ago when I was on a “pilgrimage” of sorts at Casa del Sol north of Abique in Georgia O’Keefe country at a week-long retreat at Ghost Ranch with the Celtic teacher/author John Philip Newell and a small group studying “Ancient Wisdom” with John Philip, a Sufi scholar and a rabbi. (No, this is not a joke about meeting three “religious” persons in a bar!”)

There is something very mystical and memorable about the air that one breathes in a desert landscape, the way the wind blows and how sounds ring through the mesas and the canyons there in the Southwest. A sense of ancient indigenous people living interwoven with the nature of the place. And those memories include Buff flying out and meeting me there at Ghost Ranch and our taking off for another two weeks just wandering through New Mexico, Arizona, up to Wyoming and back again, spending our last couple of days in Taos. That part of the world has become a nourishing and sacred part of my soul’s landscape. I often travel there in my memories, dwell in the spaciousness of them and am refreshed.

photo by Brian Spencer , Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center, .

For years now I have traveled in a way of journeying and being that I have simply labeled “Celtic” and “pilgrim.” I travel with eyes wide open to the beauty of place, to the beauty and goodness of people met along the way and with a sense of interconnectedness with the landscape and all life around me. I journey eager to savor each moment, however ordinary it might seem, because of a sense that every moment has the possibility of opening me to the greater Presence waiting within any time. I remember, as if yesterday, John Philip’s voice years ago at Casa Del Sol reminding us, “The next moment has never happened before!” What exquisite possibilities that idea promises as we approach the threshold of the “moments to come” of our lives, wherever we go.

In a way any travel makes a pilgrim of us, an opportunity to step into the unknown, almost mystically, with a sense of something sacred calling us forward step by step to explore new places, meet new faces, breathe fresh air, savor new sights, tastes, sounds and live both deeper and beyond who we have been before.

As you read this Epistle reflection I will already be in New Mexico, having unpacked the new compact, lightweight, travel-easy “carry on” I bought for this and future travel. I will have settled into a pilgrimage rhythm, my heart and mind and senses exploring territory, both the familiar and the unfamiliar waiting to make “more of me.”

I leave you now with the beautiful poetic reflection of another of my favorite Celtic writer/teachers, John O’Donohue, from the latter verses of a poem titled “For the Traveler. Here below, though originally penned in poem design, I offer it as prose for contemplation as perhaps you too consider some summertime travel.

“When you travel a new silence goes with you. And if you listen you will hear what your heart would love to say. A journey can become a sacred thing: Make sure, before you go to take the time to bless your going forth. To free your heart of ballast so that the compass of your soul might direct you toward the territories of spirit where you will discover more of your hidden life, and the urgencies that desire to claim you. May you travel in an awakened way, gathered wisely into your inner ground; that you may not waste the invitations which wait along the way to transform you. May you travel safely, arrive refreshed, and live your time away to its fullest; return home more enriched and free to balance the gift of days which call you.”

Traveling Mercies,

Torrence

at Farnham last week.... and next...

Reflections

Queen Anne Sunday

June 30 ^th

Join with Farnham & St. John’s to celebrate Holy Communion using the service from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and two large flagons, chalice and paten which are part of the gifts of a fund established by Queen Anne (reign 1702-1714) to help the new colonial-era churches.

Announcements

July 4 ^th

Cople Parish and the Northern Neck Historical Society invite you to gather for an Independence Day Celebration at Burnt House Field (Mt Pleasant Road -Rt. 675, Hague map ),

burial site of Richard Henry Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence at 8:15 a.m. Following that brief commemoration, we drive to Yeocomico Church. for a 9 a.m. service of thanksgiving for our liberties, prayers, and singing of patriotic hymns.

above photos by Mark Jenkins

Combined parish Sunday Services at 10 a.m.

summer casual attire if you'd like.

1 ^st & 3 ^rd Sundays at St. John's

with Communion ;

2 ^nd & 4 ^th Sundays at Farnham

with Morning Prayer

Summer Speaker Series

begins at 6:00 p.m. on June 18 ^th at Wellford Hall, St. John's Warsaw with Barbara Heath speaking about Archaeology at Coan Hall in Northumberland County.

we hope to have the next speaker on July 9 th .