“What I Did on My Winter Vacation”

Well, it wasn’t exactly a winter vacation.  Two weeks ago, I flew to Arizona for the annual Bethany Fellows Leaders Retreat in Tucson.  Bethany Fellows is a ministry to pastors serving their first churches for which I have been a mentor for 17 years.  It is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in ministry, paying forward to new generations of pastors the support, encouragement, and wisdom that I received 40 years ago from seasoned pastor mentors such as Roy Griggs, Ron Olson, Millie Slack, and others. Every late January/early February, 15 of us meet up at a Catholic Retreat Center at the edge of the Saguaro National Forest northwest of Tucson for a week of rest, fellowship, worship and prayer.   

Each of our daily worship services is led by one of my colleagues. Mid-week, my colleague Melissa St. Clair, Lead Pastor of Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Fort Collins, CO, began our worship by telling the story about Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the brilliant novelist and short story writer who died just shy of his 41st birthday.     

In the fall of 1923, at the age of 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married or had children, was walking in Stieglitz Park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favorite doll.

Kafka offered to help her look for the doll and arranged to meet her the next day at the same spot. Unable to find the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter ‘written’ by the doll that read:

“Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world.

I will write you of my adventures.”

This was the beginning of many letters. When he and the little girl met he read her from these carefully composed letters the imagined adventures of the beloved doll. For three weeks Frank focused exclusively on the doll’s letters and handed them on to the girl every day. The little girl was comforted.   

When the meetings came to an end, Kafka presented her with a doll. She looked different from the original doll, but an attached letter explained:

“My travels changed me.”

The girl kissed the new doll and happily brought her home.

Kafka died a year later.

Years after Kafka’s death, the girl, now a grown woman, found a small piece of paper – a letter –  stuffed into an unnoticed crevice in the replacement doll. In the small letter signed by Kafka, it said:  

“Everything you love, you will eventually lose,

but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

I have no recollection whatsoever of what followed that story in our worship that day.  All

I know is it was still on my mind the last night of our retreat when the 15 of us went out for dinner together at a nice Italian restaurant.  We gathered around a long table, with me at the head, my longtime friend and colleague, Bethany Fellows Executive Director Kim Ryan to my left, retired BF Executive Director and mentor Don Schutt to my right, and the other leaders sitting across from each other down the length of the table. 

White linen tablecloths. Candles. Waiters in black pants, white shirts, black vests and black bowties.     

The waiter poured us glasses of red wine and set fresh-baked bread on the table.

Wine. Bread. Friends in Christ at table. 

Don, my dear friend and mentor, got my attention, pointed his finger down the length of the table at which we sat and said to me,

“This table stretches all the way back to the Last Supper.” 

I did other things on my winter vacation, but those two stayed with me, so I share them with you.