A Place Apart, a Place Eternal – 02/03/2012
February 3rd, 2012I read this week in the Village Voice an invitation to share “Holden Stories.” I’d like to use Matins this morning to tell part of ours.
I learned on Monday from the J-term students that Holden’s original name was Holden Village: A Place Apart. When life up this mountain includes power outages due to avalanche chutes, and multiple vehicles are needed to get up and down the road, it does feel like a place apart.
On the other hand, I believe Holden is also a place ever near, kept and carried within those of us who visit. It is a place beyond itself, existing outside this dear mountain valley, in the lives of so many others who love it.
Finally, it is a place eternal. Not that Holden will always be the same, or even that it will always be here. It is a place eternal because God will keep it. God will hold it and all its meanings in eternity.
Part of the way Holden feels like a place eternal to me is that it holds the memory of one particular saint. John Steven Paul was dear a friend and mentor, and the teacher who first told Casey and me and ten other “Valpo” students to pack our hiking boots and come up the mountain. In those days, he also told us to prepare for a steady diet of lentils. This week, there is nary a lentil to be found! Times change.
JSP, as we called him, directed a group called Soul Purpose, a liturgical drama troupe that wrote and directed plays for performance in worship. JSP was lovingly precise about this work, the sound of each line and the shape of each movement. The “s” word was forbidden from our speech: skit. No bathrobe biblical characters allowed!
We came to Holden as artists in residence in the summer of 2001, performing plays and sharing village life. It was a formative time for many of us. About halfway through our time here, JSP instituted “little visits with JSP” on his chalet porch. As it turns out, he was lovingly precise about his care for each of us as well, wanting to check in, learning how we were each experiencing Holden, helping us imagine how we might take this place home with us in our daily lives.
In the summer of 2009, JSP unexpectedly died. He was only 58. I was pregnant when I attended his memorial service that fall, and we gave that child, Arlo, the middle name of John in honor of JSP.
I returned to Holden in the fall of 2010 with a pastor’s group and five-month-old Arlo in tow. Tucking him in a wrap, I walked him around the village loop, down by Railroad Creek. It was September, the water was low and the trees were lovely. And I stood on a rock near the creek and cried, missing JSP, thinking of the future with Arlo. My tears and the running brook served as reminders of the baptism which holds me, now Arlo, and JSP together in Jesus Christ.
Holden may be a place apart, a special place of memories and saints. It is also a place of plans and schemes, hopes and dreams. A place of vocation. Certainly it was so for me that first visit, when I began to wonder about going off to seminary. After this week, I find myself wondering if it is my calling to be the one who gathers up some students, or congregation members, and gives them a packing list including hearty footwear. Maybe it is my job to bring others up here, up to this place apart, this place eternal.
Thanks be to God for you, for your keeping of this village now, and for God’s good grace which keeps us all.
By,
Liv Larson Andrews
Liv Larson Andrews is pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Spokane, Washington. She is assisted by her adorable son Arlo and loving spouse, Casey.