Shortly after I was elected bishop, I learned that a first-call pastor had received and accepted a call to Redeemer Lutheran Boise (which has a shared ministry agreement with Grace Lutheran, Horseshoe Bend). It was time to start planning Mariah Mills ordination in Cleveland. What I did not know but soon learned was that, because of our full-communion agreement with the Episcopalians, I cannot preside alone at someone’s ordination between my start date and installation. After a bit of a scramble, Bishop Stacie Fidlar (in the grey alb) from the Northern Illinois Synod volunteered to be the bishop of record. I was still able to participate in the service. It was such a joy to hear mentors and parishioners talk about Mariah and sing her praises. After the service I asked Rev. Dr. Rachel Wrenn (Mariah’s Old Testament professor at Trinity Seminary in Columbus and the preacher at the ordination) if she was doing something at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp later this year; I thought I recognized her from a flyer on a table when I was at Flathead in June. Yes, she is. And that launched us into a conversation about outdoor ministries, parishes we’d served, and later her time at Emory and her dissertation.

Truth be told, I have wanted to go to Cleveland to visit two friends for a long time. Deb Yandala and I met when we were on Margie Fiedler’s 2006 ELCA Youth Gathering Fiesta Planning Team, back when I was in the first years of my first call in Iowa. My dad had been a mentor to Deb and I have stayed in touch with Deb and her husband Sherm Bishop these many years. Sherm died, too young, in April 2022, 14 months after my dad died. Karen and I made up half of our Jesuit Volunteer Corps community in Syracuse, NY the year after we both graduated from college. She went on to get her MSW from Case Western and is coming up on her 20 year anniversary at The Cleveland Clinic. I do not think we had been together since a five-year JVC reunion in San Francisco. I loved walking around Lakewood with Karen after the ordination. After serving for several years on Nampa’s Building and Design Review Committee, serving on the Leap Housing board, watching Boise update its zoning code, and reading two books about zoning, it was beautiful to see the walkability of her city. Deb lives in Battery Park which also has neighborhoods and some real walkability, including a route right down to a Lake Erie beach.