Traveling with twins in Minnesota: Jeffers Petroglyphs

Memorial Day is always a good day, in my mind, to look back in history. Living a good ways from family this Memorial Day (my beloved and our baby went to California to visit her aunt for the week), meant that dad and the 2 older daughters marked the day together. The community picnic (with hot-dogs and pork burgers, chips, beans, and bars, and the subsequent trip to the county historical museum just up the street were my most celebrated ideas of the day.

After the trip to the museum and a quiet break at home, I, Dad had the bright idea of heading North West into the prairie and taking a good look around one of the true historic wonders of Minnesota. (click on the pictures to enlarge them and then start searching for the carvings).

The petroglyphs neat Jeffers are prehistoric (at least pre-European history) carvings on an outcropping of exposed red Sioux Quartzite. I first came to the spot about 11 years ago. The state historical society has made some real progress over the years. Durring my first trip signs were out and trails were marked on the rock and nearby to protect the images from people. A building was underconstruction, but not yet complete back then.

I came back a few years ago with another history buff. But this trip with our oldest girls reminded me of the wonder of this place, that like they said is, just "Out here in the middle of the wind and the prairie?" No body knows which group of people carved the images in the rock or what they mean. The symbols are easy to make out: spears, people, animals like the turtle and the buffalo. But the bigger question of meaning their remains unresolved by modern historians. The mystery of why this rock has been a place for stories over the centuries is fascinating and easily leads to great imagination about who, when, where, why, and how these images in the rock came to be.

The weather was warm and my traveling companions did their best in the late afternoon early evening memorial day sun.. Thank goodness for big enough water bottles and interpretive signs through out the area.

One story that the girls are still discussing is the legend that the rock formartion was a safe place during a great flood. The legend said that the rock turned red from the blood of those who died in the flood.

Whatever the cause of the rock or the origin of the images in the rock our girls had an unsolved mystery to talk about and a beaded bracelet and necklace to show at school during sharing time.

Fatherhood and fishing thoughts

I haven't blogged in a while but I have two updates:

Fatherhood thoughts: My beloved and I took a trip back down memory lane this past weekend with our 3 girls. We went back to the city on Lake Winnebago where our older 2 girls were born just about 6 years ago. We shared meals with old friends, played with some friend's and their kids in a swimming pool with a nifty water slide. We had a chance to drive past the places we'd been so many times before.

It wasn't our first trip back and it won't be our last. Wisconsin isn't that far away after all. We've come back to relax and catch up a few times over the past 6 years. We came back this time so I could give a speech at a banquet for the church where I served a few years ago. Our first girls were pretty small when we left; but we've been back enough to introduce them to the church where they were baptized and the pastor/God-mother who baptized them.

The time in the Fox Valley included a short trip to the Hecrodt Nature Center and Light-House at Kimberly Park where the Fox River flows out of Lake Winnebago. The girls were complaining about the Lake Flies that hatched last week too much to catch the beauty of the area where they were born.

We're back in the prairie today. The air is warm and there's plenty of wind. My beloved said it's a record setting heat. It's a good old prairie heat wave. Its our home now and will be for a while, but still it was good to go back to see old friends and celebrate with them. It was good to know that there are good places to go east of here.

Trout Fishing: A week and a half ago was the annual Mother's Day Weekend on the Whitewater River. It was a great time and I will look forward to the weekend in the pasture next to the wildlife management area again next year. A new member joined the crew at the old fishing hole. Dave's a true fly-fisherman who even brought out a wonderful wet-fly called a Mother's Day Caddis for the weekend. All these years that I've been fishing on Mother's Day and I had no idea that there's a Caddis pattern for the weekend. I learned more from Dave in two days then I had in about 11 years playing with a fly rod.

The challenge for the trouter, taken from God's question to Job in Job 41:1 was, "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook?" was answered by Chad, an Iowan by way of Fargo. Chad had the biggest catch ever on the Whitewater, while fishing with a mep thrown on a spinning real. He said it had gotten snagged on a tree across the stream a good hours walk up from the rest of us up at camp.

He pulled back hard and it snapped back. At first he thought it had bounced off, but obviously it didn't.

I drove Chad to Winona so that a doctor could pull the hook out rather than risk having either of the 2 chemists or the preacher in camp try to remove it. Chad caught himself with 2 of the 3 treble hooks. The doctor was quick with the lidocaine. She snipped the 3rd hook. Next she pushed one of the hooks through to cut off the barb before pushing the 2nd one through and snipping out the barb. After about 60 seconds of pushing and pulling chad had 4 little 2 mm cuts in his cut where the barbs had pierced him.

2009 SEMN ELCA Synod Assembly

As a pastor I'm obligated to attend a series of annual meetings. Today I'm at one of them.

ELCA Lutherans have a creative sort of church governence. Members of different churches gather in the spring in synod assemblies. The gathering is partially like a family reunion with friends meeting again after a time apart renewing old frienfships. It's partway a time for renewal & revival, and this year considerable time's is being spent on a discussion about complex social issues.

There's no shortage of secondary topics at these gatherings. This year's no different. We have a great deal of time dedicated to a secondary topic, notably human sexuality. The real issue in our time for the church, sharing Jesus Christ in Word & Sacrament with 2 missing generations, is easily lost.