The Demand for ANIMATED Gratefulness

Living in nature does one thing; it produces in me the need for gratefulness for all the beauty present there.  No one can stand often among the sky, earth, and water and not feel the dilemma of who or what to thank. It is too much goodness to just shrug and walk away with a “hmm?”  Hmm, to express that feeling of gratefulness is like saying kissing is nice or I felt bad when my dad died.  

I live in a constant state of enormous debt of gratitude, but it is a pleasing state.  It calls me to an ever greater imagination, and a living state of animated being, both Spiritually and physically.  It calls me to a being that I cannot accomplish on my own, that I know I am unable to accomplish by my own self.  It requires, yea, demands a clinging to a Savior to save me from the utter inadequacy of myself to be as grateful and to express and live out that gratefulness, as my experiences demand.  

 

Fair Haven pushes me to acknowledge my complete
inadequacy for animated gratefulness. 

Looking and Seeing Are Two Different Things

We are color seers.  It's part of our worship and devotion to our Lord.  His exuberance for color and sharing are two of His kindest attributes.  We look, and then we tell Him what a wonderful job He is doing.  Fall, above all else, is a time my lover and I set aside to worship outdoors, seeing colors, the infinite number of colors He creates for us to see.  This is the point of this tale.  We go to see Jesus, and His colors never disappoint.  Seeing and looking are two different things.  Eyes that see are eyes that were once blind but now see.  That is another gift He gives: sight to the blind.  Now you know why we are color seers.    

Boat hiking with my lover to 
"See" color.

Normal: Good, Moving Toward Great

A disclaimer.  We do not have television.  I voted on Tuesday and woke up Wednesday as usual: a cup of good coffee in a beautiful handmade oxblood-red cup, the Ancient Text with the Ancient of Days, and a long view of the earth, yard, river, mountains, rain falling from the sky, my normal.  Later I saw in my mail a text from a Christian Podcast I follow, with the mail title, "Catastrophic Wipeout for Republicans.”  I smiled.  I had not experienced a catastrophic loss since my mom died in March, and even that wasn’t really catastrophic, more like a goodbye for now.  I turned off my mail, picked up a good book, and kept drinking my coffee as I watched a glorious rain move over the mountains west of me and work its way across the river to the land I live on.  A wonderful, NORMAL start to my Wednesday. 

PS: Just received word that this was the second anniversary morning of our family's adoption of our little Inca Treasure boy, Joshua, the happiest grandchild we have.  Life is normal; good, moving toward great.   

Our Joshua on his adoption morning, one of 
the most blessed days of our family's history.  

 

Pay Attention to Your Senses

In the very darkest hours, or days, or months, or even years, there is always the overwhelming joy of Jesus.  But I must avail myself of Him, seek Him, make time for Him, “ACKNOWLEDGE HIM, DELIGHT IN HIM.”  He will not burst into my sorrow uninvited or if I choose to go it alone.  In the midst of it, the great mental and emotional strain of it, I must “come to my senses” and remember Him, and return to Him, with all the confidence of his child.  The sorrow will not be removed, but I will be reminded that Someone Greater than the cause of and the resulting sorrow of my situation is waiting on the porch looking for me…filled with compassion for me, to wrap his arms around me, to put his shoes on my feet and his robe around my body and his ring on my finger.  I am home with HIM.  

Exercising is another great way to come to Him.
This is our trail at Swan Pond that we bike every morning.

 

Time

Clocks all over the world have been turned back.  Meanwhile; 

“Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above.  

Join with all nature in manifold witness 

to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.”  

And You and they never change!!!  

 

Sacred Work Left To Do

At retirement, one can feel overwhelmed by everything to do because the list, “when I get time” is long. However, after a few years, the long list is completed, and there is still plenty of time left. It is then that one must have meaningful work to do, work that seems purposeful and needful to be done because there is no real incentive to work or labor. When one was employed, work was mandatory even if one didn't quite like it or think it had value. Now all incentives have been removed. One must find meaning in and by the quality of the work. I mean this in the highest form of the word. That is why I have changed the word quality for sacred. Sacred work calls forth not only our greatest efforts but our prolonged and diligent ones as well. Sacred work is that which combines the will of the Divine with your abilities that you love to do, those tasks you do because “you find God’s pleasure”* when you do them. Discovery is one of the greatest gifts to remaining competent, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and sacred work is the greatest gift of discovery.

