Rembrandt van Rijn. In a different time and what seems to be a different world, when the concept of travel was deemed to be both relaxing, and educational, my wife, Carolyn and I signed up for a tour of the Baltic capitals which included a visit to St.
Petersburg in Russia. Staying within the bubble of the group tour seemed to be the wisest and safest course of action during the time we spent in the city that was saturated with centuries of history. A highlight of the visit was a tour of the Hermitage. It is a museum laden with numerous treasures. Its significant size cm x cm, or approximately eight and a half by six and a half feet was breathtaking. The subject was simple, yet filled with complexity of light, shadow and symbol that might have allowed for hours to pass by if it had only been possible to have that time.
Yet, for me, with only a few minutes permitted to our group, to stand there and take it all in, was one of the highlights of many days of travel. Like so many times in life that slip by with an unimaginable speed, unaided by any photographs, those moments can only be entrusted to memory. From a greater perspective, the likelihood of ever returning to Russia, even to make another trip to the Hermitage, may easily be tossed into the wastebasket of impossibility.
They were, in fact, different days. They were days which we remember from our own unique perspectives. They were days which others remember, for their own reasons, less fondly, because their own memories are not so pleasant. In my own life, a recent simple phone call began a process which has moved me, at what feels like lightning speed, from my comfortable chair, reading the newspaper, with easy access to a cup of coffee, to five days later beginning a new experience in ministry as the Interim Priest in Charge at St.
It is not an invitation to return to the church community of the past, but rather an invitation to explore the future and what new ministry might look like in the years to come. The constant which, in his own way, Rembrandt captured in his painting, was that the Prodigal Son was welcomed home and was embraced by his father. The lost was found.
