Exquisitely Guided

Sammy Goes Off-Roading

2012-01-22T21:17:00.003-05:00

You've met Sammy before--a little, white rear-wheel drive Toyota pickup with a paint-chipped hood, nearly 200,000 miles, and the faithfulness of having been in the family for about 9 years. Sammy's a good egg, albeit a little bit of a speckled one these days what with all the road muck sprinkled on his white shell from the winter roads.

This afternoon, however, Sammy wasn't so sure about listening to directions, even with the four big buckets of sand behind his wheelwells. He thought it was more fun to get a running start on the road and then to slide, his hands out in the air for balance, truck cap tape fluttering behind him, trailer hookups dangling.

He got to showing off a good deal, much to the chagrin of some folks, triumphantly calling out at one point, "Look, mom, no front wheels!" as he slid up a hill on the ice-glimmering road. With that, his front wheels indeed went all squirrelly and he himself did a curly-que that ended in an ungraceful faceplant into the juniper and snow filled ditch.

There just so happened to be passing by a couple fellows who were willing to haul him out and dust him off, none the worse for the wear, and who even kindly offered to follow him home lest he get into any more shenanigans on the way. So Sammy tried hard. He pointed his nose straight ahead. He hunched forward to tried to keep his wheels straight. But the shellacked road was just too temping. Off the road he went again in another face plant, finding snow in his nose after being hauled out the second time by his bumper.

This time Sammy decided to stay put. No more adventure. He pulled himself off the road into a little clearing and made ready to nap there, shutting off the shine of his eyes with sleepy eyelids and agreeing to wait out the ice long as necessary, just wishing he were tucked into his sheltering garage some five miles south.

The Lord Gave and the Lord Has Taken Away. Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

2011-11-30T23:16:00.004-05:00

"Miss Knott, did you let your cat out today?" I feel my stomach tighten as I listen to my fifth grader's question over the phone, remembering how just this morning I had picked her up from where she lay curled beside the heating vent in all her queenly calico glory and put her outside as I left the house for my walk across our county road to school.
"Yes, Austin... why?" I force myself to respond, but somehow, already, I know why.

* * *

It was a quiet May evening this spring when I went for a walk with a dear friend of mine on the Andrews University campus for a mutually-much-needed chat. Midway past the custodial building, however, we were pushed beyond the concerns of our own lives when we were interrupted by the persistent meowing of an attention-famished little puss, so desperate for love that she would later, with little coaxing, follow us back to the "no-cats-allowed" apartment complex, submit to being snatched up and popped inside my B49 door, scarf down a can of "human" tuna, all the while purring and meowing so constantly so as to lose her voice--and still continue on telling her story of woe and then rasping out her happiness as she spent her first night on top of my stomach, waking me up every several hours as she got lonely in my tiny, human-filled apartment.

And thus the little one entered my life. The next several days, no, even the next morning proved to be adventuresome, an apt foretelling of the nature of the months that would follow. No sooner had she awoke, but she peed on my visiting sister's sleeping bag as a welcoming gesture and was tossed outside for her misconduct, I sadly expecting our short friendship to be thus ended as my frustrated sister closed the door behind her skinny rump. But this little one was not to be deterred--one night of keeping me awake with her exuberance hadn't been enough. Within hours she shocked me by announcing that she was back at my rust-red door and hungry, and within days she had turned into the "9-c'clock cat," adjusting her business to my teaching schedule. She faithfully returned each evening at that hour exactly, proving herself and thus drawing to herself the name of "beloved friend"--Amie--by her nightly presence on my bed.

And then she became a Trooper as she, a troll, transplanted with me to the land of the Yooper. She was a trooper who liked to wiggle in and out of the long blinds hanging in front of the glass door in my bedroom, making them tinkle, to get my attention. She was a trooper who had a way of bumping my door open with her moist, love-seeking nose just as I was changing my clothes--Amie! She was a trooper who would rather be outside than use her plush litter box and who sat on my back steps listening for my alarm clock at 4:45 a.m. at which point she would start her yowling--and door-seal-popping if necessary--to make me get up and let her in. She was a trooper who would tell me she had something to tell me as I came home from school so earnestly that I would finally give in and lay down on the floor, on my back, so that she could daintily prance up on my chest and tell me everything through her purring.

And she was even known as a cat with a desire for Holy things amongst my community, following a Wednesday-evening-moment-of-curiosity during a church cleaning, and a subsequent absence of two days during which time my nine school youngsters and I were praying for her . Friday evening I came back from a sunset-"God, why?"-run, and there she was, dolphining up against the white birch tree in my front yard in her excitement to see me again. The next day, as I related my Sabbath praise of a returned loved one, a small chuckle was heard across the church sanctuary and "the rest of the story" was shared: how some little calico cat had insisted during a Friday evening Bible study that she wanted out of the church. Right now! No, I never found her enthusiasm to leave much room for patience.

* * *

I find her by my mailbox, on the right side of the road as Austin had said, stretched out and stiff already. Her brilliant life force is quieted for the first time since I've known her. I pick her up, as I did this morning, and I take her home to where she must have wanted to go--too eagerly for once. And I find this first possible full night of sleep spent in another sort of wakefulness, this one also due to her. But maybe that's so I can talk a little more with her Maker.

Pianos in the Kitchen and Chili-tasting Tractor-racers

2011-10-16T21:16:00.003-04:00

Just about two weeks ago my students set me lovingly straight on the fact that "Yooper" does indeed have a plainly phonetic spelling instead of my made up rendition (U-per), a spelling that is just as important as the narrow-mouthed vowelly accent they themselves have and the turn-a-statement-into-a-question-"eh" that I am struggling to keep out of my own language. But this is but one amongst many Yooper gems.

* * *

Thirty students and all three small classrooms full at Wilson Junior Academy is a good thing--and a cause for chuckling each Tuesday morning as I push the piano out of my room, and then at each lull in my busy teaching schedule throughout the day. In fact, through two closed doors and across the hallway I can hear it, even as I instruct my 5th-8th graders on how to use "muscle verbs" to strengthen their writing, even as the nine cries of "Miss Knott!" make me wish I could clone myself at least once. Through it all the fingers of our eager youngsters plink away on the keys of our piano, to the audience of a stove and a microwave and the hot lunch dishtowels and a piano teacher, all day long, all in the brilliantly acoustical kitchen. . .

* * *

Matt runs out of the men's bathroom, his eyes big. "Miss Knott," he says, his normally quiet, deep voice a little huskier than normal in his apparent distress, "I just flushed my flash drive down the toilet. It has my essay on it!" He rushes back in. The essay. The one he's worked on so hard. The one that I can't wait to read because he asked me the other day what those flowers were called with brown centers and golden petals. "Black-eyed Susans," I had told him, and then I saw him typing. Perhaps I am biased, but an essay mentioning Black-eyed Susans is bound to be a good one.

I don't know what to tell him. He actually flushed it? But a moment later he comes back out, the flash drive dangling rather lifelessly from his hand. Dare I ask? I take it home and pray over it as I put it in a little pitcher filled with white rice. . .

* * *

"This is really happening," my student says, eyebrows working up and down for emphasis, "a little kid is out in the hallway, putting something into the outlet." Thumbs point over the shoulder, and I dash out. Sure enough. There's little Sawyer--his right foot already in a tiny black walking boot after breaking his foot not long ago--innocently poking a plastic fork into the fascinating electrical crevices. . .

* * *

Hayrides. Jacob wonders what the big deal is--a ride in the cold on a bale of hay. In my mind I ask the same question. But Yoopers take them to a new level, racing their New Holland and Ford tractors up the middle, or rather, dominating the whole county road with their caged cargoes of chattering passengers. They find an old trail through the woods, or perhaps make a new one. They rumble and pitch us across the Cedar River. They weave in-between giant rolls of silage and barns amidst a manure-scented haze. And afterwards there is a chili cook-off tasting session--twenty some chilis ranging from vegan to veggie to a solitary meat stew at the far end of the table, swarms of folks with their plastic cups and spoons gathering around the pots and the cornbread and the quart of maple syrup that is soon used up.

* * *

Gailyn and Valerie tell me that they can give me some more apples to expand my carefully canned, five-quart collection of applesauce, and so I meet them at their "new house," as they call it, off in the woods on a curious leaf-strewn gravel road with a galvanized gate gaping open at the entrance. Here they are far away from their cranes and sawdust-burning stove machinery that they hope to sell off as running business someday.

They grin and wave at me as I drive in and invite me into the cute little hunting camp that they are remodeling. I didn't know that they have this other house besides the one from whose porch they throw and then hand-feed apples to the deer. They both give me a sheepish look when I ask how long they've been working on it and what they're doing. "Well," Valerie begins, "we were just going to fix up the closet, make it a walk-in. . ." She points to the corner of the camp's footprint where there is evidence of a recent struggle and the hopeful look of a bedroom and maybe something more. "But then we really didn't like the staircase--it was here," she says tracing her finger across a mark in the fireplace, right beneath the loft. "So we took it out. And then we took off the paneling on this wall, to put on the outside wall of our walk-in closet, and we discovered that the squirrels had chewed through the wall behind the paneling. So we have to take that out too. And then we looked at the wiring. . ." They chuckle good-naturedly and throw up their hands. "It's all her idea--naw," Gailyn pipes in, and looking at his wife fondly. He, on the other hand, dreams of the day when the house will be finished and he will walk outside and whistle and have the chickadees flock about him, landing on his hair and crumb-filled hands as they did when he was a boy.

* * *

"Bridge may be icy!" my seventh and eighth graders chorus to me as the wheels of the minivan I am driving begin their climb up onto the Mackinac Bridge, heading north, heading home from the lower peninsula's Camp Au Sable after several days of conference-wide company. Later when we stop at a rest area on Route 2 along lake Michigan, they pop out of the car so joyfully that a woman giggles and says we look to her like a van full of clowns. I laugh along with her as my charges run in to the bathroom. And then I race along with them down the boardwalk to the sands of the beach, all of us inhaling the smell of leaves and water and cleanliness, and there they scrawl in the water-lapped sand with a mixture of fingers and shoe-heels, "We are home!" Somehow I feel as if I want to tack an "eh" onto the end of that. I think so too.

A Reaper Resting

2011-07-12T08:50:00.007-04:00

O there'll be Joy when the work is done,
Joy when the reapers gather home,
Bringing the sheaves at set of sun
To the new Jerusalem,

Joy, joy, there'll be joy by and by
Joy, joy where the joys never die
Joy, joy for the day draweth nigh
When the workers gather home.

Grandma Madeline LaClair
5.3.1928 - 7.12.2011

On Thinking about Things and Moving and Inspired by the Thoughts of Thoreau...

2011-06-29T21:00:00.006-04:00

"Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:--'the evil that men do lives after them.'--As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust."--Henry David Thoreau, Walden ("Economy," 54)

Well-spoken. But what now?

Some might argue that I am young and that it is not too late.

Young? How?

Do you not know that I bear the ancient genes of frugal New Englanders in every digital hair and attached earlobe of my body, that I carry the generations-old, thrifty, conscientious whispers of "you might just need that later... better hang on to it," in my already well-entrenched cogitation pathways, that a book by one of my favorite essayists sits in the room next to my own, titled String to Short to Be Saved, and tells the story of a box with just such a label found in one of Thoreau's "dust hole" type attics... with just such hapless string particles inside?

I have never liked yard sales all that much, but that does not make me any more of a hope case. I simply cannot bring myself to go that public and especially anytime the word "rummage" appears on signs I feel the guilty need to bolt around the nearest corner. But you have not seen me furtively creeping along the wall out of my dormitory room to the unofficially titled "free tables" in the upstairs lobbies, nose twitching, beady eyes darting, ready to sidle nonchalantly past with only a glance if the door should open, ready to run back to my nest, rat-tail trailing behind me, if suspicion should arise, but eager to just see what's on that table. It might be something useful.

I do wonder what dried tapeworms I have collecting dust in the crannies of my room... But I fear a greater problem. What about the carefully dessicated giraffes that will crumple even the loaded bumper of my toy truck?

And I will dismiss the first solution that comes to mind as impossible: Perhaps those giraffes would be happier staying with my parents in Vermont. No! Even there the frequent rain would cause their exponential and hydrated growth into complete giants, not merely dried ones.

Toting Expansions

2011-06-26T15:02:00.009-04:00

My veterinarian sister left for her New Zealand job on Thursday, all of her worldly possessions crammed and weighed and prayed into six oddly-bulging bundles--bike box, ski bag, ginormous hockey satchel, suitcase, backpack, duffle. We helped her haul her pile through check-in, and then watched her from behind the thick layer of security glass in Burlington, VT as she removed her shoes and took her laptop out of the well-loved backpack and flashed us a final grin. If the ashcloud over Chile lets her, she will fly with her relatively small mound from Los Angeles to far across the gray sea on the morrow.

Now I look out the window at the little white Toyota she left behind. I don't think that I could fit my entire life into six bundles anymore--let alone into either (or both!) of the two tiny Geos that have each taken their bows out of my life in the past several weeks. That's why I have Sammy, sturdy yet as ever, and minus only my sister's beloved collection of bumper stickers stating such enlightening tidbits as "Coffee: It Makes You Poop." (That one in particular seemed especially loyal to my sister with it's tenacious glue, but the determined teacher in me prevailed.)

In three weeks or so Sammy will help me move out to U-per land as he has faithfully served my sister for ten years--New Hampshire to Michigan to Vermont to Colorado--this time with a bed set in the back and a signature pair of green crocs on the dash. In southwestern Michigan we will add to our entourage a calico named Amie--who adopted me--and such cumbersome delights as a cello and an oboe and "several" unfortunately-shaped boxes. We'll buy the dishsoap once we reach Sam Campbell land--that is, if they use such things up there.

Yet again I long for the sleek-shelled simplicity of being a turtle.

Another One of Those Things...

2011-06-22T16:29:00.002-04:00

In my child's mind I used to think that Geo Metros were the ugliest cars, rolling around as they did with their silly bubbled bodies and impish pointed noses. And besides, everyone else in my family had trucks--practical vehicles good for the growing woodpile and pulling horse-trailers and some semlance of self-esteem...

*Proud Geo owner, 2007-2011

My father is a teacher. He is a good one, and I used to "know" that I was not. As a college freshman, studying English was as close to education as you were going to get me. Okay, if I had to, I would add secondary education as a minor... and maybe Teaching English as a Second Language would be surviveable... but never, ever ask me to teach the little ones!

*Excited beginning teacher, 2011-

Serving in a foreign mission field? That was for those who had a passion for it! And that did not include me. Wasn't there enough work to do in the home country?

