Adventures of a City Boy Turned Country Pastor

The new visitor said: You know the little bridge on the Stockholm Road, just past the turn-off to Stottler’s house? Our laneway is the first left after that bridge. Those were about the clearest instructions I’d ever heard since coming to northern Maine where a good number of roads are un-marked or have multiple names, and if there is a nickname for the road, no one uses the road’s real name. But these instructions were crystal clear. I’d have no trouble making a follow up visit at the home of these new visitors to our church.

So on a cold bright Wednesday winter morning I headed off to do my pastoral duty. Stockholm Road. Over the little bridge. First left. Not strange at all that I couldn’t see the house from the road. Newcomers to northern Maine loved these little run-down houses hidden back in the woods. The running joke was that newcomers to the Maine Woods were probably either actual outlaws or in the witness protection program. So I pulled into the first laneway on the left after the bridge. Then my thought process went something like: “This is a pretty laneway! They haven’t plowed in a while. This isn’t a road!” And I sank up to my axels about 50 feet down a snowmobile trail.

I temporarily gave up on finding the hidden home of our new visitors. I hiked to a house of a guy I knew who had a pickup truck and a long cable, and it ended up taking two pickup trucks choo-choo trained together to tug my car off the snowmobile trail. And since it was Wednesday, and this was a country Baptist church, of course I gathered that evening with the faithful of First Baptist Church of New Sweden. And of course there was no hiding what I had done that morning. If anyone knew, everyone would end up knowing. So I shared the story at Wednesday prayer meeting. And a good time was had by all.

Hopes and Fears

With forgotten force
Little boy feelings return
Each December
As the year looks to turn
Hopes resurface
Forgotten dreams recur
To play the imagination
Hoping to be hoped again
But hopes must be met
With courage & joy—
A lot to ask a little boy.
While hopes return
Fears never went
And grow best in the cold
Fears – those bullies bold
Must be met
With courage & joy—
A lot to ask a little boy.
December’s turn of years
All these hopes and fears
Erupt in a little boy
Who seeks courage & joy
In cloth
In straw
In a little town
Where the hopes
And the fears
Of years and years
Are met.