KINGSVIEW

MOVING INTO THIS NEW HOUSE

Michael A. King

It was with relief and sadness that in 1997 I wrote for Christian Living magazine the last of the nearly monthly “Kingsview” columns that had been appearing since 1989. Relief because I could forget that task amid starting a new publishing company, finishing a dissertation, and moving toward a new pastorate. Sadness because I had loved writing the column and felt the grief of “leaving this old house,” as I put it then, and saying good-bye to the readers who had visited with me in it.

I had only a foggy idea of what lay ahead when in that final column I cited Hebrews 11, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” then concluded with these words: “I trust that within such developments God is gently at work, sewing stitch by stitch the walls of the new tents in which I’ll for a time make camp on my way toward God’s great homeland. And as they say in Mexico, one of my early homes, Mi casa es su casa, my house is your house. I hope you’ll come visit me in my new homes.”

I confess to feeling a tingle in my spine to be able now, four years later, to welcome you simultaneously into this new house, DreamSeeker Magazine, as well as into that old room within it, a Kingsview with at least some (I'm not very good at tracking what's up in the corners) cobwebs swept away.

And I hope you won’t mind if I briefly tell how this came about. Two threads intertwine. The first goes back to the early 1990s. My life was in crisis. I sensed I needed to do much personal growing and also that it might be time to go back to school to prepare for career possibilities I dimly glimpsed ahead.

One day within that turmoil I found myself for the first time on the West Coast and on a high Oregon bluff, looking down over wave after wave of flower-strewn meadow to the majestic swells of the Pacific Ocean. I gazed at the glory and felt the ocean wind wrap itself around me. I felt simultaneously swamped with the hurt and fear of that period and opened as fully as I’ve ever been to the sense that I was hearing very nearly the audible voice of God’s own Holy Spirit.

As the Spirit of God did “descend upon my heart,” to echo the words of a great old hymn, I heard many things that have guided me since, but what matters here was this: God seemed to be telling me that my deepest vocational calling was to collaborate with the power of words, those same words Genesis says God used to create all that is, to weave and seek dreams, to shape visions, to bring healing and hope amid life’s hurts and horrors.

That vision sustained and motivated me through the joys and the terrors of studying about the power and peril of words by pursuing a doctorate in rhetoric and communication and writing a dissertation. I would often look up from my computer, up to the wall just above my printer, to gaze at the photograph of that haunting Oregon vista. And I stood in my mind’s eye on that bluff as I decided God’s call included starting the publishing company through which DreamSeeker Magazine is being released.

Then came the second thread. Last autumn I woke from a dream. In the dream I had been back in college and filled with images of yearning which, I came to realize, held another call. I kept pondering what it was from college days that the dream’s images were inviting me to reawaken.

Eventually I realized it was this: my love of writing. For 10 years I had been constantly studying words or working with them as an editor or publisher, yet they were largely the words of others, not words from my own heart. It was time for me to write again.

But how? It seemed I needed to integrate both my calling to help others find and share words from their souls and my calling to offer my own words. Then I had the wild idea to start a new magazine that would allow both to happen. Then I had the wild idea to start a new magazine that would allow both to happen, and with the invaluable counsel and support of consultants and friends, it has.

As I feel myself simultaneously standing in that ocean wind high above the waves and now able to see at least part of where God was inviting me to go, I am grateful. With joy I look forward to what comes next.

I invite you to explore with me the rooms I hope we’ll together encounter in this new house. And I hope as well that we’ll sometimes travel beyond the house, toward distant seas and meadows, in search of places where the wind blows strong and sweet and through it God’s Spirit descends upon our hearts.

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is pastor, Spring Mount Mennonite Church; editor, DreamSeeker Magazine, and a columnist.