*Student missionary, spring 2010

---

Colporteuring. For years I've hid behind a flimsy excuse of shyness and awkwardness and a lack of the ability to be pushy, the claim of wanting to witness in a less shocking manner, and if all else failed, the stubborn laugh and the "I just don't do that." It seems I might have learned from previous experiences that such locked and barricaded rooms in our mental hallways are the delightful challenge of the Master Lock-picker...

After merely a three days of personal experience, I could tell you about the Surabian, non-Christian man with olive skin and dark curly hair whose eyes were magnetized to the cover of the Great Controversy. "I am fascinated by this title," he told me, his fingers reaching out for the book.

I could show you the two highschool girls I almost walked away from, their young eyes sparkling over the healthful cookbook and Man of Peace, an adaptation of Desire of Ages.

I could have you listen to the retired theology professor from Michigan State University, politely disagreeing with the divinity and second coming of Christ, with the books I carried, with the faith and beliefs I held. I could have you hear his wife scold him into giving me a donation, and see him give an amount such that I could press a book into his hand. "Please sir, I want you to have this."

I could share with you an inner peace and joy I've found only when allowing God to break down my barriers and work through my inexperience, prejudice, and weakness to show His mighty power and glory.

Joy Comes in Batches

2011-05-25T21:01:00.016-04:00

I've always loved May--perhaps I can use that as a feeble excuse for why I've waited for so long to write, in order to make that pleasant plunge from the cold and snow of December into the fragrant, moist air of spring. . . or perhaps because like cookies, good things are even more delightful when there's more than just one to share. . .

---

Student Teaching
January 3 - March 25. 6th Grade ELA at the Berrien Springs Middle School. A great team. 144 wiggly youngsters. An opportunity to share my own delight with language and an opportunity to be "found out" as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian by my students in a public school environment. An experience cut short by the offering of a permanent substitute position...

Miss Knott the Art and Entrepreneurship Teacher
March 28 - June 10. Thirty calls for help at once, ranging from "Hey Miss," to "MissssssKnott," to my personal favorite from little Bryce, "Hey there Miss Lady." Paint and clay and business plans and shared inspiration and undercover mission work...

Graduation
May 1. Five years later and still so much to learn! A little anti-climactic: Teaching Friday, April 29, high Sabbath, busy Sunday, teaching Monday, May 2. Reunion with many dear ones.

Soon to be U-Per
May 1. Acceptance of a 5-8 teaching position at the Wilson Junior Academy, Wilson, MI. God has a sense of humor. Yes, I had to look up the location too! A philosophical and mission-minded fit. A complete God-caused-weekend-flip-flop from "This is Nineveh!" to, "Lord, I would be honored to work with such a committed church and school board. Your will be done."

Dr. Rachel Knott, DVM
May 13. An eight-year-old's dream receives a diploma.The mountainous beauty of Fort Collins, CO. 11,000 feet of elevation, snow-buried huts, a sun-pinkened face.

and

Jacob Gibbs
January 16. A ministry-minded Sabbath friendship becomes a mutually admitted matter of God-concern... and then...
(March 23) a more than friendship sort of friendship, well-doused with prayer and joyfully growing.

Only One Explanation

2010-12-15T09:39:00.008-05:00

I felt my wheels twitch as they moved off from the damp pavement to a slushy sheet of snow at 60 mph. Before my mind could tell my hands what to do, they had turned the wheel sharply in an attempt to correct my angling toward the big utility van I was passing.

***

The roads had been pretty decent up until then. Just as I had left Berrien Springs at 2:30 a.m., the snow had tried to smother out my optimism for the seventeen hours ahead of me, but I had passed through the pocket and by the time I was on I-90, heading impatiently toward Vermont, the road was dry in places, wet in others. I was out of Michigan. Through Indiana. Ohio's end was in sight with the snow speckled signs telling me I was 50 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The winds had been gusting around me already for five hours, occasionally bearing snowflakes, and in Ohio, the snowflakes had gotten thicker. I wasn't too worried though. I was heading home.

***

My little Geo Metro, Chuck, had a mind of his own when my hands set him free like that--as if he was suddenly getting me back for the times I've squished four people into his two-seated smallness and stalled him as my left-foot got accustomed to his finicky clutch and forgot to cover his ragtop before it snowed. He was skating all over the road like a whirligig beetle.

And then I saw myself headed straight for the side of the utility van. I remember thinking it wasn't going to be good. I remembering wondering if it would hurt when Chuck's chin and nose would crumple up in front of me and then munch me up too.

And then we hit, Chuck ramming his front into the flank of the white van. My computer on the seat next to me flew into the dash. Chuck was still going, spinning, heading back west on I-90 east, then turning again, completing his antics and wobbly 360 as he knocked himself out with a smash against the guardrail.

***

Before leaving at 2:30, I had knelt down on the brown carpet of my apartment. Usually I'll close my eyes for a few seconds as I sit behind the wheel in preparation for a journey, the words running around quietly in my head. But yesterday morning I needed something more. I needed to hear that prayer be real.

And it was. In the yet-dark hours as I headed out and the stars streaked across the sky. As I sat wedged against the guardrail and found that I was alive and that nothing hurt. And when I looked and found that even the bulb of my broken taillight would continue to glow out behind me--along with the warmth of gratitude within me--for the remaining twelve hours, for the last of the lingering journey, Home.

Seeing, Among Other Things

2010-10-31T09:04:00.003-04:00

Ginny Owens sings that she doesn't climb mountains to see the view. I want to sit in my purple chair and stew on that for a few minutes, but she is going on, hardly waiting till she can open her eyes to God's wonderful wonder, His display of great beauty and power. She can't keep from singing.

I can't seem to keep from running these days. All that time, my calves sore, my body ready to plop into bed when I have to stay up late and finish the assignment I couldn't do while I was running. I guess that's predictable, but...

Can Ginny Owens run? Can she climb mountains? How can her feet know where to go even if someone tells her? Can they know each root, each pebble, each ledge slanting away from her and slippery with snow melt?

And why would you hike without a view?

If your heart is singing, I guess that's why. If your faith is seeing, even though you're blind. If your body aches with the burden of God's love blowing the scent of mountains across your face, not merely because you gritted your teeth and made it go.

The Evidence of a Long Time

2010-10-31T08:59:00.002-04:00

That frightfully buzzing, biting run
Petered out in a dorm room so many
Seconds ago that my
Computer no longer remembers
I used to visit my blog
Occasionally.

Biathlon

2010-07-18T08:46:00.002-04:00

I run the final length of dirt road and plunge into the corn, crawling, the bubbles I stir up with my outstretched arms and hands streaming over me like dew or sweat or pollen, lisping through broad green tongues, "aren't you claustrophobic? Aren't you tired? Aren't you giving up yet?

I emerge, dripping, breathing hard, trying to huff the strength down into my legs, and run onto the wooded path, the wind whistling through the water in my ears as if my arms are taunt, freshly straight behind a skiboat on a wakeboard.

And now my competitors join me fiercely like a herd of deerflies buzzing around me, biting my back, shrieking in my hair, making my face flush brighter, faster, faster. They follow me, undaunted by hills where they crowd around me thicker, hardly lagging as I once again find myself on the dirt road, the paved road, up the last hill.

On the sidewalk my last tenacious contender, in a burst of extinction, rams against me, laughing at the swinging of my arms at her, but daring not enter behind me into the winners circle of study.

Distractions

2010-07-09T19:02:00.006-04:00

"They are not quite decent," indeed, "to tell the truth" and to borrow, just for a moment, the words of Jane Kenyon.

Waving to all who peer out into the courtyard, they perch on the best ride in town, the top down, the wind in their hair, their showy white hats blowing about their faces and feathering and silking upward to a brilliant pink tip.

And the way they carry their limbs! Just so, like the male swan, neck curved, pinioned wings gracefully drooped to draw the eye of the lovely female--

I feel I ought to give them a thick bottomed glass and pour them a drink of my very best, sit in their company, lean in to catch the fragrance of their light perfume,

Which I do,

They, resting daintily on the edge and then sliding their slender, brown legs into the very middle, properly bent beneath them at the knee,

Sipping up the sparkling water with their toes.

Sighing with Annie Over One's Slavery to Words

2010-07-07T21:02:00.004-04:00

"Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever."
--Dillard, The Writing Life, 51

What Some Folks Do

2010-06-29T21:21:00.005-04:00

Reed's Automotive has gone out of business. I guess that might have been expected with the numerous little auto shops in St. Johnsbury, an excellent one being right across the street, and several more along that one same stretch of road alone.

Mr. Reed was a nice fellow though--his little, smoke-filled, cluttered waiting room a virtual library of children's books, his grin of a rather contagious grandfather sort, and his elderly hard of hearingness, of his own admission, a help for passing inspections.

But perhaps of greater note to the town, Mr. Reed did car oil undercoating--that sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul thing of protecting your possession to the tune of more oil drips on the road, running down the ditches after a rain, and making its way into our streams and ponds and lakes. And Mr. Reed was the only business of that sort in St. J.

I am conflicted. But what is one to do with the clean underside of a little eighteen-year-old Geo Metro that is valiantly fighting corrosion from the salty winters and the dirt-road-sealing summers of Vermont?

Perhaps it wasn't my idea, but as all twelve feet, six inches of my car passed inspection today with a clean blue streak, and as my mechanic, the guy across the street from Reed's automotive, humphed and gave his approval at the low mileage and the fresh oil undercoating job in need of some good dust, I could only chuckle and heartily agree.

Learning From the Master

2010-06-24T19:08:00.002-04:00

I take the old English textbook out of my dusty bookcase and turn to Robert Frost's "Mowing." Scythe...whispered...the heat of the sun...the feeble-pointed spires of flowers...a bright green snake. I expect that he was just as proficient as a mower as he was poet since poetry seems to sprout best out of the simple tasks of life. But as I look out the window at my own work, I know that not even someone tipsy with the exilarating green of a Vermont summer would hire me to scythe their field. It is ragged, vetch and daises torn up along with the grass. And somehow I think that Frost didn't think to mention the sweat trickling down behind the ears to the neck, the deer flies tangling themselves in the curls of hair and buzzing entrapped against the head, the scythe blade that becomes dull too quickly, or the strain felt from the stomach, out to the elbows, and up to the shoulders. And yet I guess that was part of Frost's skill--to not state the obvious unless there was a peculiar way to tell it. I suppose too that is why he only hints at the gracefulness of a practiced scyther like my father, where the whisper and the motion and the waves of falling grass and ferns far out-feel the deer fly biting the arm.

---

I bring the textbook downstairs to the kitchen where the floor wafts up pine-scented amonia and where the counters bear evidence of my supper plans. My parents haven been spending a few precious days in celebration of thirty years together, and now I have one quiet hour to spend out by the pond while my grandmother is visiting her sister. Earlier this morning as I misted water over her head and picked out her permed curls and then as the extra water slipped into her eyes and I had to bring her a towel to wipe them, I couldn't help wondering at the way we have swapped our roles--unwillingly perhaps at first, but now in some sort of secure acceptance. Not that many years ago she might have been bathing me, a baby small enough to sit in her large kitchen sink, she carefully watching that the shampoo didn't get in my eyes. Or perhaps when I was a little older she might have knocked on the bathroom door to make sure I didn't need help, like I do now for her, or take me for a walk on the old road behind her house or down to the bridge to feed the river, I having to trust that she knew where we was going. And she was the one trying to keep me dry when it started to rain.

---

The English I taught in Honduras was an English that a good many people could teach. The muddy mile I walked each day was a mile that most could walk. The electricityless, laundry-hand-washing life was a life that a number of folks could live. But I suppose I need not state the obvious so commonlike... I guess the point is that I had something to work on in Honduras. It is kind of like our part in the plan of Redemption. If efficiency was all that mattered, God would be much better off doing the work Himself. And yet He has given us the opportunity to experience His servanthood, to experience the simple moments of life freshly, poetically, to experience new thoughts about the people around us and the love to be passed on.

Christ was a servant, the True Servant, bending down to clean the dust-covered callouses and the dirty toenails, allowing the lepers to approach Him and kneel at His feet, healing the grandmothers, the aunts and uncles, the children. And that's something to keep learning, in Honduras, yes, but in the field, in the home, and ever.

Small Snatches

2010-03-17T13:23:00.008-04:00

The laundry room

Maria and Mariella, dressed for a birthday party

The moment of the pinada

A lonesome fellow just past our gate

Encouragement on the ridge

A full larder

Manuela and the mountains

More mountains

The old Toyota that you can start with the storage room key

Typical plant around here--no, I do not know it's name

Represented here, a portion of our team, are Belize, Venezuela, Switzerland, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the United States.

Honduran mountains from a nice rocky ledge about a 30 minute walk from campus

Teammates Jacob and Eli--an interesting conversation

Waiting for the master bathing in the creek

Our classroom/chapel and "the plaza" of morning and evening worship

Currently my classroom, but each Sabbath, our church

The team--students and staff. Yes, there are many more women than men!

A Sunday Thought: In the Company of Puppies

2010-03-17T12:35:00.004-04:00

Again and again in the Bible we are told that we are like sheep going astray and I do not try to correct this image--but somehow I think that we are also a great deal like stubborn puppies.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are Honduran dogs, born and raised here, three brothers as different in personaliity as they are in color. For at least three months they have been at IBC in an environment of doggy heaven--food, love, walks--and yet, just as we have the effects of sin still in our physical bodies, these puppies are products of their environment. They constantly fight among themselves, they strongly dislike children and cars and bicycles, they destroy chew up anything that is left within their reach.

As I look at them, I see how much they have grown. They are learning to stay in the areas that are theirs. They are learning not to chase cars. They have learned that they can't accompany anyone in a skirt or dress pants. And they are learning to come a whistle.

In Jeremiah 10:8 God says that He will whistle and that His people will come running. And yet I I am amazed at how we, like these puppies, are constantly distracted--by a donkey in the pasture, a rock rolling down the hill, a mound of cow manure. Do they want to obey? Do we want to obey? Well, maybe here is where the metaphor breaks down. Perhaps they don't. But whether their training tells them to come or not, or whether we want to heed the gentle voice of our master or not, there is always the deeper instinct telling us to return to our "doghood" and to our "vomit."

"Who shall free us from this body of death?" Who can overcome battles with temperance, with low self-esteem, with selfishness? "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," we are not left as wretched puppies, eating the hides and guts of a butchered steer. We are children of the King, through His strength set free from the law of sin and death.

A Sabbath Reflection from Some Weeks Ago: Under a Tree

2010-03-17T12:19:00.003-04:00

As we walked back from the primary school, talking and chuckling at the fact that we were conversing in Spanish, we heard the cheery voice, "Buenas dias, hermanas" from up ahead of us. After looking around we saw hermano Manuel sitting on the edge of the raod, in the shade of a large fragrant tree. He had come to enjoy the sunshine of a beautiful morning, and he had come to find peace. "Ah, hermano, tu estas como Natanael!" I said as we passed on, leaving him with a smile on his face.

