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My mom has terminal cancer. What was originally thought to be isolated has spread in her bones. The doctors suggest that optimally, she could live a few more years.

A few months prior the diagnosis, Deb and I were talking during a walk together about the future. We’ve been spared, comparatively, a lot of human suffering. We’ve witnessed loss in other families, neighbors, and friends. Yet, for a large family, at least on my side, with sprawling uncles, aunts, and cousins to fill two barns, most of my adult life has been spared the work of death and loss.

If I’m honest, I began to process my mom’s potential departure from this life when she told me last summer that the doctors found a lump. It took so long for the dreaded Canadian healthcare system to get her in for scans. Too long. My mom, I could tell, wasn’t itching to really know the truth, choosing to believe it would just all be dealt with by the professionals. Something inside me, however, began hurting, and praying for her.. and for my own soul that was gearing up for the possibility.

I’ve always been close to my mom. All of us four siblings have cherished her as our biggest cheerleader. She’s always been in our corner, believing in us, even if she was shaking her head. I’m not blogging a eulogy today, but I am trying to embrace the journey of grief. We will all lose loved ones. Even our Jesus wept and grieved over the loss of friends. I remember the first time I heard the phrase, “Feel your feelings.” I found it odd, even offensive at first. How could faith stoop to such a low estate as our own feelings?

Today, however, my faith is becoming content with pain. My faith is growing in ways I wouldn’t have ever believed in the past, when it simply denied my circumstance and clung to outcomes out of fear. Faith in the resurrection love of Jesus is comforting in the valley, the dining table is set in dark places. I will not fear.

I’m grateful that my mom is a believer, and this journey for her will undoubtedly be the most treasured one of all as she lives into the moments that we so easily take for granted. I pray our whole family learns to love more authentically and hurt the way we should now, so that we can be truly liberated in the freedom that removes death’s sting. To die before we die. To let go before we’re forced to surrender. This is the stuff of formation, and I choose grief, by faith, knowing I am truly comforted when my heart is truly broken.

Praying for wisdom for our family in Romania, to value her remaining time, plan the way we should with trips to Canada, and for the Lord’s mercy to overshadow us all. May she be granted many sweet days, months and years. I love you, mom.

Light is a metaphor that Jesus used for both himself (Jn 8:12) and those who follow him (Matt 5:14). Our light in this world, comes from the Light of Life.

Over the years, we’ve huddled around the nature of light as a family, naming our Cafe and mission space Lighthouse as we planted a welcoming, culture-shifting space in the center of our Ukrainian village. That was 10 years ago! Back then, the main street was littered with little bars, and an eery sense of despair.

We were ridiculed at first by local bar owners. Never, they said, would a non-alcoholic place survive. Yet, over time, the bars all closed and competing cafes followed our path. A dirty old nightclub remained a place where midnight fights broke out and bad things happened. One day, the club’s owner, a well-educated man, asked me for coffee. “I need to ask you something,” he said, as we sat in the corner of our cafe. “Do you think I should close my club?” A month later, he started a new business selling purified water.

Light isn’t just a message. It’s embodied hope and meaningful influence. Light directs the heart toward a world that should be, and in Christ, can be, “as it is in heaven.” Light isn’t just about instructing souls how to get to heaven, but introducing neighbors to the humanity of God in the suffering Jesus, who hurts with, and for his creation. Light looks beyond the present trials, and sees the resurrected Christ who is coming again. 

Though we long for Christ’s final return. He is, through the Spirit, in a sense, returning already, through us. The kingdom doesn’t fall out of the sky. Jesus says it’s reality is already within each of us. The darker the hour, the stormier the sea, kingdom’s light gathers the attention of the hopeless. A lighthouse was made for the storm, not for sunny days. 

This past month, we’ve been praying about pioneering another Lighthouse missional space in the heart of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. By God’s mercy, we already have close to 80% of the funding to lease out the property and launch! Yet, my heart is burdened for Lighthouse in Ukraine. We are in need of some financial support this year (about $800mo) to pay all our bills, and keep the cafe open. It doesn’t have the weekly ministries like it used to have before the war, but it continues to hold space for neighbors, friends, and provides a space for some gatherings (e.g. Soldier’s wives meeting for trauma care).

