Dear Fellow Hikers,
Today we begin our second Life Hike Letters Season* with our 14th Life Hike Letter (S2/L14). Reaching this milepost, I want to let you know how grateful I am that you’re joining us on this journey. As the saying goes… So far, so good! At this point, the only visible difference between Season One (Winter) and Season Two (Spring) is that I changed my Substack photo* from my winter weather backdrop, to a springtime look.
As I promised, this look back at Season One will be quick. If you are interested in reviewing the content, flow, style, format, etc, of our first 13 letters, you can find them on our website. I am pleased with how those letters have turned out. My writing process, my writing hike, is often a bit of a muddy slog. I am very grateful for the people who have helped me in the writing, editing, and publishing of these letters. But what pleases me most is the fact that we have fulfilled our commitment to consistently show up in your inboxes every Friday morning. That is the foundation of this ministry of presence… persistently showing up…
“There are a lot of things that I could say about Dan and his journey to ordination. But the one thing I really want to I say is that… He certainly is persistent” ELCA, Mpls Area Synod, Bishop Craig Johnson, Dan Carlson’s Ordination, August 15, 2010.
That’s how I made it through my eight-year ordination process… also, often a muddy slog… but I was happy that the Bishop acknowledged my efforts. I’m not so sure it was compliment, but I certainly was pleased!
As we look ahead to Season Two, my intentions are to stay on the same path, headed in the same direction. But we also have some new ideas for going forward. For starters, I’m going to relook at the content of Season One. I’d like to do some work that would bring these individual ideas together, creating a collective identity of our Life Hike beliefs and practices. Hopefully the results will provide readers with some resources that could benefit their personal Life Hike faith journeys.
I’d also like to spend Season Two exploring some new topics of conversation. For example, I’ve always wanted to share some of my perspectives on the topic of The Separation of Church and State. I believe that administration of those two institutions definitely needs to be separate. However, to focus on maintaining the divide between these two critical “Society Influencers” can be very dangerous. Even though a level of separation is very important, we must focus on how Church and State can connect and work together to benefit the overall health of our communities. I would also suggest that we look at adding Business institutions to this cooperative mix. Religion, Government and Economics… God, Politics and Money… now there’s a conversation ice-breaker for your next party!
Some of the other topics I’d like to spend some time with include: Cultural Christians / Believer Christians… Seeking A Common Faith Tradition… What Is Church?… Ministering To The Nones (Religious Affiliations: “None”)… People: Good, Bad, Safe, Dangerous?… I’d also like to do some Book and Media Resource Reviews. If anyone has any additional ideas, I’d love your input! That’s it for now, thanks again for reading!
With Care and Gratitude, Dan
Postscript…
Re: *Life Hike Letters Seasons… You’ve probably figured this out, but I’m using a Season#/Episode# (in our case Season#/Letter#) model to label and organize our letters. Since we actually made it to a second season, I figured it was time to share some detail on how I define our seasons. Christianity has a Liturgical Year with a variety of seasons (such as Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, etc…) Since I’m working to figure out what type of ministry labels fit our Life Hike ministry initiative, I felt the more common terminology of our natural/nature seasons would be a better fit for us. So we will have four seasons, three months each, Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall.
Re: *Substack Photo… This is the round photo of the Substack Author that pops up here and there, often in the upper right hand side of some of the substack pages/documents.
Winter Weather backdrop: Cold weather clothes and snowy overlook of the St. Louis River on a trail in Jay Cooke State Park.
A Springtime look: Me sporting my official 2024 Twins Spring Training Hat, with a backdrop of “almost” budding trees in the woods behind our house.
Next Up: “Dan’s Elderhood Trail Travels…” (Friday 03/14/25, S1/L15)