Later the same day, but cooked up to a roasting heat, I stood by the dormitory, waiting to get the church key from one of our team members. As I felt the sweat beginning to trickle down my back, I heard myself saying, "I shall wait under the mango tree" and in that moment, as the perfume from the blossoms surrounded me, I thought again of Nathaniel and the fig tree and Manuel on the side of the road.

Micah 4:4 reads "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken it."

It seems then that the fig tree is more than a symbol of peace, more than a symbol of God's abundance, and more even than a symbol of contentment. Under the fig tree is a place of searching and spiritual revival and reconnection with God.

Even now as I sit between two rocks, a pine against my back, a good half-hour walk from IBC, I read these words and find comfort. I came here for refreshment, for peace, for the filling of a longing deep down. I have been waiting all week to find it, and now, my books on my lap, I have found it as I look out across the mountains of Honduras, at the edge of a valley, under a tree.

Introductions

2010-01-27T17:47:00.001-05:00

Looking out the gate of Buena Vista

View of Buena Vista from a ridge behind campus (El Suyutal is on the far left side of the picture)

and a mountain view further up the ridge.

The hallway of the building I am currently staying in and walking out our road toward the village of El Suyutal

The donkey who brays every morning and the toads who don't appreciate it when we water our garden beds

Meshach (white), Abednego (black), and Shadrach

Nina (on left) and Mia; Adam and Eve

To Be or Not to Be (As If It Makes a Difference to Choose)

2010-01-25T21:32:00.004-05:00

I do believe that my cheeks and arms and legs are a bit ruddier than they were two weeks ago. And I know for a fact that I understand more Spanish and can produce more than I could on my first nervous night in Tegucigalpa some time ago. But somehow these things make no dint on the hard-coating of Americanism that encases me.
---
I hear Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego barking and look up from my lesson plans to see cattle passing by our gate, a Honduran rider behind them. I think of my neighbors in VT, their calloused hands waving hello, and their voices calling their howling pets away from my horse. I think of the inconvenience of those creatures that don't obey and that have followed me home, and then I whistle and call the the boys. But the rider and cattle pass by, and the dogs do not return until the last steer lumbers by.
---
In the darkness of the room I do not see the kind senora leaning forward to kiss my cheek and I want to pinch myself for forgetting the custom. I don't generally eat dairy products and I am not very hungry, but I accept the maiz with mantequilla and the yucca that she gives me. "Muy rico," I say, and I mean it, but I don't know if she believes me.
---
As I walk through El Suyutal, I feel the eyes surrounding me and when my companion says softly, "Muy rapido, muy rapido," my legs are only too happy to comply. Without noticing, I am soon ahead of her. She chuckles, but in her voice I hear the tightness that I feel in my own throat.
---
I ring the bell as I finish preparing "almuerza" for the rest of the team and for the two workmen. This week we have had white rice and beans and tortillas and curry and bread and so my Swiss friend and I have decided to be brave and branch out. She cooked brown rice, and I have just finished making an Asian-style stir-fry with some soy sauce I found in our little kitchen. We have already agreed that we will watch and see if any second helpings get taken, and in a half-hour we are back in the kitchen, giggling, as we look at the scanty remains of the big meal we prepared. At least this went over better than my split-pea and fresh vegetable soup...
---
As I finish leading out in the final hymn of our prayer meeting, I move amongst the brothers, wishing them a good night, and then begin helping pick up the chairs. Tonight, like other nights, a brother relieves me of my stack with an almost chiding "Emily..." Well, I say to myself, that may be all the English they know--but then again, haven't I noticed that only the women from Buena Vista ever help to pick up, not the women of the village?
---
To be, or not to be? I ask again. Do I continue to visit the ridge for quiet time in the mornings, despite the fact that it would not be good were I to be found out their alone? Do I carry a camera so as to preserce the experiences I encounter and at the same time advertise the fact that I might be a "turista americana?" But then again, it seems that whether I choose to be or not, there is the height, and the pale skin, and the blue eyes to betray me

Simpler Things

2010-01-18T21:01:00.005-05:00

I have a blister on my little finger from washing towels. If you had told me about such an occurance a mere nine days ago, I would have chuckled and said such a thing was not possible. But now I know the truth--yesterday's bout with the washboard and our kitchen's thirty-some "toallas" was enough to cure me of my laughter... in one sense. On the other hand, after an afternoon with my body half in the sunshine and half in the cool washing water, I am that much more delighted.

I cannot tell you how many times already I have walked into the room I (will) share with four others after dark and unconsciously begun feeling around for the lightswitch, or thought pleasantly of a warm shower and then scrunched up my face in anticipation of the cold running down my back. But it is only habit that makes me do so. Tonight as I showered, squealing, by lamplight, I found myself chuckling at the unique experience, and chattering about it with my co-teacher Manuela over the thin walls of our abode.

And so time and I march on--I often with either a little green "perrico" or a dishtowel on my shoulder and a garbled Spanish sentence in my mouth, I often thinking of how wasteful I have learned to be, how careless I am, and how ignorant of many things. Perhaps four and some months will teach me somethings. But then I shall only be eager to learn more.

Buena Vista

2010-01-13T16:59:00.001-05:00

My arrival at Buena Vista on Monday, my home for the next five months, was a celebration of more than merely seeing the place I have waited so long to see... it was a breath of tranquility after a long and curvy, jouncy and wild ride from Tegucigalpa past bony animals and over pot-holed roads, along with two clutch starts due to battery failure, an empty stomach, and a parched throat from a mere cup-and-a-half of water in some twelve hours.

My journal entry last night said dia quatro at the top of it--so yes, now that I am on my third full day here at the school, I feel as if I can tell a little.

Buena Vista is beautiful indeed and as was told me from the beginning, is set in a little valley surrounded by grand green hills. Yes, of course showers are cold. No, we do not have electricity. Yes, we are on winter vacation until February and I therefore have a little more of a chance at working out the Spanish chatter of the few staff around me before my English classes begin.

It is quiet here, oh so quiet, fifteen minutes away from the bustling little village of El Suyutal, and therefore protected from all but the braying of donkeys and the crowing of roosters from various places around campus. The slower-paced Honduran lifestyle has my eyebrow quizzically angled at one moment and my heart leaping in delight at another... everything is all so new.

This evening five of us trooped out to the village for an evening prayer meeting where I was once again reminded of how American I am. I have taken so much for granted. Here our church is a roof with three walls, a cement-pad floot. But truly, the hearts and hands are so warm, even to a tall white girl who stumbles so badly when asked where she is from that she says, "I am Vermont." And then I have so often taken for granted the kinship of a conversation where every detail is understood, at least in word. This evening I stood in the center of a jolly group of church folks, smiling and nodding at all the appropriate places and catching the general drift...but I must remember that it has only been five days...

Oh, there is so much to say... about new friends, about our dogs and cats and parrots, about lonliness, about mealtimes and cooking, about the rats in the storeroom, about hikes, about lesson plans... But oh, the time is short. Someday too, pictures will be coming, friends.

I continue to be amazed at how God is blessing and how I have the assurance of His strength. Each day I am reminded that I am not here of my own accord, but that He has placed me here, and that it with His power that I will do the task before me. It is enough--or rather, the crowning cap on my joy.

Another P.S.

2009-12-10T07:05:00.002-05:00

For those of you who faithful friends who watch out for my very blotchy posting record, I will continue to use this blog for my five months in Honduras--that is, when the time and internet connections allow.

Some choose to begin a new blog to chronicle their missionary experiences, and yet I believe that to separate this journey from the tale of my life would be to sever it from all that has led up to it and leave it dangling, cold and vulnerable, for the owls to snatch.

Exquisitely Guided and a Winged Horse

2009-12-04T06:56:00.008-05:00

It is hard to believe that I have spent the last fifteen-and-a-half years in school, and nearly as difficult to realize that the thirty-first half will be completed as soon as I turn in one last, finished assignment this morning.

And that will be it for now, for the next five months, unless one counts a sixteen hour drive home in the snow as the final test of the semester.

A month from today I board my first commercial flight as I leave Boston, MA for Honduras, flying to a land of Spanish and guava fruit and scanty communication, and beginning my post-school life before my schooling itself is finished. Am I frightened to embark thus? Well, perhaps, but only as jittery as any one might be while on a runaway horse that has promised not to kill you and yet is racing at full speed toward a cliff. I have chosen to believe that the Horse has wings.

A Question

2009-12-03T19:51:00.002-05:00

Does God grow us in straight line, ever onward toward one end like the sleet pelting against ones nose and backback,

or does He nurture us more in a circling pattern like the first snow flakes of the season tickling the tree branches, teaching us to revisit old thoughts in a new manner and learn anew from past experiences,

or does He gently mist His will and His purity upon us like an autumn rain, only in such amounts that we will be able to bear it,

or does there have to be one answer?

Sometimes I am as confused as the weather was today.

Out the Window

2009-10-23T16:44:00.003-04:00

If she meets you in the bathroom

with a sad look on her face,

and a yellow shoe in each hand

dangling from a long white lace,

And she tells you that she's washed them

but the stain can still be seen

and they're really, really wet now,

and she can't remove her screen,

Then open up your window, friend,

And let the shoes hang out,

In company of the golden tree,

And the wind all whistling about.

If she takes the long thin laces white

And ties them in knot

And, coolly, on the hinges there,

she drops those shoes she bought,

And she tells you that she'll leave them there

a-drying in the sun,

until no water droplets drip,

from soles or yellow tongues,

Then open up your window, friend,

and let the shoes hang out,

in the company of the golden tree

and the wind all whistling about.

Old 100 After One Hundred Musings

2009-09-23T13:33:00.010-04:00

The number 100 plunges into my brain and triumphantly hauls out a memory or two...

Here's blond Natalie, standing beside her project that was required to be made out of one hundred "somethings." This time, the "somethings" were eggs and she spent days blowing out the gooey innards.

And Dad used to count to one hundred so speedily when we were playing hide and seek out in the woods that I couldn't rightly hear each number, but of course I knew that he wasn't cheating.

Then there's Gramdma, standing at the front of the little Drewsville, NH stone church, her Bible spread out before her. "I will be reading Psalm a hundred," she says with a smile. And she begins: "Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness, come before Him with Joyful singing...

For one hundred posts I have been trying to do that, trying to serve Him through memory, through song, through creativity, through experience, through being me. And He is yet there, much more consistent than my scanty and forgetful musings. He is beyond the regularity of my studies and the enthusiams of my inspirations. And He is much, much more faithful even than the 100th hymn that I sing far too infrequently:

"Great is thy faithfulness, oh God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with thee
Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.

"Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

"Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.

"Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have need Thy hand has provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."

Love and Autumn

2009-09-22T23:04:00.005-04:00

Today is one of those thoughtful days. The eighth anniversary of my grandfather's death, nearly a month marker since I began my fourth year of college and left my family in Vermont. And it is the first day of Autumn, the first day of fall 2009 which officially began at 5:18 this evening...

Every morning as I sit at the registration counter, I hear an insistent banging at the door at around 9:00 and look up to see them coming in, pushing their daughter to work in a wheel chair. It seems rather switched up-- they up and active, she looking tiny and frail, her hair white and fluffy and thin around her head as if it is one delicate dandelion puff that a sudden breeze might blow throughout the lobby. The unusual trio always looks up and wishes us all a good morning as they pass through and into the hallway, always cheerful, rather together-like. Several minutes later the elderly couple walk slowly back past my desk. I always notice then that they are somewhat stooped, their heads white too, and that they aren't perhaps the spry folks they once were. But then my eyes always stray down a little further to their hands for what I know I will see--fingers strong and tightly twined together.

The trees have begun just a little of their rosy-cheekedness around the parking lot and today the misty rain warmed up what will probably be the last wave of summer campus flowers. But there is a solemn beauty in it all that summer's ecstasy can't quite match.

Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?

2009-08-13T23:26:00.003-04:00

She is my hero. I want to tell the world that she can take a shower by herself, that she can go on a trailride, that she will help sweep the the bathhouse with a bit of coaxing. I want to call home and tell them that she let me float her on her stomach in the swimming pool, that she let me braid her hair for church, that her love for bananas no longer keeps her from eating anything else.

I met her last year, a bright eight-year-old who bopped noisily into my cabin and claimed her bunk for the week. I didn't really no what to do with a child with Aspergers, and neither did she know what to do with me, a new authority figure in her world who didn't allow stuffed animals to come to dinner time and who asked her to stay with the rest of the cabin. And so we spent our week in some sort of warfare, physical and spiritual, both of us with tears in our eyes, though tears of rather different sorts. But I wanted to see her again.

This summer, if anything, she waltzes into my cabin with more zest for life, ready to introduce her Webkins to me, telling me to close my eyes and simultaneously unzip her bulging suitcase. I half expect the contents to burst out at me like a well-wound jack-in-the-box, well trained by their exuberant master.

I see immediately that she has grown. Her bright yellow sneakers are undoubtedly larger than last year's shoes, her figure a little taller. But throughout the week I watch as she initiates games with her cabinmates. I watch as she tries new food. I listen as she asks for prayer. I listen as she sings new songs she's learned. I feel her arm sneak around me in a hug at line call. Becky has grown. Something inside her has responded to love. Something inside her has awakened in response to the many prayers surrounding her presence at camp.

She's the one who gives me the words one Sabbath afternoon as the rest of the campers and I sit out on the porch, enjoying solitude and sunshine. "Hey--hey, do you want my signature?" she asks me, coming up with a stamp in hand. "Sure, Becky," I say, curious to see what will happen next. "You--you say. . . " she instructs me as to what I must ask her in order to receive the honor. Then I say what I've been dying to say all week: "Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?" And there on the yellow paper she plants her seal: the name JESUS inked in red and BECKY childishly scrawled below.

Camp Cherokee

2009-08-13T21:51:00.006-04:00

And again: what can be said in a mere smattering of words that will adequately sum up a glorious six-and-a-half weeks at Camp Cherokee?

Of course there were many fun things of which I shall litter about some documentation...

Slaloming for the first time

Lovely Algonquin

Muddifying my legs

Visiting friends and picking huckleberries

Rustling bulrushes while watching over baby Moses

Swampy ventures with good friends

Choco and croc larks fueled by yummy breakfasts

Teaching horse lessons with the assistance of our hooved staff

But that is not half of it, or at least it ought not to be. It is about a heart altar and full submission.

It is about quiet moments with God on the dock. It is about a unified staff. It is about friendship and brother to sister love. It is about trial and prayer and repaired bathhouses and fixed swimming pools and righted wells. It is about stories of changed lives.

And it is about these ones.

Especially this one.

And there will be more.

