In 2005, I was stuck in my professional career. I had been serving as a pastor of the United Church of Christ for 27 years, ten of those years having been spent in Rapid City, South Dakota. Our children were raised and left our house to pursue their lives and careers. I had applied for a position as a Conference Minister, but the search committee had chosen a different candidate for what I had thought was my dream job. I loved my job, but I was still itching for a change of some kind. It may be because ten years was the longest I had served in the same call at that point in my life. Perhaps it was my memory of something my father had told me when he decided to sell part of his flying business, “25 years is long enough for anyone to do the same thing.” Whatever the reason, I was trying to figure out what the next phase of my life might bring.

What came along turned out to be just what I needed. We applied for and received a grant from the Lily Foundation for a sabbatical. We had taken sabbatical leave before, but had never figured out how to work out a real break from our parish duties. The grant not only provided funds for the church to hire excellent leadership during our absence, but it also provided generous funds for travel and exploration. Part of the grant application process involved writing a proposal to the foundation. One of the questions that we were given to ponder as we prepared our application was this: “What would make your heart sing?” I recall thinking about that question for quite some time and compiling a list of things that I thought would bring me joy. Among the things on the list were time with family, especially our adult children; time to explore nature, especially wilderness places; time to connect with colleagues, especially a seminary classmate with whom we were very close; and time to travel.

As has been the case with thousands of ministers who have received Lily's sabbatical grants, the experience renewed our commitment to the congregation we were serving. We went on to serve that congregation for a total of 25 years until we retired. During that time, the congregation grew in its sense of mission and outreach, faced and addressed some capital expenses related to its building, deepened connections with mission partners in Costa Rica and on the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, and Pine Ridge Reservations, and developed new worship and faith formation programs. I look back on my 2006 sabbatical as one of the most crucial turning points in my career, even though it didn’t involve starting a new venue for service. Instead, it involved a recommitment to the call in which I had served for more than a decade and would continue to serve for many years to come.

The question of what makes my heart sing remains an important one for me. In many ways, the answer is the same now as it was back then: time with family, time with nature, time with colleagues, and time to travel. Being retired has given me the gift of time in new ways. We now live near our son's family. We have opportunities to be with our grandchildren every week. We spend time outdoors, regularly connecting with nature. We can connect with colleagues over the Internet in ways that did not previously exist. And we can travel, although not in all the ways I had imagined before being retired.

What I know is that travel and being in nature have ways of nurturing my heart and soul. Susan and I spent four days hiking and viewing the sights on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. We have walked through old-growth forests and marveled at cathedral cedar trees. We have stood atop rocky cliffs and gazed out at the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. We have walked along sandy beaches and listened to the sounds of creation. It was a soul-refreshing time for us, even though we had more time for connection with nature in retirement than we did when serving congregations full-time.

Making a personal connection with the glories of creation is an integral part of my life. It is one of the reasons that preservation of the environment is more than just a cause to me. It is personal. My connections with wild places have deeply moved me, and I have dedicated my energy to preserving them for future generations.

When our son was the age that our oldest grandson is now, we enjoyed watching the Sci-fi/fantasy movies in the Star Wars series. We had a VCR in our home, and he got a boxed set of the first three movies in the series, which were labeled episodes 4, 5, and 6 after additional episodes were filmed. We watched those three movies together several times. The third one, Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, featured training scenes set in a deep mystical forest and introduced furry characters who become allies. The Ewoks are small, furry aliens who live on the forest moon of Endor. They have a tribal culture and primitive technology, but can utilize the tools at their disposal to defeat the more technologically advanced Empire. The forest scenes for that movie were filmed in a grove of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, known as Cathedral Grove.

We went for a walk in Cathedral Grove yesterday and were reminded of how its special atmosphere inspired moviemakers to develop characters and scenes for a wildly popular movie. We didn’t meet any Ewoks, but we could see how one’s imagination could soar in such a place.

Cathedral Grove was just one of the places we explored on our trip to First Nations land on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is sacred space. It has made our hearts sing. We will return.