Yes, they had been humbled. Who knew where the next meal would come from on many of those days? Yet they were fed. They did not die in the emptyness of the desert, quite the contrary, they grew into a fuller and deeper grasp of life. God broke open their old selves, their old way of being in the world, and invited them to leave the husks behind. God did not offer them abundance and security in the desert instead God offered the possibility of intimate dependence-a chance to know what it felt like to be deeply connected. Then God assured them that this link could remain open as long as they chose to stay on the line."Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you," Moses said.

We tell stories so that we might enjoy the persistance of memory. We garner clues about God's whereabouts in our life and times from the tales of our spiritual ancestors. There is wisdom for our time in the story from the desert. We have enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity. But our feet have trod through wilderness these past forty days or so- it is a desert of dust, asphalt and rubble rather than sand. Ground zero humbled a nation every bit as thoroughly as forty years in the desert. Our illusions of invunerablity are gone. We have been touched by the real possibility of murder and dying unprepared. Our lives are in the hands of God.

We hunger for answers like the Isrealites hungered for bread. They got Manna - it wasn't what they asked for, but it fed them. We want answers but instead we are being fed by deeper questions than we have been willing to ask ourselves for a long time.

It seems that the more that has been stripped away, the more God has been revealed. The evidence is in our conversations. God is given mention in the news. Politicians have prayed in the streets. We do not live by bread alone. We need the word of the Lord now as desperately as did the Isrealites in the desert.

Perhaps we are remembering who we really are. Perhaps we are awakening. We have been broken open and made aware of our fragility and dependence. God in his curious wisdom often chooses to pour himself into cracked vessels. When who we have been is broken open, there is room for who, with God's help, we might become.

We often only find our true selves when we have, for a time, been lost. Catherine Rod, the archivist at Grinnell College recently rediscovered a modern tale that helps illuminate this conundrum. The author of the tale wrote:

"Sometime in the dark hours of an early morning in November 1913, 1 awoke to the realization that l was on a train, without the least understanding as to where I was going, what I was there for, or who I was."

For most of us, this would have been a terrifying experience. For Cecil Fairfield Lavell it was indeed bewildering, but it also presented him with an opportunity to discover himself anew, unencum-bered by his past. When he searched his pockets he found a little money and some letters that gave his name and occupation-assistant professor at Teachers' College, Columbia University. He could remem-ber nothing of that life, nor did he wish to return to it until his memory was whole.

Lavell left the train at Toledo, Ohio, and began walking west, determined to survive by his wits. "If I could take the whole matter as an adventure, as an experiment in labor and life, then, when my normal self should be restored, I could come back perhaps a little wiser than before." He earned his keep as a casual farm hand, but found "to my regret I had to recognize that farming was to me an unprobed mystery… even hitching up a team seemed a performance as intricate as a problem in higher mathematics."

By mid-December, Lavell had reached Colorado Springs, where he was to spend the next two years. He first cleared ice and frozen mud from the rails of a streetcar line and then loaded and unloaded railroad ties. When that work ended, he headed to Lake George to work as an ice-cutter. It was hard physical labor, the kind of work for which Lavell was ill-suited.

"Lamentable it may be, but true it certainly is, that a mere college professor-perhaps any college-bred and professional man-is likely to be the most helpless of mortals outside his own field." He did, however, develop a deep respect for his fellow laborers, who were "without exception generous and good-natured; they willingly showed me the tricks of the work, helped me when I was faced with something that I could not quite handle, showed no impatience or snobbishness in their obvious superiority."

Once spring came, Lavell moved on to Manitou, where he performed a number of odd jobs at a sanatorium and did yard work in exchange for rent of a small cottage. For a few weeks, he found employment with Romaine Fielding, who was filming for the Lubin Moving Picture Company. Lavell even tried prospecting in hopes of making enough money to improve his hand-to-mouth existence.

He discovered many things about himself, including his ability to survive with only the most basic of necessities and the great pleasure that small things could provide: music, books, the beauty of the outdoors, and the company of his fellow workers. "Never again would I be able to look upon a laborer as other than a man and a brother."

While his life at this time was far removed from academia, Lavell found himself drawn to the world of ideas. He borrowed books from the nearby Colorado Springs Public Library and thus was able to "pick up all the main threads of my intellectual life." Once he even looked up his name in the library's copy of Who's Who and read "with mingled feelings" the basic facts of his former life.

It was in March 1916 that Lavell's memory began to clear. He returned east and once again resumed his life as a professor of history, yet he did not forget the lessons he learned on his two-year odyssey. The wisdom he had gained from his unique experience was incorporated into his teaching and into his life.

A different person might well have lamented that three years of his life had been lost. Lavell's vocation was to be a history professor. Moving railroad ties doesn't seem to have any connection to Lavell's choosen path. But Lavell was a better human being for the time he spent wandering. Lavell discovered the value of others in a way he might never had choosen if he had been in his right mind and his regular routine.

We have been shifted out of life as we knew it. We have been shocked into generousity by the impact of airplanes. The sound of falling buildings distracted us and we forgot to be as self-absorbed as we often are.

The events of September eleventh have stripped away the veneer of life as it was. We are able to consider afresh who we will be and how we should act in the world. Now we are open in ways that we have not been for years. ."Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you," Moses said.

The commandments God gave were gifts - the secret of how to be fully human, how to live in a society with appropriate boundaries and acknowledged connections. We are interdependent. We need to acknowledge that we need each other, and God, if we would lead lives that mean anything. And if we are connected to neighbors and strangers we bear responsibility for them.

We have a thousand things to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving day. But not everybody does. September Eleventh has made us remember that for the moment.

But will we slow our movement until generous motions devolve into mere words? Will we be like those people in the Letter of James who saw themselves for a moment in the mirror but then moved on and forgot who they really were? To remember who you are is a powerful experience full of possibility. We are not Moses, or ancient Isrealites, or even Cecil Fairfield Lavell, but we are with them, children of God.

We are surrounded with the invitation to wake up. We may not be far from the promised land but it will not be as we have imagined. For it is God's good pleasure to give us a kingdom of his making, not a pale reflection of the devices and desires of our own hearts.

Is the world today safe? No, and neither was the sand of the desert or the ice pack on Lavell's lake. God does not require ideal conditions in order to do his work. And neither do we. The fear of falling buildings or plummeting markets can stop us in our tracks. But why should they? There are widows and orphans and people in distress, every day in our country. There is ministry to be done in God's name right here and we are all being called into this work.

But how can we do this in the face of ongoing threats, in a troubled economy, in the midst of our own uncertainty about the future? Let us not worry about what we cannot control. Let us make godly use of that which we can. God knows what we truly need. Let us move forward together with all the faith we can muster. Let us focus on the certainty of God's call and not the uncertainty of lesser things.

Jesus turned to the crowd and said: Do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?" or "What will we drink?"or "What will we wear?" For it is the Gentiles who strive for these things; and indeed your heavenly father knows that you need these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Thanks be to God.