Find Your Compass

Recently, I was working in Eugene, Oregon, and on my day off, I did what I love to do whenever I'm in a new place: take in the natural beauty around me. I decided to drive the McKenzie Pass Highway, which follows the old wagon trail road, up to the Dee Wright Observatory. The tight, steep curves made me grateful for pavement. More than a dozen switchbacks later, I arrived at the top and was completely alone.

I climbed the small walkway to the observatory, which the Civilian Conservation Corps built from the surrounding lava rock nearly 90 years ago. At the top, I found the compass. It wasn't a traditional N-S-E-W compass, but one that showed where all the peaks were within the 360-degree vista.

As the brisk wind whipped through my jacket, I descended to the level below, where I found an enclosed viewing area. Each window in this space isolated the mountains so that you could focus on one peak at a time.

Standing in that stone room, I thought: what if we narrowed our gaze to see what God needs us to see, without distraction?

That day, it was the mountains. I wonder, in your moments of stillness, where does your compass lead you?

Perhaps the altar is that place, where each week we follow our spiritual compass to the same "mountain peak." A place where the lava of our lives is transformed, inviting us to re-calibrate and focus on where we go next… together.

Someone built that place long before I arrived and much like the Civilian Conservation Corps, we are the stewards of St. Barnabas, tending this place together with our time, our gifts, and our presence, so that when someone arrives alone and searching, the view is waiting for them.