c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. Visit his Web site at http://www.onajourney.org.)

(UNDATED) Now that my wife and I have unpacked treasures from our parents’ houses, it will take a guided tour to understand our home.

That tight-lipped woman in the oval painting, for example, is an ancestor named Mary who came down the Ohio River on a flatboat and stopped at New Albany, Ind., where in 1820 her husband established the town’s first shipbuilding company.

That watercolor shows “The Baltic,” a side-wheeler built by his company and captained by their son, winning a riverboat race from New Orleans to Louisville in 1859.

That large writing table is made from a 2-inch-thick siding board from a Colonial-era farm in New Hampshire. My wife’s parents used it to edit their diocesan newspaper, which is how I met their daughter.

That Windsor chair came from my grandmother’s house. The desk behind it was built by my father and used by my mother to keep the books of his business.

That print was a farewell gift from clergy colleagues in St. Louis, that watercolor a thank you for helping a mission church in North Carolina, that photograph of a Montana hillside a thank you from a friend in Charlotte, that photograph a thank you from a family whose 21-year-old daughter I buried.

That is just one room and a superficial view of it. If anyone had patience for an in-depth tour, I could tell how the oval painting reminds me of a happy childhood, how I still miss Indiana’s cornfields and rivers, how I wonder whether I am giving comparable happiness and roots to my children, and how the two desks speak of life’s restless churning.

I suspect we all could give such guided tours. And we would be delighted to do so. We would thrill at having someone go room to room with us. We would start in the past, of course, because our treasures tend to point backward. But if anyone cared to listen, we could bring it to the present, and talk about how life seems to us today, and what we think about the future, and the emotional journey we are on.

If someone listened deeply and could let us fumble through defenses and fragments, we could talk about our faith, as well, and our spiritual journeys _ not those clever two-minute stories we tell at conferences or interviews, when some earnest trainer leads us through a brief exercise, but the real story, the deep story, the story that connects the dots, the sorrows and joys, the people who are gone and the uncertainty their passing stirs, the middle-of-the-night prayers we have offered to God, whatever we think about the condition of our home church and denomination, and what we hope lies ahead in the arms of God.

We could talk about the sacrament of marriage _ not our taste of the $70 billion-a-year wedding industry, not the latest culture war over who sets societal norms, but what it means to be in a partnership, and how giving one’s life away may be our holiest work.

We could talk about funerals _ not the planning of services in league with clergy who don’t know us well, but the moment of following a casket down the aisle and realizing that it is all up to God now.

We could talk about the Bible _ not the relentless competition between righteous camps, a riverboat race that never reaches Louisville, but holding the leather-bound book, allowing its words to drench our dryness.

We could talk about receiving a mass mailing from bishop, pastor or stewardship committee, and feeling saddened, maybe insulted, that a stranger could think a few impersonal words would serve us.

We could talk about worship and how a hymn or feeling sometimes cuts through the 60-minute treadmill and suddenly we know our need of God.

Such a spiritual tour could happen, if someone came into our lives with enough patience, curiosity and self-emptying to give us room for figuring it out. Who would such a person be? A Parthian, perhaps, a pilgrim from Cappadocia, a hungry friend whose life is in turmoil, a child at a moment of openness, or a stranger who has run out of answers.

DEA/PH END EHRICH