True Friendship is a Knott Which Angel Hands Have Tied

2009-08-13T20:56:00.006-04:00

And so it has happened. The White and the Blue Nile have joined into the one Nile, a river flowing through a desert land, a great swell of water that is life and a blessing to those around it because of its mighty Source...

Yes, I have cried tears. A brilliant blue bridesmaid dress could not prevent them, and neither could a reunion with my whole family. But they are droplets shed for an era past, not of real sorrow--they are for my childhood, our childhood. We grow, we blossom, we move on. And it is the acculmulation of all those growth spurts and transplants and waterings and buddings that has led to this celebration of two lives led by God's caring fingers. And I think that it is just as much for the wonder of this new and happy journey, for my brother and new sister, that I cry--joyful tears.

Happy Camper

2009-06-17T19:49:00.005-04:00

Burnt Granola

2009-06-17T18:48:00.006-04:00

That indescribable odor that picks up just where the fragrance of warm vanilla oats leaves off curled my nose hairs so violently this morning that it finally woke me up. I probably got downstairs in 2 seconds flat, less time than it takes me even when I hear a cat getting sick down in the living room. The heated mixture was out in another second and I stood grumbling my eyes at it in disbelief.

Such a small thing. Extra toasty granola, still edible, but little better than a chore to eat. They've always told us not to cry over spilled milk. And yet I found myself musing on my granola still by the time I left for work an hour or two later, and occasionally throughout the day. I oughtn't to say it is the waste that bothers me the most since I just told you that the granola was not burnt, merely much darker than I enjoy it. Neither am I distressed solely by the fact that my brother is returning from Bolivia in two days and that he deserves much better than conversation-deafening crunches for breakfast. Perhaps it is the dismay that such perfectly tasty ingredients--the right ones, the right proportions--can so miserably be turned into delightless fodder by the mistake of an extra hour's heat.

One good thing about chewing something for a while is that it eventually because soft enough to swallow. This morning I could hear only the noise of my burnt granola in my head-- the little pinch of a small failure-- but upon working on it most of the day, at least some extent of digestion occured.

As children we are taught that when we make mistakes we must suffer for them, and that, to a great extent, is true. If studies are neglected, 'A's do tend to be rather shy. If we take too much food, well, the polite thing is to finish it. If we stay up too late, we will be tired in the morning. We are trained to believe that we will "pay" if we do something wrong. Life has therefore taught us that if we do something foolish like burning our granola, we must suffer through it and eat it until the very final toasted oat breaks between our teeth and makes its way through our bodies.

And yet, what are we as humans but perfectly wholesome ingredients gone awry? We are chosen, created, prepared, grown, nourished, perfected, confirmed, strengthened--and then we go and burn our granola. We rebel. We backbite. We scorn. But here is where the life-long lessons of justice are spun until their limbs are splayed out and then set shaking and confused on the ground: God doesn't work like life. God is merciful. As we recognize that we have burnt our granola, He is the one in the bakery, turning on the oven to just the right temperature, lovingly making us a whole new batch with His warm hands, and showing us how to do better next time.

Oh, For the Artsy Travelers

2009-05-28T19:13:00.007-04:00

They tell me she sounds crochety. But that is after I have already boisterously agreed to drive several hours across the state to meet her. I wouldn't have been able to resist anyway. Another opportunity to get lost, and this time in pretty countryside, sounds intriguing and worth the gas to get there. And what can be sinister in hillsides bathed in baby leaves, misted with a light drizzle of fog?

It's all a wild goose chase. She might not be where I am supposed to meet her, in St. Albans, VT. Her phone number is wrong on her website. My boss shakes his head and jokes to his wife and I that we had better watch out for these artsy people who have difficulty with concrete and objective things. Like directions? Like equations? I squeak up a minor protest.

So here I am in Cambridge, VT after a wait or two here and there in Barnet and Morrisville. I've already gone past the Johnson Woolworks, the place where, according to my boss, they make the original red and black plaid wool shirts in a factory that has been working at least one hundred fifty years. I've already passed Hardwick too, with its bold yellow signs saying "WATCH OUT FOR SNOW FROM ROOF" and Jeffersonville with the yellow signs emboldened by a tractor figure. I pull off the main drag and call the webdesigner, this said artsy person. I am surprised that I have cellphone service.

I immediately decide that I like her. Crotchety? Bah humbug. I barely get it out that I am calling in behalf of my boss when she cuts in with a "yes, I know all about you, Emily." She won't let me call her Ms. but insists I call her Claire. She tells me that she will meet me in a few minutes at a "nice looking little gas station and convenience store" that will be off to my left in a few miles.

I beat her there and wait in my car. Perhaps the little gas station is nice looking for these hereabouts. And then she arrives. She is almost a second Paul Bunyan--decked out in a fishing vest, large glasses, and dark blue dungarees. I shake her hand and give her the information for the school website.

"At least you got to see a lot of Vermont," she says as she walks to the driver's side of her dark green Chevy.
"Uh huh, especially after being in Michigan so long."
She leans on the roof of her car. "What're you studying?"
I can barely reply "English" before she is nodding her head.
"Excellent!"
I grin and look up at her in time to hear the rest of her sentence: "...and a perfectly useless degree." She beams back at me. We share the glow for a moment and she gives me a knowing nod.
"Yep, we English majors are poor, but we sure lead interesting lives. Keep at it. Oh, and by the way, they make great sandwiches in there," she says, pointing her chin at the little shop.

Dirt Under the Fingernails

2009-05-27T19:08:00.002-04:00

It is raining lightly--I suppose it is about time since we have had three days in a row of sunshine.

Mum and I tromp down the bank to the garden, stomp on the tops of our shovels, and begin cutting away the grass that has crept into the soil. Within minutes my hands are nearly black from pulling up the chunks of sod and shaking the mud out of the roots.

These two weeks at home will grant me the extent of my gardening experience for the summer. Even so, they are infringed upon by the gut-deep guilt that I should be doing something to earn money. And yet, what can replace these hours of grubbiness, these conversations with Mum, these wet heads? The worms whisk slickly into their holes as we disturb them. The spearmint that has taken over the far corner of the garden also claims a patch of the surrounding air and I am so tempted by the fragrance that I grab a leaf and chew it. "We could pick it and dry it," I say, thinking of cups of hot tea come wintertime. "Yes," she replies, her eyes all chipper-like, "we could make our own toothpaste." We laugh. But I've always liked wintergreen better anyway.

Somehow it is peaceful down here, sandwiched between the blueberry bushes and the pond, and I have trouble leaving when we go in to make supper. I tell the garden that I want to return; no, not just for a visit to this little plot later on this summer, but to the whole mindset when I have the space to plant my own tomatoes. It is safe here, restful, necessary. No amount of money can change the fact that most of us, come about five o'clock in the evening, feel the questioning murmurs in our stomachs. No amount of efficiency can hurry the growth that God is in charge of. No amount of stress can erase the recognition of His bounty. Yes, I will be back-- hopefully in time for the blueberry season too.

Some Thoughts on the Present

2009-05-26T16:02:00.008-04:00

This morning my father took his five students--ranging from fifth to tenth grade--out for a paddle on Joe's Pond. With very little convincing I came along as a driver, a boat loader, and as the second person for one of the canoes.

Dad stopped at nearly every curve in the channel to point out something. There were the methane gas bubbles, rising to the surface from the decaying process underneath the mud. There were the kingfishers and the swallows, fleet by wing, bugcatchers, nimble. There was the loon on her nest and the crow in a treetop standoff with protective redwing parents. There was the mayfly in the short non-larva lifespan of some three days. Dad talked about the lily pads beginning to grow as soon as the ice goes out, gradually uncurling their reddened leaves into the sunlight. He mentioned that only a month ago this particular pond was still covered in ice...

---

When I was in elementary school and highschool I took it for granted too. There were always the camping trips. There were long walks on Sabbaths in which we learned how to sit quietly on mossy streamrocks, listening to the water gurgling across old leaves and smoothed stones. There were the horses that came along, the cats, the dogs, the turtles--all gifts that I could hardly see because they were as much a part of my cheerful bubble as sleeping was at night.

---

Last night I went to see Grayson. It has nearly been a year since he came to his new home, and I was not surprised to once again find him in excellent health, good spirits, and with an unsatiable desire for May green grass. When I arrived back home later in the evening, my parents mentioned that next weekend they had decided to go visit my grandfather's little old cabins and property in the woods of Heath, MA. Coming off from my slightly wistful visit of my childhood buddy, I found myself free to answer that I would love to go, noting that I was unconfined by a horse who would need his supper back home.

---

And neither will my present moments return--the tiny world of a university campus, the flexible job schedule, the opportunities and freedom to go anywhere, do anything, as long as the money holds out. Working at a summer camp, taking the morning to help my parents cut and split their winter wood, going along as a driver on my father's school-outings...

Ask Mr. Renkins, the old Vermont farmer who stopped by yesterday morning as we ran our neighbor's wood-splitter, the same guy who watched me ride my white horse "king Arthur-like" through all the green fields as a homeschooled highschool student. He would shake his head again and say that I still haven't found it yet either, in the same way I watch my father's students squabble amongst themselves, not clear whether it was a kingfisher or a barn swallow who just flitted in front of them, and wonder where they will be in the next five years.

Extravagance

2009-05-01T15:44:00.005-04:00

Credit for top photo--Jodi S.

P.S.

2009-04-15T21:47:00.003-04:00

This afternoon I went to check on the unsupervised boots. It rained yesterday. Perhaps they had splashed themselves into some trouble. Perhaps I simply needed an excuse to visit the river.

From a distance I could see the black blob on the edge of the trail. I grinned. Perhaps my hypothesis was right. The boots' person clearly did not intend to return to their task masters. No one had picked them up for charity either. . . But wait! As my own shoes dragged me down the hill toward the dark spot I realized that something was amiss. There was but one boot, black as ever, white topped, lonesome, pointing its solemn nose across the river to the cornfield.

I could go on, about the necessity of delivering oneself wholly into the sprouting and green-thumbed hands of spring and giving up both boots and squishing into the freedom of mud under all ten toes rather than holding onto a piece of bondage. But that would be silly. Both boots were here two days ago. Something had clearly happened to one of them.

That was a good excuse too. I peered into the water on the right side of the trail. No boot. I scanned the shallows on the left side. No boot. I looked for it as I ran down to the river access point. No boot. And up the hill again. And then I forgot about it when I clambored back up through the tree across the trail, and ran back to my jealous homework. And I forgot about the woodchuck too...

And what of the woodchuck that waddled over the bank as I descended toward the boots, the plump fellow who impudently sat up on his haunches some five feet below the trail, by the stump of a fallen tree, and looked at me? What better witness could be found for the story of the strange disappearance of the boot?

I shall have to go see about that tomorrow.

Leave Off Your Boots

2009-04-12T22:53:00.005-04:00

There sat the boots in the middle of the trail; black, and as tidy, though not so shiny, as a show horse's squared front hooves.

The edges of the trail were licked with the sunlit dimples of the overflowed St. Joseph river, and the birds were singing around me. It was enchanting indeed, but not generally a place boots would go unchaperoned.

I half expected to find their walking mates as I rounded the last corner and came directly upon the river. I had a chuckle ready, suspecting a jolly fellow overcome with spring fever like the young fisherman I found in Lemon Creek yesterday, darting around after minnows with two sticks. But there was only more sunshine, and the eager river ascending up the banks, its cool mouth glad to take my sweaty fingers and then return them to me, wet but clean.

Here I was stopping again. It was cool by the water, unlike the heat cloud dancing after me on the pavement. There were baby green sprouts beginning on the bushes near the bank, and behind me the birds were insistent. I turned to go, running again, on the narrow spit of land between the pools of shallow floodland.

And there were the boots again. Perhaps their owner had already acquiesced to the calls of spring and dove in with them still on, like I longed to do, leaving the wet things to dessicate in the April sun with plans to return. Or maybe they left the boots for charity, counting on some thrifty walker to take them in, braving the damp smell. But I like to imagine the sudden leap into the air, the ecstatic howl, the kicking off of the boots into the April breeze, the pattering off barefoot; the happy person so tipsy with spring that the only things remembered in the drunken capers up the trail were the dutchmen's britches growing along the edges of the bank.

I never even found the socks.

Springtime in Vermont

2009-03-18T13:50:00.005-04:00

Courage, Dear Heart

2009-02-15T10:46:00.002-05:00

Lucy stands in the crows nest, high above the deck of The Dawn Treader, with an arrow ready on her bowstring. Ahead of her lies the dark tunnel, a lump of blackness and despair that seemingly cannot be penetrated with any physical light. She shivers. Her heart quakes as she looks ahead at this test, this foolhardy adventure, and in her heart she prays for the one light that she knows can go with her anywhere. As the ship nears the entrance of the dark tunnel, she looks back one last time at the Sun and sees something in the shape of a darkened cross against the brightness. She blinks as she sees it getting larger and then realizes that it is a bird of the sea, an albatross. And suddenly it is above her, circling around the mast, closer and closer until it whirrs near her head, surrounding her with a glorious perfume and the whispered words: Courage, dear heart.

* * *

I wake up overwhelmed. I am exhausted. It is still dark out, and I am already worrying about the outcome of my day. It is not merely that this single day has me stumped, but that the weeks to come are looking blacker as the February zooms closer to midterms. And this morning--I have a paper to finish, a bed to be made, and some semblance of physical presentation necessary before I arrive at work in so short amount of time. I take the time to open my Bible, to be assured that my strength is indeed inadequate and that God's strength alone is perfected in my weakness. All too soon I set about my other tasks and finally find myself running to work to make it on time, praying. Something moves on the ground in front of me at the base of one of the large campus trees, leaving the ground and flapping up to the lowest branch. I stop running, noting already by its size that it is a hawk, musing that it is likely the red-tail I have often seen down by the dairy. I am within twenty feet of it now, and it still sits there, looking around, seemingly unconcerned. I keep walking, and it flies to a tree on the other side of the side-walk, its brown and white speckled chest clearly visible. I walk nearly underneath it, stop, and gaze up at its eyes, at its folded wings, at its curving beak. I stand there and know that I am already a minute or two late for work, that my paper is not as I would like it, and that there are yet many hours until Sabbath. But that is okay. Courage, dear heart.

He Counts the Stars- Psalm 147:4

2009-01-28T15:08:00.010-05:00

We very rarely begin a task without having a specific, self-interested reason for doing so. We attend school perhaps because we want to learn, but of course due to the reality that without an education, we do not have as much opportunity for making a living. In turn, we work not necessarily because we enjoy it, but because we wish to have the perks that come along with money. We are kind to our neighbors, hopefully in wishing to live as Christ, but as a practical means of ensuring our own support when we ourselves are in difficult straits.

