The morning larks are already lifted high.

Make every effort to supplement your faith with excellence, and excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 2 Peter 1:5-10

First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God. —Julian of Norwich (c. 1343­­–c. 1416)

Lord our God, we thank You that You have given us an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We thank You that You have already begun to give us new vision, that already many things are being transformed, so that we may go gladly and confidently on our way with hope for whatever is still unsolved. May all this live in our hearts and fill us with thanks to You. We want to be courageous and keep in sight what still needs to be changed as we take our part as workers in Your vineyard. May the light You have given us continue to shine in us and burn ever more brightly, as You have promised. Amen.

I think that actually where we have landed outside of Lugo, Italy is an old warehouse for the vineyards that stretch out in tidy rows in every direction. There are several beautiful apartments now tucked inside its spacious rafters, but its simple rugged exterior proclaims its original purpose.

And one cannot help but thinking about workers and the harvest around here. Abundance hangs low on every branch. Yesterday even four-year-old Everette was able to pluck not only handfuls of every-colored grape and spit out the seeds with practiced confidence, she also ate two plums, three figs, a pear, an apple, two peaches, four tomatoes and homemade pesto.

And this big long list of virtues or excellence has nothing to do with earning our place in the already now eternal kingdom of God. Rather it is a long list of pruning and fertilizing and weeding in order to create the sturdy and full-of-fruit branches connected to the Vine.

Sometime way before dawn the engines started roaring outside. And I don't know whether they were mowers or hoers or shakers, but they were up and at ‘em early. And while this walk with Jesus is simple and straightforward on many levels, there are things that easily entangle us or long to jump up and pierce our thinking like the many stinging nettles that lurk in every pathway. And while there are the waxing eloquent metaphors describing how the branches’ job is simply to “be” while the vine does (or did, depending on the translation) all the heavy lifting, someone out there is rising up before the dark orange sun and kneeling into the backbreaking work.

This walk is not for the sloppy or weak of heart.

So we are saved by faith, that not of ourselves, lest any of us boast. And brokenness and death and falling to the ground dried up and spent are all part of the process.

But so are self-control and steadfastness as daily choices. As is love. Every hot sweating stinking day we have to choose to practice love, the acting out and doing of it. And sometimes love is great fun, like racing Everette down the white sandy beach as fast as you both can go, but mostly it’s a bit of a bear, and it’s loading six borrowed bikes or two borrowed beds into the back of your car or spending the afternoon visiting three shops to figure out which sim card to buy for the folks that just arrived from Spain, France and Germany.

Or noticing the blind beggar shaking his coin box. Or explaining yet again what it means to be greatest. Or preparing a fish breakfast by the side of a lake for a bunch of people who just abandoned you when things got rough. And they couldn’t even stay awake and pray for an hour.

 A lot of the new vision stuff is still walking silently along country roads, without even thoughts, and the transformation thing is so deep maybe that it is still seeds buried underground with just little green sprigs peeking out into the light, and bunches still feels unsolved.

Breathe in deeply.

Breath out.

Coming to an end of self. How does that happen?

But there is always what is right in front of me. Even if I am still working through what it means to love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, there is always the neighbor right here.

One thing that I am being Spirit-prodded about is my edgy withdrawal from beggars on the street; even if I occasionally toss them a coin, I still look away. I am going to choose to pause, to kneel down, to look, and ask, “What do you need?”

How can I as a follower of Him not pause? He who paused for the unclean and marginalized again and again: the unclean bleeding woman, the woman caught in adultery, the tax collector, the demon-possessed naked man.

Come on. How did He answer the question “What must I do?” With a story about the religious people who looked away and the heathen who knelt down.

In excellence and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection, and love. 

A holy intention even in the so very long lines at Heathrow

La paz os demo, mi paz os doy; yo no os doy como el mundo la da. No se turbe vuestro corazon, ni tenga miedo. Juan 14,27

I certainly thought about traveling lightly yesterday. The City of Lugo donated an apartment to Marco's community group to use as a home for women and children in need, but first of all they must pack up the lives of those who had left them behind. And one was an eighty-year-old woman who had just died, and her family wanted it all: chewed by who-knows-what varmint boxes of receipts and church programs and daily calendars with the name of a bank stamped in gold on the front cover, enough telephones to trace the entire history of this modern invention, countless jars of honey and Nutella with just one more spoonful or shampoos and lotions with just one more squeeze, and bags and bags of blankets and shoes and kitchen towels and scratchy sweaters. And of course we all considered the lilies of the valley and the birds of the air and bigger barns while we worked. And really, at many levels, all this packing and up and down stairs and lowering beds out of the window was as delightful as boating around Venice or beach days at Ravenna because of the happy spirits and goodwill of all these young men singing and laughing as they loaded up the big truck for storage in a large country farmhouse also provided by the city.

And we rode our little bikes down the street for another capuchino, where Marco soon received the good news and the bad news phone call from the city's lawyer, and it was difficult to know which was which: the city had decided to donate all of the stuff to the ministry, and by the way, all of it had been stored in the wrong empty farmhouse and needed to be moved immediately.

And Marco was unhappy because he likes things done correctly and efficiently, and this was neither, and they had worked all day Saturday as well.

But Nicole reminded us of something true, that is so true I hope to remember it all of my life. Just as the first sorting and hefting and stacking had been an act of joyous worship, so could the resorting, the re-hefting,  and the re-stacking be a joyous act of worship. If it is all done for His honor and glory, it doesn't really matter what it happens to be.

And besides, it doesn't matter how far that old farmhouse is out in the country, because now I know how to ride 100 km a day. No problem.

This is the message that has so struck pastor Chris that he has taught it over and over again these past few years, so that its truth may settle in deeply and take root and produce the fruits of love, joy and peace: we can choose each act to be an act of worship. For His honor and glory.

Whether it is crafting beautiful violins like the Penazzi grandfather, or wood oven roasted eggplant and garlic pizzas like the brothers served us last night. Or standing in a British Airways line chatting with a Las Angeles hairdresser about his awe-inspiring visit to Rome. Or not getting access to the free airport internet so I can curl up with my old friend Annie Dillard once again.

And last night after the pizza and the nice bottle of white wine and before the game of Spades, we prayed for each other and the lives we will led this next year, just out of sight around the next curve. May we each live freely in His peace and provision, and not look to the world's peace, where moth and rust and little mice do certainly corrupt.

Centered in Him and His great love. Free, free at last.

And Annie Dillard ends her book of questions about The great I AM with some words from Martin Buber: the world of ordinary days affords us that precise association. With God that redeems both us and our speck of the world. God entrusts and allots to everyone an area to redeem: this creased and feeble world, "the world in which you live, just as it is and not otherwise." Here and now, presumably, an ordinary person would approach with a holy and compassionate intention the bank and post office, the car pool, the God-help-us television, the retirement account, the car, desk, phone, and keys. "Insofar as he cultivates and enjoys them in holiness, he frees his soul...he who prays and sings in holiness, eats and speaks in holiness, in holiness performs the pointed ablutions, and in holiness reflects upon his business, through him the sparks which have fallen will be uplifted, and the worlds which have fallen will be delivered and renewed."

So be it. In holiness, free, free at last.

The British Airways flight is three hours late and there are quite a few people worried about missed connections, but there is no one around to answer questions.