It’s Friday, and I’m at the Pines Resort above Oakhurst, California, near Yosemite.  It’s a beautiful sunny day, and the temps right now feel like they are in the 70’s, maybe even the 80’s.  I came up early to get some work done before our Chamber of Commerce retreat begins this evening.

A luxury I don’t normally have is to be able to stay basically on one task.  In this case that is to write sermons, read, and rest a bit.  Most of the time tasks are broken up by conversations, meetings, and ministry—all good but still interfering.  So this Chamber retreat has opened an opportunity to get additional things done.

One of the things I’m going to complete while here is reading Redeemed by Heather King.  The byline of the book reads “A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding.”  I just finished writing a sermon about the importance of having contact with fellow disciples.  Then I read this from King’s book.

The Eucharist is the ultimate participation in something greater than myself, and the fact that it require participation reminds me that, much as I’d often like to, I can’t trod the spiritual path alone…I think maybe he [Jesus] was saying that the flesh-and-blood human encounter, in all its messiness, its awkwardness, it’s necessary incompleteness, is the way we come to God.

Our Chamber retreat begins tonight.  I’m looking forward to that a great deal.  I think there’s no end to the good that people can do when they create joint visions.  Our Chamber board is made up of extraordinarily talented people, and it will be interesting to see what they dream.