He counts the number of the stars.

I daresay He does not need to know their number. He has told us that He can count the stars, and yet has never published in human tongue the exact number, like He might of if He were human--He has not printed it in the latest scientific journal, signed GOD. In that sense He has not boasted. And it is not as if stars are human beings, in need of at least the occassional meal or sip of water, or birds, desirous of twig-ball nests and leafy branches above them, or living creatures in need of His mighty hand for survival. To be sure, however, stars owe to Him their placement and their suspension in the atmosphere. But stars are stars: things we humans know so little about in the grand scheme of things; bright drops in the sky little children look at and imagine to be nail holes of light into the heavens, or rolling orbs of fire, or fireflies, forever placed and forever "on." What end is to be achieved by counting them?

He counts the number of the stars.

Could it be else, but wonder? Could it be else but uncontainable joy? John Ortberg writes in The Life You've Always Wanted that he imagines God saying to the sun each day, with the innocence and joy of a child, "Do it again," shine another day (62). And why not to the stars as well? To God, they have never grown dusty--each morning, each evening, like the first day, He kindles fire in them again, calling them by their individual name, glowing them.

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them

God told Abraham several times in Genesis that his descendants would someday be as the stars. In Genesis 15, we read that "He [God] took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' " God concludes His show-and-tell by reminding Abraham once again that his family will once be that numerous.

Are not we, by faith, children of Abraham? Are not we the uncountable stars burning little dots of light into the black around us?

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them

Like the stars, we each have our own name, given by an excited and fond-eyed Name-giver in a continual burst of creativity. We ourselves are evidences of God's laughter, delight, and star-counting extravagance; uniquely called and predestined and justified and glorified.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes:
“What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?" (150).

And so He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.

He has given us names that each take part in His wonder. He has given us pieces of Himself, bits of His starglow. And yet though we are too many to count, His light is not reduced by a fraction--It fills the heavens so as to take away need of the sun--it is only amplified by the gift.

Seeing Snow

2009-01-25T20:25:00.006-05:00

Snow...

Has been crawling up trees like overly-large albino catepillars, or slugs leaving trails of white mucas behind them, or sub-sandwiches pickable and munchable

Snow has been clining to twigs like particles of pussy willows

Snow has been hugging limbs like giant rodents, balancing with the aide of long tails, attempting to soak up the sun

Snow has been capping scarlet berries with crystal drops of white

Snow has been pillowing woodland arches with wild wraps

Snow has been carved by the wind, flaked and shattered into pointed shards

Snow has been following winter-browned flowers with funnels of shadow

Snow has been skating around golden grass stems, leaving a history of subtle waves

And snow has been bluing and dancing and growing in reddened peach orchards

And growing in the sun

Ode to a Missionary's Crocs

2008-12-31T21:24:00.010-05:00

With hiking poles they clapped their soles
while strapped to backpacking sacks, and sang
their marching song with softer note to cookstove
cooked soup and tired heels and toes
rose-colored with climbing, walking, comforting
them cozy-like. Somedays, crocing, they slid
on mud amid puddles, squeaking wet and
clean with cold--but cradling feet in such a way,
contagiously congenial.

When winter whipped a fire-red
sheen across cheeks and stiffened beards
with beads of frosted snow, they worked with wool
and warmly wiped the windy blusters off and swept
them skating out through open windows, snuggling
about the chilly feet a lullaby of soft sole and
curving length sprinkled with holes.
Travelers, they lately tromped amongst trials
and children, sharing smiles despite a thinning
life of labor, flying with fever-relievers and bearing
help to souls by bearing him.

Faithful, they, even when holing, forbearing
several rocks only to bruise and black his arch, doing what
a pair of recycled tire bits, rough, dark, blistering, though trusty,
will never do.

A Few Much-Loved and Delightfully-Unified Scraps Finally Become Colorfully Warm

2008-12-17T23:02:00.005-05:00

Drippings

2008-12-16T21:56:00.002-05:00

"All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. . . ." --Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

As I have looked this week at the results of an icestorm, I have seen thousands of frozen droplets dangling like crystals from saplings and fences. I have felt the cold hardening my gloved fingers and even overcoming the fluffed-out warmth of the little Arabian horse between my knees. I have slid down our dirt road on the heels of my shoes, spun up icy sections of pavement with my car, and punched through tough crusts. I have felt my misty breath come back in my face, and seen the white frost bristling my mum's eyebrows after a forty-five minute walk. But unlike this frozen region and these droplets, caught mid-drip into a hard tooth of ice, there are musical and spring-like drippings, nay, torrents of joy drenching me. They have not been sealed up, like these wires, in icy cases; they have not been confined by shortened sunlight, or buried, like the Reeses Peanut-Butter-Cup wrapping I found, underneath six inches of sodden snow. And due to their Source, neither will they be.

The Puzzle of Stickers

2008-12-16T20:57:00.002-05:00

You are so proud the day your teacher gives you a gold star sticker for your brightness. It stays on your clothes all day, but when you try to attach it the next day, it falls, its points curling, onto the floor where it promptly finds your brother's shoe and hangs out on the bottom for a couple of days. Not to worry. The next weekend your grandmother tucks a whole sheet of smiling horse and leaping turtle stickers into your birthday card, and your friend gives you a whole book of global frogs, carefully labeled and realistically colored. They're pretty and shiny and stickable. They're yours. But you discovered when you were three that they rip easily, and by four that they can only be stuck successfully once (most happily on a wall until your collection is discovered and you receive a gentle spanking). By five you sometimes considered the consequences of sticking them, and by six you became stingy, only occassionally sacrificing a whole colony at once. Now you have a whole box of sticker sheets--fuzzy ones, sparkly ones, big ones, small ones--that you are too cautious to use randomly, and not dedicated enough to organize.

Sometimes you decorate your mirror corners, but then you get sick of them and ambitiously try to remove them, only being successful at removing the pretty parts. When you give a friend a card, sometimes you are generously motivated to seal it with a special sticker, but when you get such envelopes yourself, you find that they open funny. So you stick a few on your desk and discover that white remains are no nicer there than on your mirror. You try keeping them in your drawer, but no visitor gets terribly excited over a dusty and yellowing sticker collection. One day you put one on your nose, and then are struck with a creativity of simply throwing them out. Your mom finds them while you are at school and puts them back on your bed. When you get home, you are busy for several hours smothering a poster board with them, and then try to sneak the project into the recycling bin--they have been used their lucky once and they are finished--but someone inevitably cannot bear to see them go. The hideous poster ends up back in your room and you only used one hundredth of your collection to make it.

Finally, you try an extravagant approach: A sticker's life is apparently long, so make the most of it. You start your collection on mom's filing cabinet where she can keep them, where they are not being wasted by lack of usage, and where everyone can gloat about their cheap beauty. Who knows? Maybe your grandbabies will get excited about them, manage to rip a few of them cleanly off, and eat them. And not even a clique of stickers can stick long in a baby's digestive system.

A Ballad

2008-11-30T22:38:00.004-05:00

It happened now in ages past--
A week has passed since that ago
When east coast lawns shared their repast
With green, whilst we had snow,
And waking he to seeing fiery red
Where brown and wire of chicken coop should be
Instead, he rising from his Sunday bed
Of sleep went racing out, bed clothes flying free
And little caring where they fell. Not yet dead,
There they squawked. Helpless, hot,
They crowded there and crowed
Their pain to the bursting heat, fought
Their neighbors the the coolest side. The road
Had not yet born engines flaring when he
Raced flames and clipped a door in their abode
Through which they panted, clucking free
And hurt not more than a singed span
Of proud-held comb. But he
Looked on his gold-licked arms and
Wondered at the scorch-ed skin with boiling filled--
For heroes feel not flame, nor stand
To see their Chickens burnt or killed.

A Lesson Learned from a Quitter Sock

2008-11-29T21:04:00.005-05:00

You know how it is with quitter socks. From the moment you first favor them with the clothing of your foot they fit loosely and don't seem to cling to the form of your feet. When you first put them in shoes, they surely put up a smooth front at first, holding up until you speed up your pace, and then beginning their foolish creep, down your foot, into the toe of your boot. The temptation is to stop every few feet and pull them up, fixing the problem momentarily, and yet it really is a fruitless endeavor, ending in you dropping behind, constantly worrying, and continually focussing on the uncomfortableness.

There is the always the point when one gives in and must accept the quitter sock. To be sure, it is rather a claustrophobic feeling as it wiggles its way down to keep your toenails company, and you will notice that your heel gets cold as it comes in contact with the cool and slippery sole of your shoe. But then with the acceptance comes the ability to cope, and the determination to keep up, and the gratefulness for the other sock that hasn't quit.

Could it be that God allows us a few "quitter socks" just when we are confident that all our foot-clothings are new and in working order? Could it be that we take our waking moments for granted, our spiritual and physical nourishment, our warmth? Could it be that quitter socks test our endurance and enable us to wind our eyes around the trees and focus on the top of the mountain, pressing on and forgetting our discomfort in view of the glory? Could it be that quitter socks are an opportunity for Thanksgiving?

---

And why not thank Him? Thank Him for the socks that haven't yet quit, yes, but thank Him more for the joy of the race, and for the mountaintop, and for the experience promised upon the mountaintop where we shall finally see Him, and thank Him face to face.

Frosted Shredded Wheat for All Three Meals

2008-11-17T17:03:00.002-05:00

I am on a diet, apparently, one of those in which you eat nothing but the same thing again for every meal. And so it is frosted shredded wheat--fresh snow powdered on all the browning crusty grasses. For breakfast this morning, I looked out the window in order to eat it as it coated the frost-toasted ground and everything else. For lunch, I heard it patter about me in its cold sweetness. For supper, I enjoyed the taste even as I felt it blowing through my sweater and bouncing against me like the spitballs of some imp. Is it sustainable, I ask, or is it just a fad diet come to yo-yo my clothing weight and my emotions in their preparation for the winter to come? As yet, the research results are inconclusive. I only know that I have eaten well today, and that it has been delicious.

Paul Bunyan Returns

2008-11-13T21:57:00.003-05:00

I met her when I was fifteen, and she was formidable. Dressed darkly, silver hair cut in a bowl-shaped fashion, big feet, a slow, wide, thinking smile behind which she hid herself. I was an oboist of five years, timid, lazy, full of complaints about my oboe teacher, and Sue was another option in the area. I don't know if it was the command to put my cold oboe in my armpit to warm it up, or the pointing out that I shouldn't use my own spittle but water to wet my reed, or if was the strong eyebrows convincing me to play more confidently, followed by the calm and dimpled smile. I had a lesson from her once.

My butterflyish oboe teacher did not become more beloved to me after my experience with Sue, but I was certainly more grateful and spent a little bit more time on my scales and silly oboe exercises, waiting for the times when she would challenge me with real music. And then I found the Windham Orchestra, an hour away, to which my patient parents agreed to drive me--a real orchestra, with me as the second oboist. The music was hard. And I discovered the first night that I would have a solo. And I loved it. And I was delighted with Handel's firework music, calling for three oboes, and with Dvorak's 8th Symphony, calling for an English Horn. And I wondered who could possibly be the English Hornist, and who would end up being the additional oboist. I was expecting some night to meet another flitterer like my teacher, or a spry chap like Zeke, the first chair, his long white hair flying and his stature proudly standing about an inch shorter than me.

When I felt a presence next to me that night, of course I looked up, expecting by the feel of darkness and height to see a man. And when I had, I wished I hadn't. I wanted to shrink. It was Sue towering there, the same , slow smile stretching out her face as she recognized me and took her seat next to me as English Hornist and as third oboist.

She was still formidable. All she needed was an axe slung over her stout shoulder and a California Redwood rooted in defiance before her. But her solemn solos began to charm me. She was the first English Hornist I had met, and my fascination with her eerie tone gradually melted away her darkness. And when I learned that I had a solo two measures after hers ended and that I wouldn't have to count until then, she became an instant friend of mine. I marveled at her thick fingers maneuvering through the tricks of Handel, and I was amused at her bushy eyebrows going up and down with the lilting haunt of the English Horn and Dvorak.

I have not seen her in four years now, and had once again almost forgotten about Sue, the rebel oboist who had stolidly propped herself up next to me, her large and dependable embrasure making the big English Horn look small between her knees. I am a bit taller than I was then, definitely thicker, wearing dark pants and a gray shirt. Hair still light though, eyes still blue, feeling so small behind the new acquaintance of the big English Horn that I could perhaps hide behind it, except for my glowing red face and puffing cheeks. And then I saw her--Paul Bunyan, as my brother and I dubbed her--sitting there in the back of my head, her foot thumping inaudibly as the time for my solo came, her smile telling me to play more confidently, and her eyebrows going up and down for expression. Yes, Paul Bunyan has returned, just in time for the last couple rehearsals before the concert. And I hope she'll stick around.

When Not to be Thrifty

2008-11-11T20:50:00.006-05:00

Three mornings a week, I meet the now bundled grounds workers as I walk back from the pool, watching them as they blow leaves off the sidewalks in a futile effort to keep them clear for the next ten users, no, for their own feet on windy days.

It's almost as if I must race the busy-bodies out in the mornings in order to feel the leaves under my feet and to see them sprawled and scuttling across the cold grass and cement. Each morning I fear that they will have stolen my wealth before my eyes can feast on it again, but as yet, the enormity of the task seems to have stumped them--they dare not touch the golden tree next to Nethery, the circle of color beneath it a witness of the thousands of leaves it burst forth in the spring, bore through the summer, and now bequeaths to the grass-loving bugs as their part of the inheritance, casually tinkling the golden plates as if they are common, as if they are only flecks of fools gold some child might be attracted to.

I durst not think I am the only one who benefits from such prodigality, and yet one does have to beat the darkness-blinded leaf-blowers to the leaves, just as one must dash in front of the wind to the sky before it gusts away the morning-pink clouds in order to feel them deeply...

Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about taking time as a child to stop and pick up pennies as small treasures of wealth, enjoy them, and then go hide them for someone else to find--what a rebuke to my hoarding self. Shall I not begin to expose my pocketed coins to the world? Perhaps I will begin by taping a bunch of golden leaves to my window, that others too might find themselves not rained upon with snow, but with brightness.

What the Corn Revealed

2008-11-11T20:31:00.002-05:00

To me it seems I was here
before leaves drowned the trails
with rusty gold; weeks past,
wandering about in a green woods
and green corn towering
above my head, knowing not
particularly where I was, but
in search of some connecting tromp
of tracks to take me home, a loop.
Even my feet laugh now--
but for the corn might I
have seen this edge of field,
clogged tread with mud as today
in finding the desired leg of trail
bleeding with leaves as if shot
and amputated from one of the deer
that leaves steaming pellets
in the air in front of me
this november morning.
Amongst sleet and worries of hunters,
nose bursting with red and running,
mouth madly laughing-- feet slipping on
last defiant sprigs of green and tripping
on the desolate stalks of once-tall corn.

