Wednesday 26th June I woke to a ‘California dawn’; it was beautiful! It was before sunrise and so the gentle light was wrapped in the softest of cool breezes. The morning air was silent apart from the call of waking birds. The day had the sense of promise and life. I was sitting under a Sycamore tree just enjoying the moment when Tim and Charletta appeared with carrying a range of foods for breakfast, starting with a smoothie made from frozen over-ripe bananas, peanut butter, carob all blended together - wow! What a way to begin the morning, it was so delicious. After breakfast Charletta took me on a tour around the Ojai Valley Community Church campus. The church was founded sixty years ago and grew to be a community of some 800 people. The buildings on the site are extensive and in themselves tell the story of how the community grew. The current pastor is Paul Bergmann, who I have still to meet person-to-person whose personal spiritual journey has importantly shaped the life of the church, with a main meeting hall that will hold a 1000 people. Paul has been bold in speaking out in the inclusion of lesbian and gays in the life of the church and on LGBT rights in general, along with a strong Christocentric universalist theology. This has seen strong negative reaction to him personally and a huge drop in people attending the church. This has obviously been very painful, but there seems to be a sense in which the community is coming through all this bolder and stronger and with real hope. I feel it an honour to be here at this time and very much looking forward to being part of everything when they meet on Sunday morning. Charletta then took me up to see some large local oak trees, about a quarter of a mile from the OVCC campus, standing together in a group – a wonderful place for quiet personal reflection under their shade. The oak tree is characteristic of southern California they are everywhere - the Live Oak with tight little leaves to reduce the amount of moisture loss in the high temperatures, the Valley Oak that is much more like the classic English oak with its distinctive leaf, there is the Black Oak with its dark bark and the beautiful red leaves of the Poisonous Oak (which is exactly as it’s name says) - and so many more. A little later in the morning Tim and Charletta took me to visit the ‘Grandmother Oak’ (500 years old), with a dominating presence near a creek. Not only does a huge mature oak like this provide a huge shade umbrella but characteristic of the Live Oak, their branches swoop down and grow low to the ground so that you can sit on them, making your connection with the tree even stronger. This was a special moment. Returning to OVCC we meet up with Victoria, Alec and Olivia Loorz who also live on site. Victoria is the newly appointed assistant pastor, with her two remarkable children. Olivia has a passion for writing and with a number of years still to go at school she has nearly finished her first novel. Alec, has just completed his first year at university, but has for many years already (even as a very young man), he has been a prominent Green voice in the climate change debate across the USA. We all went down-town into Ojai to have lunch together in the ‘The Farmer and The Cook’ Wholefood store and salad-bar café. The food was delicious. While we were eating I had more of a chance to get to know Alec. Tim provoked the conversation by asking me what I thought about there being a link between environmental issues and spirituality – no need to think about that one! As I shared my belief that I thought that they were totally interdependent and that without really addressing this reality there was little hope of the kind of ecological turnaround the planet needed in order to survive. Alec just connected. Some years ago he had gone on a trip to South America and made real contact with indigenous communities and became convinced that you cannot separate ecology from spirituality. But as we both discussed with each other there are not a huge number of other people who see it that way! He is a remarkable young man from whom I am sure I have much to learn and perhaps a few things to share. During the afternoon, I sat under the Sycamore tree again and tried to catch up writing my blog under its shade and shade. That evening was the regular midweek church ‘Midrash’. I understand that usually they use their time together to grapple with the big theological, philosophical and ethical questions any of them are grappling with. Tonight, they asked me to talk with them. There were 19 people in total; Tim had asked me to talk about how I had discovered ‘shalom’ and how I understood it. Charletta asked me to talk about ‘mishpat’ as both justice and judgement and its implications for universalism. So I decided to weave them both into what I had to say. There was a warm and generous response with a great discussion at the end. I felt there was a real connection with everyone. Quite a few had already bought my book (Thanks to Tim and Charletta), several had nearly finished reading it, others bought it at the end of the evening – there was quite a bit of book signing! I really enjoyed the evening. One of the people who I had a good conversation with was Angelique DeCour who has a passion for writing and publishing in journals pieces of work raising issues on peace and justice. She is keen to talk with me further and so we will met up tomorrow afternoon to do so. Times like that reveal so much about individual people’s spiritual journeys, which always enriches me. I am looking forward to the fact that I will meet up with most of them again on Sunday. When everyone had gone, Tim and Charletta, Victoria, Alec, Olivia and I sat down and shared a stir-fry together. It was just great. What a first full day in the Ojai Valley!
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 05:50:46 +0000
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