*Eric Lydell’s statement on how he felt when he ran.

One of our Sacred Tasks is to build our family graveyard atop Brown Mountain.  We are now
gathering stone to build the wall around it and gathering moss
to seed it.

 

TRUTH

A walk in the woods is as good a medicine as there is for whatever ails you.  In the quietness, beauty, and abundant life found there, one can fully realize the ultimate TRUTH of all truths; there is One who loves and cares for you.  

 

A Two Page Love Note

Each evening I gift myself a goodness like that of red on a rose.  I build a fire stack complete with tinder underneath, so upon rising in the morning, I need only strike a match and the divine gift of fire enters our home.  I keep it going for a couple of hours, driving off the fall chill from our home, and then bank it up and by noon it is out.  It is a present that I hold like a two-page love note, waiting quietly in my thoughts until it is opened to warm my lover, my heart, my soul, and my ageing cold body.  

 

 

Some Poor, Struggling Seaman

Oh, the daylight comes on like a hopeful answered prayer of the greatest magnitude, but is often never acknowledged.  But suppose for a moment that dawn didn’t come and the morning hour nine came, then ten and eleven and by noon there was still darkness, dark as coal, dark night.  Would not all our hearts break asunder.  Would not the pray-er cry out, the politician stand silent, the rioter drop his rock in fear, the sinner and the saint clutch their breast.  But it did come on today.  I sat before a fire and watched it slowly, like a divine whisper, gloriously, miraculously, become day, the light again, the star obediently letting there be light.  Oh, my heart softens in gratefulness; I am a child again, feeling the security of the touch, the peace that passes by and leaves me dumbfounded in ways to say how I feel.   “Let the lower lights be burning, send the gleam across the waves.  Some poor struggling fainting seaman, you may rescue, you may save.”        

God is good!  God is great!  Let us thank Him!

The light burning away the fog
uncovering the island across the way.

 

Enjoying Minutes

Time is what God gives older people because we have at last learned to enjoy minutes.

Found this lichen in the woods while hiking up 
Mount Brown, Sunday morning.

 

Turning Down the Bed

This is the perfect week: cool mornings, warm afternoons, vast blue skies, the quiet of the earth turning down the covers. 

 

The Best Wine Served Last

Weak and worn, shuffling along, head filled with old dreams stuffed in cotton, joints hurt, body sore, a Jag in the barn, the prime gone, the steel hulk all that's left.  There are periods, stretched-out time like used elastic, good only for reminding me of the taunt me I used to be.  It doesn't hurt me as much as it hurts my feelings (pun intended), but it surprises me in its wholeness, all cells in me feeling the ancientness of having been around 68 years.  There is a great joy, though, the joy of feeling all the cells that used to go unnoticed, knowing there is a lot of me that I am now aware of.  There is a lot of me left, and I like to imagine it is the best left for last, as the quest said, “the best wine served last.”  

  

 

Half A Star

Last evening my lover and I sat by the river to watch the sunset.  It was halfway down, and instantly we became cold; the earth we lived on cooled considerably.  I started laughing, raising my hands and praising in glee that we had a whole star and not half of one.  I told my lover, “Who, with just a bit of common sense, could experience this and not become overwhelmed with gratitude for being blessed with a whole star?”  Who is this Three God that is so kind to give us a whole star to warm us?  You can worship the star or the One who made the star, but definitely one of them is worthy of all our laughter, praise, and worship.   

Sleeping On the Bed of Winner

Victory, a great win, is good for the soul.  Us 26-them 10 and my lover and I saw it all.  It is great to win.  Life is a win-or-lose proposition.  There is no other outcome.  You win, or you lose.  Winning is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of gratitude and abject physical (you will act crazy), mental, emotional, and spiritual euphoria.  We win=euphoria. We lose=lost.  This is life.  It all comes down to this.  Everyone had better find out how to win.  Winning is the key.  How to win.  A well done or a depart from Me, win or lose.  It's good to lay down your weary body on the bed of winner. 

The faces of winners.

  

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's the hap-happiest season of all...   (Just a good thought on beginning Luke this morning.)

