Twenty-One Pilgrimages

Not quite Dan's destinations, but not far off...

Since my birthday is on Halloween, I was recently asked what was my most memorable birthday celebration. Whew! I couldn't do it right off. Maybe never? That caused me to think of where I lived on Halloween which resulted in this reflection. My first three years were spent in an apartment in Chicago.The next fourteen were in Grand Rapids, MI and I do remember at times the awkward moments of celebrating my birthday and welcoming costumed visitors. That ended in Buffalo, MN where I celebrated one birthday which I don't remember except that the WWII draft was closing in.

My home then was in San Diego and Oakland, CA and on an APA 38 in the Pacific. A couple of weeks after my discharge from the Navy I went to North Park Junior College where I lived in a boarding house and two homes in Chicago before there was an opening in the dormitory.

After two years I attended the U of Minnesota where I lived in a rooming house for two years for $11.50 per month, a paltry sum even in the late 1940's. Upon graduation, I went to Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN where I lived on the second floor of the main building where I mistakenly welcomed another student only to discover that he was a professor. My third year of seminary was back in Chicago where I lived in a two story house with several other students. Bored yet?

After graduation, I took a church in Traverse City, MI, lived for a few weeks in an unfinished house on the beautiful Grand Traverse Bay. Then moved further North on the Bay to a one-room log cabin where the landlord installed a bathroom saving me many steps in the snow.
From there I went to Los Angeles where I was an assistant pastor and a grad student at USC. I was offered a position at Azusa Pacific College in '59. By then I had married and we lived three months in an LA apartment and the summer in a lovely mountain cabin at our church Bible Camp before spending three years in West Covina in a cute two-bedroom home.

Back to North Park in Chicago in '62 where we lived two years in Burgh Hall as resident counselor, a mandatory dormitory for incoming freshmen. Then two more years in a home owned by the college and off to Minneapolis, MN where we lived in a church owned fourplex and then bought a home nearby in Edina.

Then it was off to Berkeley, CA overlooking the San Francisco Bay and city, to a home some church members felt was too pricey for a man-of-the-cloth. The phone rang four years later and the four of us left for Stockholm, Sweden working with internationals and after three years returned to my wife's home town, Muskegon, MI where I became an interim pastor. We lived in the parsonage for two years and in our own home for three more. Barb and I then journeyed to Mexico City in a similar position as in Sweden for two years living in a home owned by the mission.

We returned to the States, rotated for awhile with relatives until I took another interim position as chaplain in the Northbrook Retirement Center near Chicago. We lived alongside the senior residents in a furnished apartment A few months later we moved for the third time to CA and lived for a few months in a home owned by the previous chaplain, and then into two different apartments on different sides of a stream or fourteen years in Santa Barbara. Retirement lured us to move to the Phoenix, AZ desert for six years. And then, in a rather futile attempt to move closer to our children, we ended up in Barbara's home town of Muskegon near her siblings for over ten years in a charming condo.

We plan to move shortly into Covenant Village of the Great Lakes, a Continuing Care Retirement Center in Grand Rapids, MI. I am returning close to my childhood home after seventy years. Perhaps now you may understand why I have difficulty identifying my favorite Halloween Birthday. Most likely, our next move will complete twenty-one captivating pilgrimages.