Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.
Richard Gillard, ELW 659
Beloved of God,
Holden Lake, a 5.5 mile hike from the Village
The two weeks I experienced at Holden Village in August were well spent. From the get-go they were about learning, restoration, and relationships. I’m always struck by the fact that when I go there I can count crossing paths with folks whom I didn’t expect to see. On my first evening, before I put head to pillow, I made this list of connections: Kris—a friend who was part of the winter community with me in 1991; Jeff—a musician friend from Portland; Cindy—the spouse of a colleague I met when I started ministry in 1986; Joan—a now retired musician who our family had connected with on a previous Holden trip; Paul, a Seattle colleague who had visited Peace as a Pass the Hat speaker; Paul and Jana—a couple from Wisconsin who are friends with my brother Mark and his wife Miriam. And that was just on day one! When I returned later in the month with the whole family, there was a whole new set of people with significant connections waiting to be discovered. What a gift!
With Paul and Jana Oman at Holden with one of Paul’s parable paintings.
One of the most significant connections was with Paul and Jana Oman. Paul, an ELCA pastor and artist, left parish ministry in 2011 and has developed a unique ministry of painting scenes from the Bible live before congregations while at the same time he teaches about the subject. It’s called Drawn to the Word. As one of the presenters that week, Paul worked on large canvasses to paint several parables from Luke’s gospel while those of us who were present sat slack jawed as a new world of the text opened up before our eyes. But it was Paul’s wife Jana with whom I first made a connection. We were in the snack bar line waiting our turn for a Holden Scoop of ice cream when Jana heard my introduce myself to another person. Afterward she asked me if I was related to Mark Kindem. “Yes,” I told her, “Mark is one of my brothers.” Jana went on to tell me how she and Paul had come to know Mark and his wife Miriam because of their connection to Mt Carmel, a family camp and retreat center in Western Minnesota. Fun coincidence. But it went deeper…
Some of you will recall that Mark, who is both a pastor and a pilot, was flying alone after midnight on April 29, 2024, only 10 minutes from his Bemidji home, when the engine suddenly stopped. After trying standard procedures to get the plane started again, Mark realized he’d have to put it on the ground without power—a crash landing. But before panic could take hold of him, he felt a presence surrounding him like a blanket, and a preternatural calm took over. He looked left out the plane’s window and there, through a break in the clouds, were the lights of the town of Clearbrook. He knew that town. It was there, he decided, he would go. Mark doesn’t remember anything from that point on; doesn’t remember how he executed a perfect turn to line himself up to his new target; doesn’t remember how his landing gear caromed off the top of an industrial warehouse on the edge of town and then threaded its way below the adjacent powerlines and onto the highway; doesn’t remember crashing into the retaining wall or being life flighted to Fargo.
Paul Oman painting of Mark Kindem’s plane, guided by Divine light.
Last summer at our family reunion Mark told the story of the crash. And when he was done, he lifted up a painting that had been commissioned by his family unbeknownst to Mark. The painting depicts that very moment when, miraculously, the plane skipped over the warehouse and under the powerlines, threading the needle and saving Mark’s life. The artist of that painting, I now realized as I stood in the snack bar line, was Jana’s husband Paul. My times at Holden served as a joyful and visceral reminder of how relationships are at the heart of our lives of faith! The Spirit of Christ is ever drawing us closer to God and to one another.
In this September Peace Notes you’ll find numerous opportunities for engaging with folks within and beyond our community, thus building up the body of Christ. What gifts God brings to our lives! What a joy to know and be known; to love and be loved! With you on the Way, Pastor Erik
We are a
What does this mean?
