Ah, 2009! – It's here -- the year in which I’ll take my long-anticipated sabbatical. Beginning March 1st I will have six months for rest and renewal, generously supported by a Lilly Endowment Clergy Renewal Grant. Having now worked out some of the details, I’m ready to talk about what I’ll be up to. Here’s a brief run-down of our timetable below. I have also put up a Google map of our travels that you can find by clicking here.
February 27 - March 5, 2009
Red Sox Spring Training in Fort Meyers, Florida. This is just so that we know we have really started sabbatical time. Carolyn and I will be taking in four Red Sox games during the week. We’ll be staying at the home of friends in Naples, and also looking forward to connecting with other friends in the area.
March 7, 2009
Back to Boston for a one-day diocesan Spring Learning Event at Boston University with Brian McLaren as the featured speaker. If you’re not familiar with who Brian is, you can check him out at http://www.brianmclaren.net/. Oh yes, and you can sign up for the event here.
March 15 – April 15, 2009
One month in Japan. We have rented a house in Shimoda, a town on the Izu Peninsula, in a rural seaside location. This month will be a time for disconnecting from the routine of parish life, living life in a different key, listening to rustling brooks, reading Basho’s poetry and perhaps writing some haiku of my own. I also plan to do some hiking and bicycling as I prepare for the next big part of the sabbatical. I’m especially interested in biking up to Ito-shi, about 25 miles away, on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula, where I lived with the Shimomura family as a YFU exchange student in the summer of 1971. We are also really looking forward to seeing our Japanese exchange daughter, Junko Masuda, her husband Tomonobu, and their daughter, Sawako. It will be the first time we have met Sawako in person. They live in Osaka, where Tomo is a priest at a Buddhist temple. The last time we saw Junko and Tomo was at their wedding in 2004.
April 16 – May 31, 2009
Pacific Coast bicycle trip from Vancouver, B.C., to Tijuana, Mexico. George (my 21 year old son) and I plan to ride bikes from Canada to Mexico along the Pacific Coast. We’ve set aside six weeks, and hope that it might take us less than that. It will be a new and challenging experience for us both.
June 7, 2009
Back to Andover and Lawrence for the first ever graduation (baccalaureate service) of the Esperanza Academy. Could not miss this event!
June 8-15, 2009
Amahoro Gathering, Johannesburg, South Africa. Carolyn and I will attend the Amahoro Gathering on the topic of the African Reformation. (See Amahoro’s website at http://www.amahoro-africa.org/ for more about this organization and the upcoming gathering.) I also attended last year’s Amahoro Gathering in Kigali, Rwanda (see prior blog posts about this in May 2008).
June 15-22, 2009 (estimated)
We will travel to Kigali, Rwanda, where I’ll co-lead, with Steve Bonsey, a retreat for Rwandan pastors sponsored by the REACH organization. Carolyn and I are also hoping that we might get a couple of days while in the country to go and see the mountain gorillas up close and personal.
June 23 – July 7, 2009
Carolyn will return to the US, and I’ll be traveling to Denmark where I plan to visit with my Danish brother, Michael Balmer, and his family. They live on the island of Lolland in southern Denmark in the town of Maribo. I plan to do some traveling throughout the country, perhaps on bicycle for at least some part of it. I’m very interested in observing what it is that makes the Danes “the happiest people on earth” according to a study that reported various subjective measures of well-being. I’d like to soak up some of that happiness and bring it home with me. I then plan to travel from Denmark through Sweden and Norway, then across the North Sea to Scotland. From Aberdeen, I’ll take the train down through Scotland to England and then to North Wales, to the town of Hawarden.
July 8-22, 2009
I’ll go to St. Deiniol’s Library, where I’ll spend two weeks reflecting, hopefully writing, and in general trying make sense of the journey I’ve been on throughout my sabbatical.
July 25, 2009
Will go to my nephew's wedding in Wichita, and return to Andover and Maine for a month of gradual reentry before a busy fall at Christ Church.
More details to come. Stay tuned.
Friday, January 2, 2009
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