Last weekend Sue and I made our annual pilgrimage to Boonville for the Big Muddy Folk Music Festival. I always come home from this festival with a new appreciation for musicians who truly love their music, and sometimes I bring home a new perspective on life.

This year a fiddler spoke of how much old music from the Appalachian Mountains he had learned from a fiddler 60 or so years older than himself, who had previously learned many of those same tunes from a fiddler born early in the 19th Century. Three men’s lives connected by a shared love of the same music and spanning almost two centuries--now there’s a perspective on continuity and community. As a result of this exposure to old and cherished music that provides continuity through two tumultuous centuries, I feel re-gathered and a bit more whole.

Some of that renewal also has to do with the satisfaction of keeping personal traditions. A friend we always go to Boonville with said last weekend, "We have to eat BBQ on Friday night--it’s a tradition." And so it is. Even more important than eating BBQ is the tradition Sue and I share with 3 other couples of meeting every year for food and renewal at the Big Muddy. We’ve all known each other a long time. In our years together there has been much to celebrate, some things to grieve and a whole lot to talk over. Reconnecting every year with these important people in my life, sharing with them experiences of music and little rituals of gathering and friendship--all that grounds me and even inspires me.

A friend told me lately how much her faith lived out with family members, friends and church family means to her at this stage of her life. I think I know what she means. Increasingly for me faith, family, friends, church are all woven together into something that sustains my life and gives it depth and texture. Whatever hope I have for this life and beyond arises from my faith in a present and loving God, a faith lived out season by season with family members and friends, and with those in my community of faith, the church.

I find it helpful to remember that our words community and communion derive from the word common--"shared, general, used by all." I would add to that definition "needed by all." We are made for one another, and we do, in fact, need one another. God made us that way, and we remain that way, even though we sometimes drive each other crazy. Even the craziness is part of our communion.

Right now we’re all a little crazy here at Olivet. A friend from out-side the church asked me about our building program. In explaining our Spiritual Strategic Journey, the future story and the planning process ahead, I found myself becoming a little tangled up, trying to describe how this piece relates to that piece, or complicates it, or even contradicts it.

Nonetheless, we will continue to be patient with this process, and hopeful, and open to where God is taking us. What I love most about our future story is that it honors both our past and our future. Our story grounds us in what we have learned of God and faith, community and continuity. And, at the same time, our story helps us reach out and reach high as we feel God’s call to share what we know of God and life with others. To stand here right now, well grounded and reaching farther than we can see, that’s worth enduring a little craziness for, don’t you think?

Dennis