Would you pray for this place of light and love? A friend just returned from visiting her family in the town, and said she was shocked at the level of depression, and hopelessness since her last visit a year ago. The seeming unending war with Russia is taking its toll on the emotional, spiritual and mental health of our friends there. We believe this place was made for shining, especially in dark and stormy seas.

Bruce & Deb

For the traveler, the known, worn path is a place of predictability and a sense of safety. Filled with fellow travelers, it’s also a place of distraction and noise. Kierkegaard reminds us that to address the divided heart, the will that is caught wrestling within temporal and eternal realities, the traveler must venture off the common, busy path. There, away from the crowd and temporal noise, the traveler ventures into the solitary forest of contemplation to address inner, eternal longings. “We interrupt our busy lives to put on the quiet of contemplation,” says the Danish philosopher.

When the traveler positions themself away from the crowded highway and bravely departs from the familiar path, a reward is given. The reward, says Kierkegaard, is the “festival garment” of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is impossible without reflection. Reflection, by nature, requires the traveler to stop and stand still for a while. Like a murmuring brook, which flows alongside life’s busy highway, “If you go buried in your thoughts, if you are busy, then you do not notice it all in your passing.” But if the traveler moves into the forest, and pauses awhile, he gives space for the soul to breathe. Then, the murmuring is soon heard, along with many other unspeakable, and invitational sounds.

The eternal, deep longing of the soul arises out of the quiet place, almost introducing itself to the weary traveler.

To venture off the highway then is to pause, to quiet the soul, and allow for the quieting, restorative work of the Spirit. Like rushing past a mirror, Kierkegaard says our busyness serves to mute our eternal moorings. Deceived by the spellbinding nature of the temporal highway, the traveler remains wholly unaware of the deep, potentiality just beneath the surface.

Our perceived paradigm of reality begins to shift as we pause to embrace solitude; we are much more than earthly highway travelers. As Chardin poignantly notes:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Jesus, we read, regularly ventured away from the crowds, off the beaten paths. Though he lived among the crowds, he was often far from them as well. He valued the murmuring brook with its eternal, nourishing effect. For the wearied traveler, the invitation to solitude and reflection restores the soul as our temporal realities attune to our eternal makeup. As we clothe ourselves with the garments of contemplation, may we experience the nourishing living water that restores our souls. Then, we can re-enter the busy highway of life, filled and at peace, beyond even our understanding (Phil 4:7).

So we enter a new year. We are told to look ahead, and yet, to reflect is to look behind, and within. It is said that the youthful traveler hurries past their experiences en route for new adventures ahead. The mature traveler, however, wisely pauses to gather up the experiences, recognizing their value for the road ahead.

What might you need to gather up from this past year?

The pause, to put on our festival garments of reflection, is to see life as a gift, not a race. Life is a gift of formation, growth, and being made whole. As eternal beings, this takes time, intention, and faith. Any fool can get lost in the crowd. It takes a courageous soul to seek rhythms of solitude, daring to live an integrated life along the murmuring brook.

To all my fellow travelers, be encouraged! You are loved. Seek the One who loves you. “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love…” Zephania 3:17. This is the treasure that our souls seek, to be at rest in this life, not only in the next.

Footnotes: Citations taken from Kierkegaard’s “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing,” pages 28-29, originally published in Danish 1847. Translation 2019 AC Beirise.

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Our first Christmas in Romania. Broderic’s family joined us at our house outside the center of Cluj. I’ve blogged very little sincet the onset of the war in Ukraine. Partly because I send out monthly newsletters by email, but also because I’ve been back at Fuller this past year, and heavily reading, and writing in academic mode.

I’ve been reasearching the history of Slavic cultural development from a missiological perspective. I have just completed my ‘literature review’ based on my research topic and variables. Writing academically has required learning in itself, as I learn to survey previous research, and bring the voices of others to the table much more. Even now, as I simply stream my own thoughts on a page, it now feels a bit foreign, like I’m being naughty! To write academically is to detach, as much as possible, your personal feelings, and interact with material in such a way as to search for gaps, opportunities, with the end in view that eventually you will add your findings, and your own unique perspective to the ongoing conversation. There’s a ton of citating, and if you were to read my dissertation so far, it wouldn’t be that engaging unless you really cared about the themes I’m dealing with.