The Joy Stone

2008-11-02T21:11:00.005-05:00

I just remembered it this morning--the stone that sits copious miles to the east in my Vermont drawer. It is a mere pebble really, rather plainly dressed in its smooth robe of creamy white and yellow, and likely the gift of some river before it was the gift of a family friend on my tenth Christmas. In fact, if someone were to throw my stone out into the dirt road by our house on one of these rainy autumn days, and if it were to land upside down, only the grater coming by next spring might turn it over and cause one to stoop and wonder at the word "joy" lying in the mud.

Joy is unique in that way, coming in odd combinations and ungainly carriages. Yesterday it was pawprints in the sand and the flambuoyant fiery gold of unleaving trees, twelve years ago it was dashing barefoot about the yard in the first snow, and a few weeks past it was the homely box turtles and lizard in Tennessee. Turned upsidedown, none of these would be too elaborate either--except perhaps the underbelly of the turtle--and yet they are joy all the same.

I do not think that the gift of my inscripted pocket stone was accidental, although like many things at that age, I somehow missed the significance. I guess I am joy, beyond simply being captured often by it, but even right-side up, we humans aren't too much to look at either. We're awkward. We have dirty shoes. Our hearts continually connive evilities.

Paul writes: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:3-6). If we find joy in things down in our neck of the woods, and if upright and purified minds praying for us find a greater Joy in our learning that true Joy is found in a higher JOY, how much more must the greatest JOY of all experienced by our Lord as he looks down with JOY upon his children who have asked Him to right them and pick them up out of the dirt?

Do bear that around with you. It will grow joyously warm-enough-to-sprout in your pocket, even as you begin to grow and burst resplendent out of His.

Now is the Time for Pumpkins

2008-10-30T21:16:00.002-04:00

We never grew very many pumpkins, and when they did erratically sprout, they were never very big. It might have been because my parents did not think that the soil was quite right, or perhaps because our pumpkins were never like the plump ones some folks buy for carving, but I like to imagine that it was because they had me.

I remember my father tucking me in at night. As I gave him a hug and he prickled me with his beard, he would almost always whisper, "goodnight Pumpkinitus," followed by "don't let the bedbugs bite." Between my squeaks that he desist from the beard prickles, I figured out that my name was indeed Pumpkinitus, and with a childlike acceptance, never wondered why.

Then there were the pies. We were definitely pumpkin eaters when it came to pies, getting excited over the square-freezer-container boxes of pumpkin thawing on the counter. And then there was the fall I discovered that my mother did not like pie crust, and when her brave words were met with the chorus of "me neithers," we ditched the crust for the custard except when company came over.

On those nights when we had all been goofing around and playing and it was getting late and we were all whispering that dad had forgotten what time it was, I always dreaded to hear his remark, "hmmm... I think that some people are going to turn into pumpkins pretty soon if they don't get to bed." And then it was time to slip down the hallway and skedaddle into the covers before he caught us. My father read Cinderella? We never did. It was only years later that I had to giggle at myself for always thinking Dad was just being silly.

I think that is where pumpkinitus came from too--the disease one contracts when the hour becomes late and the eye-lids droopy. So I have pumpkinitus? Or am I Pumpkintus? It is all a matter of perspective. But knowing my dad, he probably looked at his wound-up little goldy-head, saw the child poetically bouncing around a college dorm-room, and meant a perpetual both.

Why I Stay Up Late

Life is good
And I will be the first and last
To part my teeth and say it.
How else could one
Fledge one’s brain with plans
Hatched from
Tender egg shells
And pretend to teach
Them songs they already know
By heart?

You are tired—
But have you tried
Waking at night
Stirred by the swallows
Drinking from your
Birdbath and reminding
You that they are hungry?

In the end I suppose
I don’t want to turn off life
And so keep it on
For the same reason
I rise while it is yet dark.

Over the Dunes

2008-10-27T23:26:00.006-04:00

photo credits to Andrey

The Egg Question

2008-10-27T22:15:00.002-04:00

My mum--a nutritionist, a flabbergasting vegan concocter, and a dear spiritual sister--shared with me once that the vegan who eats an egg is severely affected by the foreign cholesterol agent and suffers from it, whereas to the regular egg-muncher, one more egg is simply that--a tasty breakfast snack that certainly does not assist the HDL happy cholesterols in their battle, but certainly does not overdiscourage them since they are used to such insults. As I have experienced the affect that the rare wedge of cheese has on my digestive tract, it seems fairly likely.

In my modern literature class, we have been reading a fair number of texts, apparently well-known, and equally well-admired. To be sure all of them have contained clever writing, and as a dabbler with words, I am excited by the interesting twists of grammar and pecularly delcicious expressions they contain. But what of the content? It is not simply due to the fact that I grew up without television that I am slightly wary of the innards of these tales, nor to the fact that I have not read their like before--I demolished plenty of junk food when I was little--but in these last couple of years I have found myself gradually going vegan, and simultaneously, yearning for those letters that uplift.

What has less-than-moral literature to do with eggs? All too much when we imagine it slowly lining the arteries of our brain with greese-laden images of crime and sensuality, human depravity and grotesqueness, hindering the flow of clear blood and water to the source of our reasonings. At first it seems innocent enough, the smooth, warm-brown shells and the clear goo suspending the attractive golden orb, the beautiful feel of it in your hand, the fine tapered point, the playful freckles...

But I long to cry out to my professors like St. Augustine does in Confessions: "You clash your rocks and set up a great din: 'This is the place to acquire literacy; here you will develop the eloquence essential to persuasion and argument.' Really? Could we not have learned those useful words elsewhere. . . .?" and again: "It is simply not true that such words are more conveniently learned from obscene stories of this type, though it is all too true that under the influence of the words obscene deeds are the more boldly committed" (19-20).

I will agree that it tastes good; I was a toast-and-scrambled-egg eater myself for many years and it was an effort to see the little black frypan, perfect for a single egg, languish in the cupboard. But that is not the issue. Aren't there more healthful materials to which we might subject our minds and bodies?

Marinated tofu is delightful, a true savor of life unto life--a fully satisfying and fragrant dish for all meals...

Death and Disappointment, Death and Anticipation

2008-10-22T15:53:00.003-04:00

One hundred sixty-four years ago was a day of disappointment as the awaited second coming did not take place. Laughing fingers were pointed at the faithful. Hearts were wounded by a deeper pain than illness, the sting of failure. Minds were frozen by a more paralyzing force than the coming of winter; an ache of more impending sorrow, confusion and death.

This week has been a week of deaths. Word came twice from home: about a cancer-battling church member, and about the venerable Vermonter who sold us our house. Word came also twice about those whom I didn't know: a gentleman down in Florida who was almost like a family member to some friends of mine, and an Andrews Professor's baptizer and spiritual mentor in Tennessee. Most shocking was the email from my old college, informing me that one of my favorite professors had passed away, only a week after a diagnosis of stomach cancer. So we are still experiencing the death and the confusion that our ancestors wept to expect. Because of the Great Disappointment, we are still continually disappointed in the deaths of those whom we hoped would continue to tingle with life.

On October 23, 1844, the farmer Hiram Edson was enlightened as he walked, praying, across his fields. He was shown that the time of the Second Coming was yet in the future; that there was still work to be done, both on earth and in heaven, before all would be ready; that justification and glorification of all Children of God was taking place in the time of waiting; that there was to be, through the experience of the Great Disappointment, an even stronger faith in love, mercy, justice, and peace; that the best was yet to come. And the best is yet to come...

So it is because of that Great Disappointment that we are still filled with a glorious anticipation. It is because of that Great Disappointment that we, who are alive, are able to share it, who would never have had the chance had our world ended in 1844. It is because of that Great Disappointment, and because of the disappointment of death, and because of the conquering of death through Death, that we can look forward, while living in thankfulness, with all the more gratitude to a time when death will be no more.

Feet

2008-10-13T09:46:00.008-04:00

My brother claims that orange-striped Oliver has ugly feet. It is true that since the day he came to live with us as a sick little widget befrought with diarrhea, a boistrous purr, and the kind of eyes, that, as my mother says, often become "fuzzy" with lovey-ness, I too have giggled much over his sillyness, helping with the undignifyingly fond names such as "the Big Cheese" and "Beatrice Bunnyhoffer"--but somehow I cannot quite bring myself to pick on the cozy toes that have brought such a bounteous splotch of orange into my life.

I have been chuckled at lovingly for my feet too, one dear one commenting that the height of my arch makes my foot rather capable of shaking hands, another observing that my toes are calculated to a rather interesting angle. But they are good feet. My sister read somewhere once that high arches tend to make for the longest lasting feet, and I might add as well that my toes seem to like my own shoes quite well. Then too, these feet have carried me for twenty years although I have steadily given them more to bear, have resiliently returned to their pinkish state although I have been foolish enough to subject them to the larger feet and blue bruises of half-tonnish creatures, have remained tender to feeling although I have gritted my teeth and allowed the blisters of rain-filled hiking shoes to overcome them; and they have learned to drive standard, have been poked by rocky-stream beds, and have curled up in wool socks on cold winter nights and clammy-footed othernights.

Most importantly, my feet are learning. They are developing a voice and an action, taking me sometimes to those who need encouragement, and discovering even before I have caught up with them that to be shod with the gospel of peace is more pleasant than to barefootedly arch themselves over the thistles--somehow, even as they gain more earthly scars, they are becoming more beautiful...

I will see Oliver in about two months, and perhaps, like the last time I squeaked up our porch steps, his will be the first loving eyes to halt me, and his the first feet to step on my own in his version of a hug, flipping around my foot, hugging it with all four paws, and attempting to disembowel it. I don't know. But this crazy thought keeps telling me that I needn't fear--that my feet can tread as lightly as his amongst the crackling leaves of October, shining with the sprouting fuzziness of Love.

Silent Pools and Yellow Swim Caps

2008-10-05T21:04:00.003-04:00

The swimmers were brought in to the pool room, resting back like nobility on their specially wheeled shower chairs. Lowered gently with special equipment and loving hands, they relaxed into the calm water, into the arms that wrapped beneath their shoulders, and into the yellow floats that supported their heads and necks. But these waters apparently are not stirred by angels, for these same athletes were lifted back out in the same manner they went in: maimed, cognitively impaired, and silent. Only one crawled out mostly on his own and then lay helpless on the deck, smiling and patient as he waited for assistance into his chariot.

I am learning how to crawl too--my head capped with yellow, and my lungs often drowned with pool water. I feel weak as I have to cease my efforts after nearly every length to catch the breath that rotary breathing seems incapable of supplying. Unlike the invalid waters, mine are turbulent with stroke after stroke of activity, but these stirrings are cruel; they slap me in the mouth as I gulp at the air, they chisil their way up the nose I reluctantly place back in the water, and they reveal muscles that have long enjoyed concealment. I seem to have more trouble accepting help than the patient fellow on the deck. I strain on in inefficiency until I am plunged down to the humility of asking for the encouragement and technique that will make me a fluid swimmer, attempting not to grimace as I realize my deficiency.

Do not my waters need even more of an angelic touch?

This cripple must learn to relax into the arms of the Gentle Healer--and then she will be taught to swim, bursting out of her yellow cap of enthusiasm with a golden Buoyancy.

A Happiness of Plums

2008-09-28T21:48:00.001-04:00

Even to say "plum" is delightful, and apparently I am not the only one to think such silly thoughts. For one, Helen Chasin has an entire poem devoted to "The Word Plum":

"The word PLUM is delicious

pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur

full in the mouth and falling
like fruit

taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh

question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure."

And just this last week Andrews English Chair Douglas Jones commented in class that he loved Ezra Pound's choice of words in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" when he ends one of the poem's lines with "blue plums."

But "plum" is also a bluish purple thought that wants to tumble me out of a plum tree back into Langdon, NH-- a child light enough that I don't squash any of the fruits I land on beneath our neighbor's little stand of trees--to scuffle around in the cold autumn grass with our German-Shepherd-Husky Duke, before he had cancer, and to gobble up the plums my mum tried to save from the bellies of my siblings, cousins, and I.

And it is the color of jam in that little book from the Shed Porter Memorial Library in which the family has so many plums and so much plum jam that they become round with its sugars, and fix their floor tiles with it, and dream about it, and are ruled by a purple stickiness. I don't think that it would scare me anymore.

Even now they are looking at me--juicy, plump, and bursting with their tender fibers, waiting for me to follow them back to the little story my Aunt Jean wrote about a little girl named Emily collecting plums with her brother and sister, putting them in a box, and taking them home to stew on the stove and stir with a long wooden spoon.

But instead I can only place their cool selves in my hand and eat them at mealtimes and othertimes, telling them that another day I might have the time to hold tight to their little stems and allow them to roll me back into the stories they come from...

Right now I only have the time for their happiness.

On This Day

2008-09-22T23:20:00.000-04:00

Seventy-seven and nearly-a-half Julys were amongst his keeping, though only thirteen Mays were amongst mine, and it was a Saturday, and we were called and told that Alhzeimers had won, and we without a grandpa. I only ever got so close as to hug him once or twice that I can remember, and that with great fear--not that he was big and fearsome, but stern and grim and years of battling the world against my tender few... yet how it is that I cried so, and that September 22 never creeps out of the morning mist but I recall a grandpa who I never saw except he wrapped in mystery and gruff whiskers and I in shyness and distance. And so I think of those I know dearly--far away--and with much much fondness.

Psalm 23:3a

2008-09-13T21:57:00.008-04:00

This waterlily is white--and rightfully so. It has petaled its life in sweet water, has been touched only by rain and dew from the heavens and the stray minnow school's nibbling, and has for its center a dollop of fragrant brightness to spread--alighting on kayaks, hiding amongst curls, and coming home along with wet clothing and a transparent snail.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good (Psalm 107:8-9)

Think on These Things

2008-09-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

What if you had woken up this morning to face another day as usual, beginning in a wheelchair and a ride in the bus to a school you would not be at if your IQ was above 55?

What if you wanted to be friendly to the new person sitting in the corner, but everyone told her not to shake your hand because they always seemed to misinterpret your welcoming actions as aggressive grabs?

What if you could only nod or shake your head when someone asked you questions you knew the answers to, and if your hands were perpetually in a position that looked somewhat like yoga?

What if the morning's feat was to recognize your own written name, first and last, and maybe say it?

What if you were miserable but could not explain the emotional turmoil within you and could only let it leak out in fights with your neighbors, complaints about a hot forehead, moans about a headache?

What if you couldn't read the Bible because you were illiterate and could never hope to be otherwise, and if you could not fathom the image of a Heavenly Father?

