“Dissolving the relationship” between a church and a pastor sounds like a grim task, but it’s not really.  It’s a necessary formality that allows the church and pastor to move forward with mutual blessing.  And it gave us one last opportunity to do things decently and in good order. 

As I’ve talked about it with friends, more than one has made the comment that “God usually calls us toward something — not away from something.”  That’s mostly true, I think, especially if you’re already serving God in some capacity.

There’s something about leaving home, leaving routines and familiar places and faces, and my own bed — leaving it all behind to strike out and discover something new.

When one of us thinks we’ve heard directly from God, we need to talk to others — to affirm that what we think we’ve heard is consistent with the biblical witness; and that we aren’t trying to pass off our will as God’s  will and that it isn’t just arbitrary voices  in our head (like, say, the Son of Sam serial murderer).  We need trusted friends, who are mature in their faith, to affirm that what we think is the voice of God, really is the voice of God.

How does one re-enter life when you suddenly realize that a good part of that life has been based on a myth?   How do you begin to untangle all the pieces you’ve carefully assembled to protect the myth? 

While there’s no doubt in my mind that Paul played some sort of role in “waking me up” in Israel, after a quick hug and “thanks for a great tour” he unceremoniously dropped me off at the airport.  And I was on my own... again.

This was the setting of Jesus ministry.  I’d like to go back before too long to take a walking tour of Galilee.

When we were after a specific bird, Paul would play a recording of its song, to coax it out into the open.  It was barely light when he tried for the first time in Wadi Mishmar.  It was supposed to be the song of the Scrub Warbler, but instead it was the first chord of a heavy metal song, so an enormous sort of  “WONNGGG” reverberated up the canyon. That made me laugh out loud.

By this point in the trip, with only two days left, the natives were getting restless.  Whenever we “missed” a species, there was increased grumbling from the five men in the back of the van. 

It occurred to me that it's out of experiences like this that novels arise.  My idea for a title was “Searching for Self with the Bustards,” referring of course, to the first rare birds I saw in Nizzana and not my travelling companions.  

The idea of the trip was to go to Israel with a birding tour because it would take me to wild, unspoiled places where birds hang out.  That’s true.  We hit plenty of wild, unspoiled places and found great birds.  What I didn’t count on was that we would also spend a lot of time at sewage treatment ponds.

We continued south on Route 90, through the Arava Valley along the border with Jordan.  We stopped in the middle of a wilderness area, in clear sight of Jordanian border guard on the far side of two sets of razor wire.  Bernard made the observation that “it would be good to be a fence maker here.”  

I love to interact with wild birds, if only for a moment:  where the bird acknowledges my existence, and I acknowledge his – it always seems a small miracle to me.  Pishing is sometimes helpful for this...and no, it’s not something vulgar. 

I never got the hang of Israeli road signs; they seemed to announce that you had arrived in a place, when you hadn’t.