Guest Blog by Pastor Tim Christensen

A perfect Saturday afternoon in mid-October -- everyone assuring me "it's never like this at this time of year" (living in Butte, Montana we find this a little hard to believe) -- Mark first asked if we wanted to go for a walk at the Monks Gate Winery in Lafayette, Oregon, and then asked if I wanted to write a guest blog.  Foolish, foolish man.  It was an instantaneous 'YES!' on both counts.  See, I grew up in Sonoma County, California in the 1960's, and Yamhill County brings tears to my eyes because its old barns, open fields, and oak hillsides remind me of my childhood in Cotati, but this county also reminds me that someplace so beautiful still exists when the stomping grounds of my youth seem gone forever.  Bless you, Yamhill County.

Monks Abbey takes its name from the hillside it shares with a Trappist Monastery so after we walked up through the vines we made our way over to a closed gate with a beautiful sandstone statue.  Since the gate was only locked with an old-style hasp, we opened it and walked over to examine the hundreds of dead trees that had once been a productive orchard.  We took a guess that the trees had been plums, and only moments later we noticed a monk quickly making his way up the hill toward us with a prayer book under his arm.  Mark had already made his way back to the gate (probably thinking about that whole "trespassing" part of the Lord's Prayer) so I figured I'd stand in the fire and get scolded for crossing over the line.  But Bother Dick couldn't have been any more gracious as he described why the trees had died, what was planned for the orchard's grounds, and casually mentioning that he was only on his way up to his favorite reading spot at the top of this hill..

Sipping wine where you can both see and smell the vines just across the yard would have been enough, but to have Linda Moore, one of the vineyard's owners, doing the pouring added a lovely dimension to the experience.  When Linda described workers fearing a new picking technique, she was speaking with the voice of experience because she seems to understand that genuine change comes slowly and there's just no rushing the process.  Vintners always seem to have an insight into patience. She poured a "vertical tasting" of three Monks Gate pinots: first the 2011 that was just released last Memorial Day, then the 2010 that had already started to develop, and finally a 2007 that helped me remember why pinot noir is so essential to the winecraft in this region.  And while the oldest wine had certainly aged in some wonderful ways, I could certainly see why a "younger" wine becomes so valuable: it's going to develop some of those same beautiful qualities, only it's going to take a little longer.  Again with the patience thing.

Walking these hillsides with my wife and one of my best friends was another in a two-week long process of healing that I hope has only just begun.  As we drive back to Montana and head back to work this week, I want to savor some of the slow-down I experienced here.  Walking on the Oregon Coast beaches, spending time with great friends, sipping wine, reading a good book, hiking the Cape Lookout Trail, cooking fresh seafood, and generally being caught up in the wonder of this place I love so much makes me realize how much I need to slow down a bit... okay, quite a bit.  Maybe I need to take a lot more walks with my wife in the hillside vineyards of Yamhill County for practice to make perfect.  Thanks for the opportunity to hijack your blog, Mark!