Creatures Here Below

This past weekend we went altar repairing.   We build altars to live in close communion with God and to actively pursue holy acts designed to strengthen our personal relationship with Him.  It is creating Holy Ground, an act mountain forests or perfect for.    We finished our task, swept the forest floor clean of leaves revealing a green carpet of tiny leaves and yellow flowers, and each reclined in peace.  We laughed, picnicked, and ended holding hands to pray and Cora leading us as we sang the doxology.  We, “the creatures here below” filled with the familyhood of God.    

If You're Going to Summit, Better Have a Great Guide

It is a great joy to have aging parents who display how to grow old.  Even at 64, getting old is no cakewalk.  It is perhaps the most difficult task we will ever face and to have someone who is actively navigating the trail is truly a Godsend.  It is like climbing the most difficult mountain, filled with deadly obstacles and challenges, and having the route clearly marked; a living guidebook to learn from.  It seems to me the best climbing rope for this inevitable summit attempt (as in life, many won’t make it) is faith in God.  Nothing else gives you such, hope, encouragement, wisdom, clear sight of the summit, and a demeanor based on the reward, not the pain, that helps you become a great guide.  Thanks mom! 

   

Giggling in Glee

A peace, a calm, has descended upon Fair Haven this morning.  After two days of blustering winds this morning as dawned calm.  But cool is its partner,  a reminder that winter is not far gone and can often lay her cold but loving hand, along our March days.  A pileated woodpecker just landed on my chopping block, right outside our door.  Oh, Fair Haven!  Summer is on its way and today I shall begin a summer ritual which I truly enjoy, I will mow our yard.  Life goes on, its rhythms often soft, like a far-off jingling chime, grass grows and holds a heavenly fragrance released only by the mower.  What a joyful day that must have been when God announced a new smell in heaven and filled His censor with the incense of fresh-cut grass to waft across His kingdom and the baby angels each giggled in glee. 

Hiking this week with the girls.

An Old Idle Faithful Mind

I am the poster child for the old saying, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”  I often find myself holed up in my mind which is poor shelter.  I much prefer to live a life of planting, hiking, creating, fixing, and so forth, occupying my mind as a tool instead of a dwelling.  All this mind and brain thinking is stemming from my consideration of my mom’s mind.  Her mind is playing dirty tricks on her by forgetting most of her memories.  However, a good side to this is the devil is having a smaller and smaller workshop; her faith is becoming more reality as she traverses the last great peak of life to life’s Mount Everlasting.  An old idle faithful mind is God’s Welcoming Workshop.   

 

Losing Your Mind's Life

I have been thinking a lot lately about the life of my mind, the life I live while living just in the thoughts of my mind.  Most of my thinking is extremely personal but one thought I am having more often is the life of a mind that no longer has a robust memory component.   My mom has lost most of her memory, memories of long ago and a few minutes ago.  Memories of her life, my life, and the lives of all her loved ones.  Memories of good and bad.  Memories of concrete, what she had for breakfast, and memories that are much more abstract, God, faith, heaven.  It is also very personal in that all the great events of my life she has no memory of.  I have begun to wonder what my mom thinks about if she cannot remember most of her memories; her days are mostly endless alone with herself and her mind but what does her mind construct to fill these long hours alone?  My mom hasn’t lost most of her immediate memory, she knows where she is, who Betty and I are, and can converse well in the immediate.  However, anything that requires memory she can no longer participate in.  It causes her constant fleeting frustration but she can immediately revert back to the here and now, me present with her.  Yesterday we spent several hours riding around her beloved Cumberland Co but she never recognized a place until we topped the hill of her assisted living at which point she happily exclaimed, “Oh look, I’m home.”  Maybe part of going to heaven is the increasing loss of earth's attachments including, often sadly for us, most of the earth that we shared with them.   

My mom she wouldn't remember.

The Most Enjoyable Family Member

We spend a considerable amount of our family time in the woods, hiking, by warm fires, picnicking, gathering beside streams and waterfalls, building altars, making earthworks, and enjoying God.  Above all things, God is to be enjoyed.  He is our truest family member, the most amazing, most accomplished, most traveled, most adventures, seen the most, done the most and has the best stories, many in live-action and living color.  Yesterday we hiked with Him, each of us praising Him for this or that, a waterfall, a good dog, a seedpod, a flower here, rock there, cliffs above, and green pools below.  As I write He reminded me that it was the little Oliver, quiet Cora, kind Sissy, adventurous Bo, smiling Sarah, gorgeous Betty, and old broken down me where He was the most.  God’s like that, always allowing us to live as Him.  You know all my life I have lived for adventure and the greatest adventure continues to be me tagging along after Him.  Happy trails.   

Yesterday's tag-a-long.

  

CCC; History Worth Repeating

I am currently sitting in a beautiful 66-year-old cabin, dark, drinking coffee in a beautiful handmade cup, having read the Ancient Living Text, and now quietly alone with my thoughts.  It is a CCC, Civilian Conservation Corp, cabin, built sometime around 1936 when the CCC was building well-crafted beauty all over America.  We are at Norris Dam State Park camping with our daughters and family, (they are actually camping, we are the base camp). Norris Dam was the first project of the CCC and the first of the new TVA established by President F.D.R. to rebuild America in the midst of the Great Depression and devastating natural disasters that plagued our country, especially in the south and mid-west.  The idea was to have young men 17-28, build great projects across America in return for room, (barracks they built), board, and pay of 30$ a month most of which was required to be sent home to support their families.  It was set up much like the army and many of the projects they built still stand and are serving us today, (the cabin that currently is keeping me warm and dry).  Well-crafted beauty, massive earth projects, using locally based materials, to serve our best interests by young people needing work.  History worthy of repeating; young Americans doing great things.          

CCC Historic Cabins at Norris Dam S.P.

A Six-pack of Light

There is a fog on this early morning, straining light and mornings coming.  Saving time, as in daylight, also delays the light and pushes my morning walk back so that I might not trip over the things that lay hidden in the saving of light.  I wish we could save light, as Jim might say, “in a bottle”, but light is as fleeting as life, come this morning and by evening used up.  A bottle of light would be a saving grace, sold in a six-pack, no reason to retool our industry, and popped open at any dark moment along the path or looking for our lost sock under the bed.  Pop the top again would really mean something then, light at our beck and call.  Alas, this silly thought must come to a close.  I have pushed walking back as far as I dare.  I must go and allow the light to come, bottled up now in earth’s shadow but soon enough, thank God, will pop the top of the eastern sky.  Bottoms up!  

He Will Never Stop Loving Me Today

I started the day with Jesus, praying and wanting to do better and promising with His help I would.  I am wrapping up the day with George Jones and He Stopped Loving Her Today.  The Ancient of Days walks with me along my ancienting days.  He will never stop loving me today.