“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”– Mathew 6:21
When I was earning an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska , Anchorage our first get-know-you assignment was to write about the place you loved most in all the world. The place you want to return to. The place that when you are having trouble sleeping you can go to and find peace. The place where you wake up and feel joy. (Or at least most of the time.) Mine was easy. My own backyard. Home. Family and dogs. Now I have two homes, although they aren’t far apart and in the same general area—Southeast, Alaska. Which means that when I hear this Gospel, I’m happy because I get it. (I don’t always.) I know where my treasure is. I don’t know if knowing this matters to God, if he or she keeps score of my understanding of the way things work, but I believe for certain that there is a great love that created this land, and my family, and dogs and magpies and bears, and salmon and mountains and rivers and the grandchildren’s red hair and curly hair and straight hair, and that has a lot to do with babies laughing and when teenagers smile. That is where love is, and where love is God is also.
Yesterday when the wind was still gale force, but the temperature rose to 23 degrees (yes I’m counting each one) I was able to walk the entire beach with the dogs. My timing was off, so I missed the regular ladies and dogs group. But it was nice to be alone, to hear my boots on the frozen pebbles, feel the wind on the bridge of my nose between the hat and scarf, the gray light even looked beautiful. I hummed in the bleak midwinter, but honestly, felt anything but bleak. My treasure is this.
Nancy Lord was one of my teachers at UAA and she has written many books. My favorite is Fish Camp: Life on an Alaskan Shore. It’s about the place where she and her partner Ken ( the former mayor of Homer) fished in Cook Inlet.
Here is an excerpt that I hope will make you smile—especially if you know Ken, and if you don’t, then imagine the most enthusiastic storyteller you do know— (You can hear me read it, and all the advent blogs at Heather Lende on Substack. I can’t do that here– and I can’t do Ken justice.)