A maple tree on a hike in Canada.  For those who
need a little good news.  "And hearts will be glowing..."

Be It Ever So Humble

Back home.  Warm and sunny.  Back to labors of joy.  Our children had all come during our trip and worked, moving firewood down from the mountain, mowing, cleaning, and vacationing.  Kept Fair Haven company while we were gone.  It is good to be home.  

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.  Home again, home again, jiggity jig.  Take me home, country roads.  Home is where the heart is.  Keep the home fires burning.  Tennessee, Tennessee, there’s no place I’d rather be.     

 

Fair Haven Cathedral

Wake up in a hotel room next to an airport.  How many times have done this?  Far from home, around the bend, all my worldly goods packed into a bag, my lover, headed home.  A cup of coffee, the Ancient Text, The Ancient of Days, a few lines in my journal, a moment to meditate, think, and set my heart, my life, my day in order…in a strange room, next to the airport.  I listen to good clarinet music. My lover stirs.  

We dropped off the RV yesterday.  She was a great old girl, kept us high and dry through some hard rains, more than one blow, and across New England and Eastern Canada.  She was in many ways a sanctuary.  But tonight we will lay our heads down in a greater sanctuary, a basilica, Fair Haven Cathedral.  We are headed home.  My lover is up.  Let the day begin.   

 

Turning Home

We turn home today, one of the great events of life.  It is always good to be in a foreign land, in the wilderness, among the forests and trees.  It puts all things in perspective.  How wonderful America and our people are.  American southerners are especially good because they look at you and often say a hearty, “Good morning,” welcome to the neighborhood, where we are friendly.  It is hard to get people in Canada to look at you, much less speak.  But when they hear us say, “Good morning,” they awaken to a relationship being offered and reply; not heartily, but sincerely.  

We should all experience a turning toward our land, toward our people, our roots.  It places all the tomfoolery going on around America into the buffoonery category.  I digress.  Turning south from Prince Edward Island.  It is good to be going home!   

Betty standing in the Bay of Fundy as the tide is out.
Largest tide fluctuation in the world. 

Happy Thanksgiving for Steeples

The PEIslanders are a neat and hardy people.  The potato harvest is being brought in, the fields are tidied and ready for a harsh winter, the dairy cows are being milked, and all the tourist shops are shuttered or will be on Saturday.  Monday is their official Thanksgiving, and so this is a long holiday weekend for most of them, a time for getting one's island in order and gathering to give thanks for all His Blessings.  

As is our habit and our good blessings, we found a church, St. Dunstan’s Cathedral Basilica, in Charlottetown.  It was easy to find, the steeple rising above all other things.  A steeple is such a kind act.  It was first created to be a beacon of hope to all those who were struggling in the Dark Ages of Europe.  Under it you could find help, food, lodging, safety, and unburden yourself.  It was truly the example of Christ’s teaching, ‘Whatever you did to the least of these, you did it unto me.’  I just happened to read this parable in my time with the Ancient of Days this morning.  

The steeple still serves that for me and mine.  We have been drawn into its hope-filled interior all over the world as we seek always to draw “Nearer my God to Thee” to revive our souls, worn thin on the good trails of this earth.  My lover and I lit a candle, knelt, and prayed our heart’s desire; she wept.  We rose and quietly left as pilgrims have been doing for all the ages: “There is a place of quiet rest.  Near to the heart of God.”   

      

 

Googolplex And More

Sitting in deep color, a wooded campsite on Prince Edward Island, dressed in fall’s fancy.  Colors have held true our whole visit.  You must not read this as some line off the cuff, some sentence that will do.  When I say color, I mean a divine thing, a most sacred event.  So many single leaves put to shame, and placed in context, all of the color field, abstractists, and even the impressionists' paintings of the last 150 years.  No human creative effort can compare, can match the colors that are true color, not those added to a canvas.  Color so extravagant, so exuberant, underscored by the fact that it will be tossed away, infinitely fluttering to earth to decay and nourish the same sacred act next year.  Try not to miss the sacredly divine as it waves past you by the googolplex.

A leaf I picked up on a hike the second day we were here.
The cup is by Megan Peden, a former student of 
mine.  I always travel with her cup.