I will, however, carve out some blogs here in the coming year. I really miss it. Entering this next year, year two of four. I had to redo the first year, having already completed 70% of it, but I’m thankful I was able to. My focus, and my professor has been divinely orchestrated, I believe.

So the year is coming to a close. Deb and I are very grateful, to say the least, that the year 2023 is over. It’s possibly the first year we’ve ever journeyed through where we’ve felt like whipped puppies at the end, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Having the year uphended by Brent’s hospitalization in the US, returning for 4 unexpected months, and going through that valley has really shaped us in ways I’m not sure we understand just yet. God has mercifully allowed Brent to stay with us in here Romania since September, and regain his footing, and with family as he titrates off all the meds they put him on. He’s about 70% off them now, and doing really well. We are all still cautious and insist that he takes it one step at a time. He’ll be starting a couple college courses this January, a huge step back to full independence in this coming year.

We’ve been delighted to return to Romania. The girls have been doing well. Claire enjoys hip-hop dancing with other Ukrainians at a club in the center. Abigail loves to read, like her sister, but perhaps reads even more. Noah is in that 16yr old phase, he’s not really wanting to grow up, very creative, and excelling at piano. Clark, he’s 18yrs old this January and in love with a young lady in Texas, daughter of longtime friends. He’s loving ultimate frisbee, and part of my regrets he didn’t have more athletic opportunities before now, he’s really quite natural at whatever sports he attempts.

Tucker, he’s finishing up his first college year, he does it onling in PA while still working 30hrs per week at a FedEx warehouse nearby our PA home where he stays. Bronwyn enjoyed her first year marriage and halfway through her second with Logan.

We’re now looking at a possible downtown project here in Cluj, a 2nd Lighthouse platform. We’re taking the next few weeks to pray about whether this is truly the Spirit’s invitation for us at this time. Part of my feels good about it, but another part feels nervous because I really want to approach my life more carefully, less impusively. I’m attracted to challenges, particularly those that are missiologically, and will challenge comfortable church goers into action and new mental models. I also am trying to discern Broderic & Kristin’s time here in Romania, along with them. Are they here long term? Is this an opportunity for them? As a dad, you want to make space, who wouldn’t want your kids and grandkids near? As a missionary, the life of faith is not for the faint of heart, and without a calling, a strategy in your heart, and a strong team behind you to pray and financially help, things can go sideways.

Deb just finished her first semester at Fuller. She’s enjoyed the challege, and the adult learning alongside others her age. I’ve enjoyed watching her develop new routines, albeit they’ve opened up requirements for the rest of us – she really runs the Crowe ship wherever we are living.. not to mention living in new places makes adaptation even more challenging. But, she feels it’s the Lord, and we hope to make it work.. one semester at a time.

Neither Deb nor I know what is next, really? But who really knows what is next? It’s been two years since we left Ukraine, two full years. As we renegotiate our present and future days in light of the continued war with Russia, there’s not a whole lot that is truly certain in our plans or even vision of what our lives will look like in 5, 10 yrs? The one thing we focus on, is learning to be present, increasingly. No more hiding into work, hiding into writing, or ‘leading’ just to perform some roles. We want to lead by our transformation, by embodying love, sensing the invitaitons of the Spirit to ‘whatever’ .. with ‘whomever’ and ‘wherever’. If we fail in this area of growth, now having lived half a century, what’s the point? If the call to live in Christ, and into our true imago Dei selves goes unexperienced, our message to the world is powerless and otherworldly. We need to make Jesus at home in our lives, it’s where the Spirit longs to dwell.. not in our ideas, plans, possible futures or regretted pasts.

So, welcome 2024. I will blog some more. I’m into Kierkegaard at the moment, and wrestling through some meaty stuff that challenges my soul. He was much more of a non-compromising man of faith than I realized. I have been looking at my podcast equipment here recently and considering firing it back up. We intended to continue it, but life happened.

Items we are praying about:

• Lighthouse Cluj?
• How will we technically stay in Romania past our visas which expire May 2024?
• Selling the big house in Rz, to free up $ to live in Romania (rent is expensive).
• I’d like to teach part time, either locally or online.
• Brent back on his feet, for place/space/job post April 2024.