DAYS 131-133 - Zanesville & Cambridge, OH - 2549 miles from home

I just now received a text from Sue - the church administrator at Cambridge Presbyterian. She wanted me to know that she'd left us some snacks and a container of her homemade veggie soup: food waiting for us after a chilly day of hiking. This in addition to the snacks and drinks already piled high for us in the Church kitchen - and the dinner that we'll be receiving later today. It doesn't get old, dear friends - this outpouring of love and nourishment!

Cambridge Presby was flattened by a tornado back in 2012 - but the community rebuilt, determined to create the kind of refuge and emergency shelter that the next disaster might require. The Church has showers, washer and dryer, a huge and well-stocked kitchen, cots, spacious and spotless classrooms and offices. Pastor Jeff, Sue, Marie, trustees Shane and Mark (and others we'll meet later tonight) - have welcomed us with unhesitating warmth and kindness. Dang! What IS this outpouring? No, it does not get old. If anything, the generosity tenderizes me more and more - so long as I remember not to take this personally.

Does that make sense? This love isn't about me, it isn't "mine" - this nourishment isn't something I deserve or earned. This, my friends, is what they call grace.

Grace happens - to turn a well-worn phrase on its head. And I think it happens for some of the same reasons that Cambridge Presby got rebuilt.

Grace happens because we've all been flattened - one time or another. We've all been laid low - and we all worry that there will be more onslaughts, more tornados and derechos and hurricanes and wildfires and pandemics etc etc... not to mention the onslaughts that we bring upon ourselves or wreak upon our neighbors. We rebuild - bigger and better, to outlast the next storm. But that rebuilding - that's not grace. That's just the defense and the bulwark.

Grace is what happens because the flattened heart has no defense. Grace happens because in these tender and open spaces, we begin to realize just how strong our longing is. Just how deeply we long to connect.

The other day I spent the morning with Mars - a member of the Mud Lotus Sangha whom I'd met on Saturday. Mars walked six miles with me. The morning was frosty and sparkling, and we tromped along route 40, enjoying an exceptionally wide shoulder and an equally expansive conversation. Mars is only 30, but has a theologian's heart and an anthropologist's mind. They spent their young adulthood receiving a strict Calvinist religious education as part of a Reformed Presbyterian congregation. After high school, Mars wanted to dedicate their life to ending poverty - but an internship in Uganda was deeply disillusioning. The realities of corrupt and/or ineffective humanitarian programming broke their heart. At the same time, exposure to other cultures and ways of thinking opened their eyes. Meanwhile, the chaos of American politics left them without confidence in our national institutions. The world Mars had known all their life was utterly and completely flattened.

In the language I've been using, Mars was profoundly "tenderized." And so here they were, walking alongside me on a spakling morning, fully engaged in the world - curious and alert, full of laughs and words and thoughts and feelings - carving their own sense of the sacred, their own pathways toward meaning. Full of wonder. "I don't wish that kind of crisis on anyone," says Mars, referring to the utter disillusionment they endured, the intensity of their break with the past and the ensuing heartache that followed. And yet, they suggested, maybe that's what we all need: to question what's been so tightly held, and what's been holding us so tightly - so that we can, at last, be free and tender.

Here's what I'm thinking now - after 133 days on the open road:

We've all been flayed, flattened and leveled enough in our lives to know just how good it is - how critical it is - to connect.

People don't want to be divided. People want to share.

Sue from Cambridge Presby texted just now, once again: "Also, we took other treats that were in upstairs fridge & moved them down. Please help yourself!!!"

We are complete beings of grace.

Sue White, Cambridge Presbyterian Church. Cambridge, OH.

Pastor Jeff Bergeson, Cambridge Presbyterian Church. Cambridge, OH.

Mars joining me on the shoulder of Route 40.

A sparkling morning (walking with Mars on Route 40), near the aptly named Hopewell, OH.

Bob successfully navigating his morning walk: Head toward the sun! Muskingum River, Lock #10 in the background, Zanesville, OH.

Zanesville was founded in 1801 at the confluence of the Muskingum and Licking Rivers.

Zanesville became known as a manufacturing and textile town - but was also an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Nelson T. Gant was born a slave, released into freedom "by the provisions of his master's will" in 1845. He crossed the Ohio river and eventually made Zanesville his home, ultimately buying this land and making a living as a farmer. Oral legend has it that he often hid slaves in his vegetable wagon. (Novelist Zane Grey is a descendant of Ebenezer Zane, founder of the city.)

Zanesville, OH.

Brad Null, outside his gym - bonafide trail angel for unlocking the facility to let a needy pilgrim use the restroom! New Concord, OH.

New Concord, OH.

The Muskingum River flows into the Ohio, about 70 miles away. The Great Flood of 1913 prompted floodwalls like the one. Cambridge, OH. As I strolled by, a handful of high schoolers walked ahead of me, down along the floodwall: a good deserted place to do the sorts of things high schoolers are wont to do.... (you can see them off in the distant right)

Downtown Cambridge, OH.

Found object. Cambridge, OH.

Part of Cambridge's memorable annual display, outside the County Courthouse: "Dickens Victorian Village." Cambridge, OH.

Members of Muskingum University Cross Country team. By the Old Guernsey Trail, Cambridge, OH.