Faith Reflection by Shawn Collins Shawn, Kristine and Elise Collins, members of the faith community of Emanuel Lutheran Church, relocated to Indianapolis, IN at the beginning of August. During the July 25 Wednesday Evening Worship service Shawn offered his faith reflection, which we include here for you to read. We pray that God bless the Collins family as they prepare to embark on this next leg of their journey in life and in faith. FAITH REFLECTION Exodus 13:21-22 "By day the Lord went ahead of the Israelites in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people." This passage was the theme of the commencement address at a graduation ceremony I attended many years ago. The speaker pointed out how easy it is to fill in the missing details in these verses about the relationship of the Israelites, the cloud, and the journey through the wilderness. The cloud never moved when the Israelites were tired, had holes in their shoes, or were otherwise out of sorts. It always stopped near sources of food and water so that the Israelites were refreshed when they had to continue walking. I would add some more details. Moses had a strategic plan, which included contingencies in place to identify and overcome the resistance of lesser minds who disputed his vision statement about collective transformation from slavery to freedom. The speaker's point was that despite the appeal of these assumptions, the Biblical text is silent on the details of the path. The focus is entirely on the cloud. When it moved, the people moved. When it stopped, they stopped. His challenge to the graduating class was the following: The life of faith does not present us with a defined path to walk. Rather, it presents us with the cloud to follow. We see this once more at Pentecost, when the pillar of fire rests on the individual followers of Christ. I've found the framework of the cloud and path a useful one, particularly during times of transition. When I heard this talk, I was frustrated with what I perceived to be four wasted years of engineering school, because I couldn't figure out the patterns in the path I was walking. The words were both an encouragement and a challenge. Despite my prayers of willingness to move, and investigations into other options, the cloud seemed to consistently point me to engineering at Purdue. I thus approached my final year as a statement of faith that there was a point, however unclear to me, to getting trained in engineering. I presented this passage as the guiding theme to my wife when we began dating, and again when we got engaged. We committed to following the cloud of God's leading together, even though we weren't sure where the path would take us. I will admit that for two first-borns trained in the physical sciences, this deliberate decision not to demand certainty from each other and from God has not always been easy to maintain. I moved to CT with a tentative vocational path in mind. After a couple years working as an engineer, I would pursue full-time graduate school to study the anthropology of religion. The cloud moved. I encountered a generous employee scholar program, an anthropology instructor who asked me to apply the principles he was teaching to my engineering work environment, and a couple supervisors who allowed me to continue what had initially been just a thought experiment. The result was a non-traditional part-time PhD that combined systems engineering, cognitive science, and cultural anthropology. It was also my consistent struggle to answer the questions "What exactly does one study as an anthropologist at an engineering company?" and "What does one do vocationally with training like that?" While I'd done some reading about mainline theology during college as an academic exercise, attending a mainline church wasn't the path I'd envisioned for my post-college discipleship. The cloud moved. First, I heard David Harper's 9 am radio program on WJMJ. Second, on my first visit to Emanuel, the two people sitting next to me did something that in hindsight is very un-Lutheran. They introduced themselves with the question, "We haven't seen you here before. Are you new?" The culprits, Natalie and Gary Bloomquist, then introduced me to Jill Doherty as soon as they found out I'd recently moved from the Midwest. Third, on visiting Emanuel some months later, my wife and I met two other couples, the Kurtzes and Bianchis, who were also new to the area, looking for a church, and looking for friends. Finally, despite the fact that neither of us legitimately claim Scandinavian heritage, nor have we pilgrimaged to the holy land of Calumet, our outsider status was not the barrier to participation at Emanuel that one might, at least in jest, expect it to be. Let me mention a few things about the path that materialized from this unanticipated participation in the Lutheran tradition. First, we were blessed to see Dick Allison model consistent dedication and preparation in leading the small 9 am Sunday School class for several years. Second, I received valuable mentoring from Emanuel's two music ministers, who graciously endured my sporadic participation on the rare occasions I had breaks from graduate school. Jim Gower showed me the beauty of liturgical music and challenged me to pursue musical excellence as a form of sacrifice to God. Melissa Moll let me inflict my search for instrumental music on the rest of the congregation in the form of special music and being a worship assistant. The result, many years after I'd put down my instruments because I couldn't see a viable path to continue using them, is a rediscovered love of sacred music, and a commitment that it be the foundation of both my personal devotional life and future church participation. Third, through a series of discussions after getting consistently schooled in lunch-time basketball by Pastor Corgan and Eric Kurtz, Joe Doherty introduced me to writings on stewardship by a Canadian theologian. The core of our discussions was the idea that stewardship is a governing metaphor that extends beyond financial giving to a congregation. It applies to how we use our talents in every domain of personal and public life for the glory of God. One implication is the ripe opportunity to think theologically about the organizations where many of us spend significant portions of our waking hours. As microcosms of social life, organizations contain a myriad of religious elements that we as followers of Christ must interact with. They have sacred truths we're asked to uphold (profit, competitive advantage, survival, happy customers). They have liturgical orders where these truths get reinforced and transmitted between generations (regular meetings, product launch cycles, budget cycles, proposal writing). Their members experience cycles of grief and celebration as the activities to which they devote time and energy succeed or fail. The exact path where these musings should lead is unclear. To one who has nothing better to do with his time, the cloud says "Write the paper Shawn. There are implications for how the church equips its people to live out the gospel in their daily lives." Recently, the cloud moved again. In a few days, we will finish packing our things, and relocate to Indianapolis. Once again, the path ahead is undefined. Vocationally, I cannot break free of the challenge to integrate anthropology, engineering, and theology (hopefully some day it will produce a useful result). Devotionally, it is unclear how we will take the beneficial elements from our Lutheran sojourn into the next congregation where we set down roots. As we prepare to part ways, it is with gratefulness for the chance to share the path of faith with Emanuel for the last several years, and prayers for God's continued guidance as we follow the cloud into our different futures. Let me close by reading excerpts from a song that paraphrases Psalm 121. It has been sung and played many times in our home as we've prepared for this move. I lift up my eyes, and I look to the mountains. I see by the shadow I'm nothing at all. The hills tower over me, black and forbidding; The tangles of forest bid me come and fall. No light may enter those caves, a great fortress; Their darkness defended by cavern and wall. A torrent, a flood crashes over the rocks, and The thundering falls drown a voice still and small. Listen, my child, for I made these great mountains, The sky far above you, the rocks and the falls, The tangles of forest, the caves and the crags, And whatever dwells in them, my hands formed them all. The shadows are emptied of threat for I'm in them, As I am in you when you follow my call; So lift up your eyes and look over the mountains, And walk in my shadow I'll not let you fall.