To echo Jane Kenyon, "It might have been otherwise."

"Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
'Take courage, fear not.
Behold your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you.'
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame wiill leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy"(Isaiah 35:3-6a)

The Importance of Being Joyful

2008-09-07T20:17:00.007-04:00

Once upon a time her name was Sheba. That was back when her muscles were atrophied, and when her coat was full of black grime, and when she lived at a long dark barn in Connecticut. I don't think she was acquainted with very much love in those days.

It has been nearly ten years now since that afternoon when we first went to see her. I remember having a sore throat throughout our four hour journey, and vaguely remember thinking it nifty that she was six months younger than I was. I was too scared to ride her, but my siblings did.

Several days before we brought her home, my sister had the bed-time epiphany that Sheba's new name would be Oh-Be-Joyful, and so she arrived at her friendly new homestead already bearing a new name--a call to joyfulness which she has never turned down since.

I had not seen her for almost two years when I went to visit her this last week, and during this time, she too, like her buddy Grayson, has gone to live with a new family. I will not deny that her coat was not as shiny as it was when we used to brush her every morning, neither was her tail as beautiful, since she has scrubbed much of the top hair off, and there were burrs in it as well as in her mane and forelock. But she still has her new name--she is still Joyful-- and that at least is not something that burrs, nor dirt, nor years can take away from her.

An Office Worker's Rain

2008-09-04T22:05:00.004-04:00

enter ID, squint at screen
half-blind, wholly hapless,
scrawl advisor, number, name
on edge-- repeat. watch umbrella
crawl between glass doors, drag feet through
dingy-lit lanoleum,
shoes squeaking a scream into gagged
air, doors swinging shut a glimpse of green
on gray as always inside, sigh.

Lest I Forget

2008-09-02T21:47:00.004-04:00

What a queer thing is memory: sporatic, embarrassing, ticklish, and rather jolly.

Upon reading an e-mail from a friend who recently visited a clear-watered small lake called Lempster Long Pond, I was reminded of the many times we got up at 5a.m. on a Sabbath morning in order to get to the rock at the far end by about 6, to eat breakfast there, jump in to the scrubbingly cold green-depths, and get back in time for church. And the huge snapping turtles in the swampy bay and the loons toting around their chicks on their backs, and the great blue heron balancing on one foot with great dignity in even his dangling head tassel, and Oscar the dog who we would let off onto the shore and who would swim the last bit.

Today I found my favorite pen, a very fine-pointed thing of the metallic aqua color one sometimes finds on special types of flies that crash into one's window screens on hot days; an implement that instantly guiltifies me about my pen-thieving tendencies, and yet pours me full up with the pleasure of the friendship of Keiron Hall who later presented me with my going away present--the coveted inkwell that makes one take too many notes in class because it is so delightful to write with.

When I saw the two girls headed toward me with a white "Y" shared between them originating from some ipod gadget, I squeaked and immediately remembered listening to one of my favorite Chopin Piano Concertos with my mother in a similar fashion, letting the music pump a connection into us that words would not have created quite so beautifully, and I giggled again at how I would deviously play around with the volume and skip songs and how Mum would give me a I-love-you-so-much-and-you-are-an-imp smirkle.

---

Random memories are exhilarating as well as perplexing, especially when they bring into one's mind a Bible verse one read three years ago on such-and-such-a-day-when-the-sky-looked-so-green-that-one-found-ants-crawling-in-it sort of thing, or when the memory text one learned when one was six presents itself for inspection to a shocked audience of recent members. We are promised that we need never worry about the things we should say in regards to God and His glory in us-- and I suppose that it is through His sense of humor and His delight in rambuctious rememberings that He will work this out. And I can recall now quite a few such specimens.

Fashion, Hanging By Her Toes

2008-08-31T18:09:00.007-04:00

"A lady is known by her shoes and her gloves" -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Tone

2008-08-31T09:24:00.004-04:00

If I were to see me lifting weights, I am sure I would laugh. To use the explanation my friend Cathy gives, I am like a stretched-out rubber band, just as strong as the unstretched ones but rather less convincing.

But I continue to get up a bit earlier most mornings so that I can either go running (in the dark, here) or patter down the stairs to the Lamson Hall Health Club to lift weights. Some of my friends have marveled at this, mumbling something about my self-motivation, but I know that this phenomena has nothing to do with me. I know that Someone shakes me out of bed even when my alarm does not do its part.

Romans 15:1 reads: "Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves." God has given me the ability to rise early and exercise, but beyond this, He has given me the desire to seek Him. Through both my physical and spiritual workouts I continue to grow and find in Him the tone that I have always desired.

But with the extra strength comes responsibility and encouragement to be granted to others--especially to those still asleep and struggling to rise out of bed.

Let Loose

2008-08-21T16:55:00.004-04:00

I used to keep turtles as summer pets, and when the nights began to burn the grass consistently with frost, I would take them over to our neighbor's pond to release them. Standing just beyond the bulrushes, I would watch the little fellows paddle out exuberantly and franticly all at once into the deeper waters, and always noticed that the center of the pond would almost simultaneaously birth a dozen or so forms of bass who would then circle the bewildered little newcomers as if to welcome them.

----

I sit in the doorway of my advisor's office in the English Department at Andrews University, attempting to figure out the details of my transfer. Her husband comes by and I am introduced--last name too, of course--and not thirty seconds later I have a friendly voice from the right and an exclamation from across the hall, and a cheerful assembly of professors and doctors of English and not English, some of whom I have already met, surrounding the part of me that portrudes from the harbor of the office, and swirling about me the cool green feel of a new stretch of friendly waters--and it has already been proven that these ones truly mean their welcome.

Journey Across the Desert

2008-08-19T08:40:00.004-04:00

Once again on the eve of college-life, it is C.S. Lewis who is my inspiration--and this time it is The Horse and His Boy.

Like Shasta, I travel across a wide desert, although mine is not one of sand, but of hours away from home and of mountainlessness and of pavement in place of dirt. Like Shasta, I journey with good company and in two-some style, but instead of swell talking horses named Breehy-hinny-brinny-hooey-haw and Hwin, the cousin-steeds, I and my cousin Merideth are carried by Dinah, the bug-case, and led by some rented creature with no personality and a Massachusetts plate my parents and grandparents condescend to eat from.

I can smell my hot self as the sun pours its heat over me even with the windows down, and there is indeed the smell of hot car and the hours go by and we stop and walk around and eat and it is heat and sun and smell all over again, and sound of squeaking kayak on top of car and occasional jingling from an unhappy alternator belt and hours and beautiful pink sun now and nearly twilight and still desert and no hope of anything else.

Shasta had a mission--to save the Narnians and the Archenlanders, or you might say, Aslan's people--and for that one goal he sweated the miles across the desert from Tashban, heading for the twin top of Mount Pire. I might indeed come from a nicer place than Tashban and be headed off with no mountains in sight, but I have already found several Oasis' of providence like the Winding Arrow River. And I know too that my journey must be worth it as well as his--because my goal, by God's grace and direction, is the same.

Final Ride

2008-08-15T09:28:00.006-04:00

I wanted to visit my little fellow and I needed some alone time with him--how awkward it would be to call someone, ask to come over to their place, and tell them to leave. But God had already arranged it weeks ago that Grayson's other Emily would be off colpuertering...

And so yesterday I went to see him, driving a half-hour around curves and straight across long stretches and up hills, finding him standing covered as thickly with flies as with fleabits. He perked up as I brought him out with my halter--a hand on his mane--dancing his little hooves in joy of going somewhere and bucking me up until I had to admit that my tears were not befitting to a rare and beautiful day of sunshine and a view of mountains, and cool trails, and a rather unafraid deer, and most importantly, a happy-go-lucky horse enjoying a special time with his girl.

No, he's right. We're both exquisitely guided.

You are no-longer a black colt anymore than I a filly-child
Dressed in frilly pink dresses,
But you yet flutter your nostrils at white daisy-patches And roll your eyes, bending from strange
Horse-eating bark in the road and frolicing
When I monkey onto you bareback.
When they thought your name was Raisin, I covered your ears
And your eyes too when they didn't believe you a boy and looked.
That time the nasty mare dented your flea-bitten bumper and
When you cut a thin, red snake into your leg backing off the trailer
I've iced you and soaked your stone-bruises until you
Kicked the Epsom Salts into a puddle on the floor.
You've covered my heart with horse-hair when it lay bare
Against your neck, sneezed yellow snot on my face with
Your wiggling nose and tried to eat toggles off my cargo pants,
Ear-pricking a whinny at me when I come to bring you home.

What's this road before us? Not that long black tunnel
We whisper of when joints burn with arthritis and pain prevents
Grass munching, else there would be acceptance. Nor
a trail blocked with a log--you love to dash over those or bushwack
If needed. It couldn't even
Be a freshly-graded dirt, spread as thickly as chunky peanut butter
With rocks--we would face the bruises together.
No, this is asphalt, a big highway I fear to take you on,
Scared you would lose your snort for country places, your
Romance for green fields. Love bids you stay--eight years later--
So I will have more reason to return, knowing your little nicker still begins high and
Ends in a deep chuckle that makes me laugh too.

Fields in Mid-August

2008-08-15T07:34:00.009-04:00

I sit clattering here on a chattering old cutter bar--a giant sewing machine recklessly unraveling all summer's careful stiches--wintergreen, goldenrod, spiky juniper, wild blueberries, spare stems of hay, young pine, the stray anthill.

Here are no hydraulics, only the wheels to work the pitman rod back and forth, pulled triumphantly by Toyota and wickedly content to buck me off upon encountering a rock, keen blades clicking until they jiggle off their own bolts and destroy themselves in their own efficiency, cutting cleanly the metal, years old, still working, but now in need of adjustment

Further up the knoll Grandpa pulls a modern bushhog behind his farmall tractor. It doesn't carve as clearly as what he commonly used, in years past--the cutter bar-- but it is good that we have backup and Grampa himself admits it works, well--but rather complicated--looking wrong in its orangeness. But that's changing too, like the cabin needing paint and de-mousing, and a lift to its tired joints, and help remembering the glory of its first tidy seams.

In a few hours we take our scythes and clearing saws and bushhogs and tractors and damaged cutter bars and return them to their places one last time--it is time to go, all to Michigan in a few days. School calls and for some, a new way of life after 39 years in New England. And then again, fall is coming and we must leave Summer to busily restitch the patchwork that she loves, knowing too that frost will overtake her before she finishes. But that can be beautiful too.

What For?

2008-08-09T20:36:00.010-04:00

There was a man once who lived in a little cabin out in the woods--far out from any sort of regular houses--contentedly, albeit a bit lonely-like. He had friends whom he would go and visit and take gifts to that he had made, and whom he was always writing letters to and invitations to his little hermitage, which sometimes returned with red stamps on them that the address could not be found, or returned with a kindly written excuse, or like some, didn't return at all.

But the man was far from discouraged. All around his cabin were woodlands and meadows and a pond and tall tree holes and little burrows and salty places and berry patches and as a result of so much plenteous extravagance, so there were also woodpeckers and 'coons and deer and bear and meadow voles and ants and the man delighted in seeing them come and partake of the natural wild delicacies and would talk to them from his porch as he saw them. Because there was no one unfriendly ever visiting the little cove of contentment, the man's four-footed and two-winged neighbors trusted him and minded not his companionship (we might even suppose that they enjoyed it).

One day as the man knelt in the dirt outside his cabin removing a few rare weeds that had come up amongst his lillies and humming, he saw out of the corner of his eye a little orange cat who was sitting under one of his tall pine trees and watching him. He was so surprised that for one split second he noticed that he had stopped humming and then his first thought considered it queer that such a creature would have come way out to his place when there were no houses for miles, and his second observation was that the cat was very small and very thin. He felt compassion and made a little friendly sound in his throat at which the puss dashed into the ferns behind the pine tree and was gone.

Several days went by and the man could not get the little cat out of his head. He began calling the creature Amie and although he would tap his forehead every time he did it and call himself daft, he began putting food out, fresh every day and making those friendly noises in his throat quite often. Six days went by and nothing happened, and then the next morning, he noticed that a little food had disappeared and it was with much excitement that he sat and watched his woodland friends that evening, whispering in such a joyful fashion that one after one he saw them lift their heads from their banquet, look at him, and move even closer.

The next morning a tiny sheltered and padded woven basket appeared next to the man's porch and this time he thought himself so silly that he would not admit to himself that he had put it there and like a addled fellow kept blaming it on "that compassionate man who lived down in the pond a ways." But he couldn't help his excitement about the piece of food being gone and he didn't stop to think if it had been one of the 'coons.

Three days and several morsels later, the man spotted a speck of orange over by the ferns and restraining himself to only one friendly noise, made himself keep working. To his elatement, more orange appeared and the cat hesitantly li-ft-ed--sl-o-w-ly--eac-h--p-aw across the clearing and arriving tentatively at the dish, ate some food. That night the bed had been slept in, and the next morning found the man waiting to serve Amie some breakfast.

Whoa! Not so fast! A helper? Amie sprinted for the ferns and was so fast that the man wondered if the repast had even been noticed. Well, Amie would be very hungry for supper, and so he waited, kindly.

But supper was two days later. The man dared hope that the friendly noises helped draw Amie back, although reason told him that it was the food. Then again... what was touching his fingers, soft-like and...and...fur? He couldn't look... but he knew he was being studied and his fingers quivered under the examination... and shivered so that Amie scurried to the ferns, but he could see the pert orange face peering at him... and drawing nearer.

Three more mealtimes were spent in this fashion and each time the man noticed that less food was getting eaten and more time was absorbed in an odd vibrating underneath the flaming coat and a strange pressure against his knees and loving hands. But that wasn't all. His berrypicking one morning was disturbed by a rustling in the bushes and a squeaky call and a special time of companionship and understanding nose-rubs. That night he left the window open an inch and a half wider than normal... and after a close encounter with glowing eyes, the mans feet were clothed with gladness--in other words, a little orange cat called Friend.

Raspberries

2008-08-07T21:04:00.003-04:00

plump thimbles
brimming with and
dribbling concentrated
beads of red, tracing
thin threads across fingers,
jackets; embroidering
even lips with lines of crimson.

Emily's Place

2008-08-07T16:31:00.019-04:00

It hardly seems like two more months could have slithered already into the hole of history, and yet seemingly they have--I didn't get to know them very well either.

I only know that they woke me up sometimes at 2:30 a.m. to tromp me all 21.3 miles over the Great Range of the Adirondacks...

That they paddled me across Saranac Lake in a yellow double kayak with friends, made sailing boats of my green crocs, and tickled my hand into picking wild blueberries for a yummy fruit smoothie...

That they greeted me each morning with twelve horse rumps and generally nine saddles, and many rides worth of kids all wishing to share my joy...

