Sermon by Young Adult Congregation Member, Ms. Bree Peterson, J.D.on Sunday, July 18. Bree preached,but shared liturgical duties with her father, Rev. Rick PetersonHi, I’m Bree Peterson. I spent my growing up years in this church. For those of you don’t know me I am the daughter of Rick and Naomi Peterson……for those of you who do not know Rick Peterson, this must be your first Sunday here. J It is good to be amongst this community again! Thank you for welcoming this rag-tag duo and for letting me share with you some thoughts and experiences. So, I’m a lawyer now – my parents aren’t surprised – but sometimes I still am. I was studying for the bar exam year ago at this time and I’ll tell you it’s pretty easy -- when you are supposed to be studying K law – to, instead, daydream about Thailand. So you can say law school, the bar, the whole deal whet my appetite to get out of town - - for a long time. My travel plan was hatched in August last yea,r when my particular stars aligned:
It is some stories and reflections from those 4 months, 11 countries and countless new friends, that I hope to share with you this morning. And maybe you have had some similar experiences encountering the world and its people, whether near to home or far away…. Experiences of stepping into new communities that are opened to you by those who have a shared experience, or seek to meet your needs, or by a person whose light just shines from a welcoming heart which desired to know YOU in a particular moment in time. These are the themes I see in our scriptures today: welcoming, listening, openness to a guest and new friendships, and sharing our spirit - which makes us shine. So, some basics on the journey…. I left MPLS with a one-way airline ticket, some ideas of places I’d like to see, and no other transport or accommodation bookings…. I also went on this journey by myself. A lot of people have questions about that and have asked me, “Isn’t it difficult, weren’t you lonely?” In all, honestly, YES sometimes I was, and this type of travel is work in many ways, so it can be difficult. BUT, I can say unequivocally that traveling independently was the BEST decision I made. Going alone PUSHED me to truly experience the community of others, because I was fully outside my own community. - When you travel as 2, who do you have dinner with? That other person. BUT when you are 1, you have dinner with a different person every evening…. I didn’t know this before I left, but I wasn’t really going alone. Because when you are a traveler you are in the community of travelers. These are the hundreds of other people just like you who are on a journey, or are seeking, or are simply taking some time, and have left home for an extended period, often independently, and are OUT THERE. This traveler community and the relationships built in it are so unique because they exist:
It is the experience of travel (the awe, the frustration, and advice shared) that brings this diversity of people together. Connections are made quickly and often lost just as quickly. And people are at peace with this malleability. I really discovered part of my identity amongst other travelers…Realizing that the thing that many people at home think is odd – this crazy wandering – is the very thing that connected me to this community and new people everyday, was awesome. I met Melani, a French Canadian who was traveling on her own, when I was in Croatia. We met weeks later in Sofia, Bulgaria, and then in Istanbul and then halfway around the world, months later in Bali. We were connected by a similar spirit and a similar journey. And it is other travelers I could to rely on for good company, advice on routes and accommodation AND, it was other travelers who saved me when I needed it most. After a long train from S. Hungary, a bus, and after walking up a hill that never seemed to end to a tiny village in a National Park in Croatia, I found there were no rooms to rent. The day was quickly ending and I was as close to homeless as I had been yet. Then I saw two travelers. Nora and Ana are cousins from Switzerland and they invited me, after no more than a 10 minute conversation, to share their rented room which (by miracle alone) had an extra bed. But that is not the best part… Weeks later I hop off bus at a local stop along the Adriatic coast and there are Ana and Nora to meet me. They have invited me to share Ana’s mother’s ancestral house on the cliffs of Pisak for a few days. We cook together in a kitchen built into the rocks and we eat together on the patio that doubles as the living room, under the tree that stands in the center, on a blue wooden table and chairs, looking across at the sea. With these travelers, I go on hikes, swim off the rocks and I eat my first fig off of a tree. Ana and Nora’s open hearts, welcoming traveler spirits and good friendship was invaluable to me then and now. In our passage today we see a traveler… Verse 38… Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.
This scripture has come alive to me because I have experienced just such a welcome. From Croatia, I traveled through Montenegro, Serbia and into Bulgaria to reunite with some people I knew, who knew me. Many of you helped support the Bulgarian Choir of the Blind when I was in Bulgaria back in 2006. This choir is made up of professional singers who are visually impaired and had, until government support was revoked, supported themselves through their music. Ever since 2006, Peter Matev, the conductor of the choir and his wife Krassi had followed my life and sent me birthday, holiday and other greetings over the years. When I was back in Sofia on this journey, I traveled with the choir to a nearby village for a concert. Four years have passed and your generosity has not been forgotten. At the concert Peter recognized me AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE who provided that financial gift in 2006 that allowed the choir to perform, along with other professionals, at a regional event in Greece. Peter told me that not only did that gift make the concert possible, but it was a gift of hope at a time of darkness in the lives of many of the singers, it was a gift of support for their struggles, and allowed them to do what brings them joy – making and presenting their music to the world. SO, in the dark on the way home from the concert Maria, one of the blind choir members, begins to sing – Amazing Grace – on an otherwise quiet bus. It is in English and she sings four verses, but this is the line I hear over again… “I once was lost, but now I am found, was blind, but now I see.” So thank you again, Anoka UCC, for your support of this choir and of me. You put your light on the lamp stand, you let it shine before people, and I can tell you your light still shines in our hearts.
A day before I left the U.S., I had emailed a young woman named Colette. She’d been writing a blog I found on the internet about living in Lebanon as a Lebanese-American and I’d noticed we’d both studied with the same organization at one time. So my email went something like this…. “Dear Colette,
See ya around, Bree” I landed at 10:30pm in Beirut and I’m standing outside the airport with my backpack on, surrounded by ten taxi drivers. I’m playing hardball on my cab fare. We arrive at a price, and soon I am whipping through the hilly streets of Beirut in the pitch black, in the back of some cab, and I finally think to myself – HOW did I get HERE? HOW did I my life come to this MOMENT in the back of this cab? Beirut was my first taste of the Middle East, and it enchanted me. I have never seen such prosperity and destruction situated door to door. And in the middle of Beirut on Hamra Street, I met Colette at a coffee shop. She welcomed me into her life and into her circle, introducing me to Farah, Cagil, Leila, Rianne, Abdullah, Christophe, Laurel and Mae, all persons living either temporarily in Beirut or who’d grown up in the city. The next evening we went out together as Lebanese, Dutch, American, Turkish, Chinese and Iranian. It was pretty awesome to be welcomed into such a group. And it was through a blog, an email, Colette’s willingness to OPEN her life to somebody new, that a new community was formed for me. So after London, Cyprus, Lebanon, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Istanbul, Thailand, Vietnam and Bali, I finally landed at 926 Haight Street, in San Francisco. I was to stay in San Francisco with a long- lost friend from high school and I was to pick up the key to her place at her sister in law’s home. When I rang the doorbell at 926 Haight Street, I instead met Kaled the chef from Casablanca, who was looking for his next restaurant, and his neighbor Doug, the freelance science-writer headed to Antarctica the next week. My friend had given me the wrong address. But time passed between Doug, Kaled and me over a glass wine, while I waited for a call about the address. And when the information arrived that the address was 962 not 926, I couldn’t pull myself away from my new friends for at least another half hour. In this encounter I found I’d brought back something with me, the open hearts of those I’d met in my travels had worked its way inside me as well and I could think of nothing more I wanted to do that evening than to get to know these two people I had met in the wrong place at the right time. It is not always natural in our society to open ourselves to others, or to see what the person standing in front of us in the present moment needs. Martha and Mary were both serving Jesus in their own ways…. I don’t think it’s Martha’s work Jesus is remarking on… (for if a verse following had been written it may say, “And after the long day of teaching and travel, Jesus heartily enjoyed Martha’s home cooked meal”). Rather, Jesus says, “Martha you are worried and distracted by many things,” and it may have been that the generous, listening ear of friend was what the present moment needed. I’ll leave you with this…. There is a light that shines from an open and generous heart. The thought for the day in our bulletin is one of my favorite Buddhist teachings… “Loving-kindness is a freedom of the heart; a luminous, blazing, radiance.” Living as a traveler for four months, and moving day to day within this world of openness, welcoming and new communities, I came to understand and embrace this radiance. I have found to keep the light shining in day to day life is effort, it is grace and it is joy.
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First Congregational United Church of Christ of Anoka • 1923
Third Avenue South, Anoka, MN 55303 • 763-421-3375
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