That they burst over my head a little bubble of spiritual moisture, committed friends, and Godly purpose...

Yes, these slender two months have given me a glimpse of God's place, which has gratefully become...

Indian Cucumbers and Other Delicacies

2008-05-31T21:24:00.012-04:00

Dug up and snapped off, washed

in a cold stream and crunched--at once earthy, refreshing--

so crisp that one immediately goes

and roots up another.

Higher Notes

2008-05-28T21:43:00.004-04:00

Tonight as I walked my horse the half-mile home from his pasture, two Veeries, one perched on each side of the dirt road, warbled back and forth to each other, making the whole evening air swim with burbling streams of notes that seemed to dribble down even into my shoes...

It is Spring. I am surrounded by extravagance. Indeed--

"How Can I Keep From Singing?"

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real though distant hymn
Which hails a new creation.
Above the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing--
It sounds an echo in my soul--
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest 'round me roars
I know the truth, it liveth,
What though the darkness 'round me close,
Songs in the night, it giveth.
What storm can shake my in-most calm
When to this rock I'm clinging?
Since Love's the lord of Heaven and earth--
How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes, the clouds grow thin,
I see the blue above it,
And ever on this pathway smooths
Since first I learned to love it.
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart
A fountain ever springing--
All things are mine since I am His--
How can I keep from singing?

Probably neither Veery has the words of this old hymn consciously running about in a less-than-pea-size brain--but the same force calls them to trickle their little brooks of laughter down onto my head, as that which pulls the hoarse notes out of my earth-bound being, placing them up on green branches and giving a new perspective to the pot-holes in the dirt road. A higher one.

I See Things

2008-05-27T18:14:00.006-04:00

The last camel has just dropped its broad feet deep into the burning grains and crept past the only landmark in miles and miles of desert: a boulder the height of one camel and the width of several more. It is still hot. The sun has been a ball of burning glare all morning, and now, being mid-day, the heated light glints off of the otherwise expressionless sand. Even the camels begin to tire, their tall backs looking less like mountains than like small humps fuzzed all over with dried brown grass. As the drivers grow hungry and spread peanut butter thickly on pieces of dried and crumbling bread, the camels relax their placid forms, becoming one with the yellowed expanse.

Minty Ground

2008-05-22T18:08:00.009-04:00

She thought that mint would be a sweet addition to her garden and so she transplanted it from the edges of the pond into the little plot beside the house. It smelled so good when she knelt barefoot in the dirt to weed out her thyme and basil, or bent over at the other end of the tilled ground to inspect her blossoming peas. Sometimes she could even find the minty flavor springing into her kitchen window while she washed dishes.
The velvety, fragrant little community became a literal multitude of happy greens, all spreading their roots throughout the entire area of herb beds as if it was theirs to keep. She was concerned as she thought of the carefully mothered tomatoe seedlings sunning in front of the house. It was time for the mint to go before they wove their lacy strings around every beet sprout and chive stem and suffocated the whole garden of her manure-enriched loam.
As she began cutting into the mass of mint with her spade, the fragrance almost changed her mind and for a moment she paused, pointing her nose up into the air to smell the apple blossoms from the orchard next door. She resumed her task with new energy, hauling pounds of mint down to the weed and brush pile near the pond. She hummed as she opened the up the soil to new life and stopped to study a toad she unearthed from its burrow.
Straighting up--finished and breathing freely--she noted the depression in the soil caused by the drastic surgery. And she knew that the scent of mint would linger on her hands for hours.

Of Goats and Deer

2008-05-21T21:36:00.003-04:00

This morning's run
thumped me through mists
and rain-run mud,
past farmer Brud's farm
where filing up the bank
of the road came goat
after goat, a flock of floppy-eared
cloven-toed creatures, a herd
of sweet-clover-mouths
out for early jaunt unfenced
and free as the frogs out on such
a moist morning. One fellow
bleated at me and pranced on his
neat toes to my fingers,
a bottle baby seeking esteem
and wither-scratches.

Tonight's drive sighted
me in evening fog with rainy drops
against my wipers, night just
placing its wrappers wetly around
my town in a way that makes
me fear mildew. A shapely blob
on twiggy legs morphed from pavement
dank as my foot clutched the brake
tightly, shifting all sights to
the deer frozen in the lights
and clearly undecided until
I was too close for breathing,
diving in front of me before
I was fully stopped--
metal and hide finding
their acquaintance hindered
by ten cloven feet.

Twenty and Tending Sheep

2008-05-19T22:55:00.008-04:00

I am in-between college and a summer of ministry, and in a worldly sense, doing nothing. Coming from a hard-working family, I have felt a slight bit odd volunteering my time to some church folks in need and helping my mother garden, clean-out, and work around the house as I wait for June 8 to arrive, especially knowing that I could have been employed with a well-paying job for these few weeks. This morning found me miserable, feeling useless, and basing my self-esteem on productivity. And not for the first time.

As I sat praying, nearly in tears, I somehow knocked my daily devotion book, My Life Today by Ellen White, and it turned of its own accord from May 19 to June 5. Curious, I began to read, and to tremble: "The Bible Shows the Way to True Happiness." I read of satisfaction found in a life of doing God's will, whether it seem small or great, of the importance of soaking up God's Word in order to impart His light to those around me. I read of true happiness, of self-esteem found in God, of doing everything for the glory of God instead of for the pride of accomplishment, of making God "first and last and best" in everything. Flipping back a page or two to June 3, I read "The reason why some are restless is that they do not go to the only true source of happiness. They are ever trying to find out of Christ that enjoyment which is found alone in Him" (158). That would be me.

I thought I had been compassionately chided enough, but God wasn't done with me. I proceeded to read of David and how God sent him back to tend sheep, even after telling him that he was to be the king of Israel and showing him that his destiny lay shining before him. David was placed in solitude, in a quiet, unglamorous, and humble occupation to grow his character into that of a true leader. Most importantly, David was content and joyful and totally trusting of his Heavenly father. His joy came from doing his Father's will and in patiently waiting for the time when God would call him to his next position. Ellen White says of David's experience: "But with new inspiration he composed his melodies and played upon his harp. Before him spread a landscape of rich and varied beauty" (159).

I thought back on the week I have been home, and was reminded again that God has placed me here. I thought of my parents and was reminded of the time God has given me with them before I begin my job away from home and my third year of college--this time out in Michigan. I thought of my eighty-year-old grandmother, who I was on the way to see, my grandmother who suffers from dimentia and who did not remember me when I gave her a hug three hours later, and was reminded that a day with family is precious to someone living in lonliness. I thought of my mother who supports my father in his teaching position and who has been running evangelistic programs for our church, and was reminded that she will begin full-time care of my grandmother for no worldly recognition in a little more than a month. Finally, I was reminded and shown that Christ took a time of forty days and nights of fasting and prayer after His baptism to seek out His Father, in the world's eyes a waste of time--"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18)--and that it was during this time that the devil tempted Christ in an attempt to sever His connection with God, fill Him with discouragement and fear, and draw Him away from His Divine mission.

So, with a sprout of joy and a tadpole of humility, I am tending sheep, and singing.

Oh, and Lord-- thank You for the birthday present.

P.S. We Are All Related

2008-05-18T21:22:00.005-04:00

I can still say that Andy Ward is not my uncle, but to say that we are un-related would be stretching it about as much as to say that we are: he is my third cousin's uncle.

Andrea's paternal grandfather and my maternal grandfather were first cousins. Andy is Andrea's maternal uncle.

Now it is my turn to scratch my head as today I was given a replacement check by my great-grandmother's brother's great-grand-daughter's uncle, Andy.

To Find a Spring Chuckle

2008-05-16T12:55:00.015-04:00

"Did you lose something this last winter?" I smile to hear Uncle Andy's Vermont accent once again, but I must admit that for the moment I am clueless--what have I lost and how does he even know that I am home? Is he calling to tell me that his mother has died?

Andy Ward is not really my uncle. I moved to St. Johnsbury, VT almost four years ago, a despairing sixteen-year-old leaving behind many riding friends in Langdon, NH and having troubles believing that God would provide others. Within a week I discovered that the dirt roads and trails around my house were extensive and that there were many fields containing horses about three miles away from me, but also learned that Grayson was the only horse in my immediate neighborhood.

Barb Machell was the first horse-lady I met on one of my exploration rides into the horse-inhabited areas, but she didn't seem like an immediate connection. And then several weeks later I was coming home from a hike with my family when we passed two thick morgans pulling little carts about 3/4 of a mile above my house--by the time they reached the edges of our property, I was bareback on Grayson, standing at the end of the driveway.

And that was how I met Andrea Turner. "Yeah, my mom told me about you," were her first words. Her mom? Had I met her mom? Apparently so: hadn't I met Barb Machell?

That first summer was a glorious one and among other newfound Vermont delicacies, I spent hours riding with Andrea and her Morgans--Misty, Magic, and Major. The trails around Andrea's house, I learned, were truly endless and kept winding you around corners and hopping you over logs, and coaxing you through just one more muddy puddle or over just another hill from which you could then see the trail, and the countryside, stretching on into the distance, forever. And I learned too that the little schoolhouse sitting at the bottom of Andrea's hill, where my grandmother went to school as a child, belonged to her grandparents, and that the farm below her's was her parents', and that her uncle Wes lived only a half-mile or so away if you took a shortcut through a field, and that just up the other side of the hill from her Grandparents, lived Andy Ward, her uncle.

One evening as Andrea and I were riding past her grandparents' house, her Grandpa Ken came out and took our picture, one which I would have loved to see: A slender grey Arab and a stalwart black Morgan, a sun-browned woman and a blond girl both in braided pigtails. Andy was there too, leaning quietly against his truck and smoking a cigarette.

After I knew that Andy was Andrea's uncle, it seemed that I saw him everywhere--sometimes he was outside his house when I rode by, sometimes he passed me in his white truck. And then I learned that he sold hay, and that he would be glad to supply hay for the girl with the "neat little white horse who looks like he's just floating along." Standing there and chatting in the hayfield as we settled up after a hundred bales, I learned that Grayson was the nicest moving horse that Uncle Andy had ever seen.

***

When I came home from college for my Christmas break this winter, one of my projects was to get a few musty bales out of my barn. $2.00 a bale in Vermont had seemed more economical than paying $6.75 a bale in Massachusetts, but by the time it had been transported four hours and then discovered to be full of dust, and by the time it had caused a visit from the vet for a hint of heaves, it wasn't that much cheaper. I figured that I might as well pay the higher price for better hay, and when I talked to Uncle Andy from whom I had never bought bad hay in the past, he quickly agreed to take the offensive bales back and reimburse me.

***

Grayson and I are back in Vermont now, he finished with Thayer Stables and I with my sophomore year of college. Two days ago while traveling with my mum, I mentioned that I wanted to call Andrea so that we could make the most of my few weeks home. But when Mum checked the messages upon our arrival home, Andrea had beat me to it--"Just wondering if Emily and Grayson are home."

We were going to ride yesterday, but she called me several hours before our meeting time and informed me that her Grandma Florence had passed away early in the morning and that riding would not be an option for a couple of days. No, there was nothing I could help out with as yet, but she would call me of things changed.

***

I honestly cannot remember losing anything this last winter. Now, if Uncle Andy had asked if I had lost anything recently, that would have been a different matter--but January? Has he found one of Grayson's freedom-craving easy boots, even though I am certain that both are sitting in my barn loft?

***

Tom Barrett has a sugar house on Frank Lawrence's land and runs his sap lines throughout Frank's woods at the top of, "Lawrence Hill," the road that runs parallel to our own. Such an arrangement is perplexing and only begins to make sense when you combine the bartering nature of many old-timer Vermonters, and Frank Lawrence's generosity, and the love for the woods that often brings Tom Barrett up Lawrence Hill from his place down in the center of St. Johnsbury to run his dogs. As fellow frequenters of the sugar maple lot, my family bumps into Tom Barrett once in a while, the rest of the time deriving that he has been there by the snow shoe trails along the sap lines, or by the extra attention that our dog, Oscar, might give to a particular patch of tall weeds.

A few days ago, even long past sugaring season for the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Tom was poking around in the maples when he happened to look down and notice what looked to be a check folded in half and lying in the grass. As it had Andy Ward clearly printed on it, and as he knew Andy, he brought it over to Andy's place and they chatted for a while, briefly wondering how it might have arrived three miles away, through a field, and up in a sugaring lot. Tom eventually left, leaving Uncle Andy with the check to scratch his head over.

***

Uncle Andy tells me that he laughed after he looked up the check for $37.50 in his ledger, laughing some more that it was still intact--except for the ink being smudged in one place--and thinking to himself: "I bet I know how it got there."

Now that he knows for sure, Uncle Andy thinks that he'll tell Tom Barrett about it, too. But to me he simply says--"That reimbursement check must have jiggled out of your pocket somehow while you were riding that neat little horse of yours."

Goodbye

2008-05-12T17:43:00.005-04:00

room 115 is empty and no nameplate

hugs the stall where shavings rest

unstirred for once

and the trail through thayer woods may

be green, but the pine-needles

laugh alone

and george hill's pavement might still be

black but no creaking bike buzzes it

with blowing hair

i guess nothing can ever quite replace

roots so recently upset, and those

holes will yet be visited by ants

for a good many years

Nameless Blue Flowers

2008-04-11T08:10:00.007-04:00

3:30 pm: Race to room from work after moaning all day long about the unfairness of indoor classes

3:45 Arrive at barn, having changed and biked up George Hill, past the purple crocuses in the Quill's yard, way too hot with a light sweatshirt and a T-shirt.

4:00 Finish cleaning Grayson's stall, then traipse the mudball himself through the barn and park him in the driveway to be brushed.

4:10 Depart for Thayer Garden

4:12 Stop to listen to a chorus of Spring Peepers

4:13 Pause for an insistent Phoebe

4:30 Wade across the edge of a beaver pond--where the trail used to be--Woodfrogs join the party.

4:45 Enter Thayer Garden

4:45 Gasp at the ground blue with little flowers--for me? Thank you, Father

5:00 Still amongst His extravagance--always

10:00am What are these flowers called?

The Curl in Me

2008-04-10T11:11:00.002-04:00

Does it bother you
That I giggle when I live
Poems, full of glee,

Do you roll your eyes at my jeans
Stained bareback brown and orange bike
Hauled up three flights of stairs?

Are you offended
That my eyes taste the sky, naturally,
That wind’s blush tints my cheeks,

Do you look away
As I dash to class under a blue rucksack
Windbreaker, green crocs

As I eat brussel sprouts,
Rye Bread, 10pm in bed,
To run weights to the nosy sun?

Ah, I see it in your eyebrows
When I speak in class,
When my pants don’t squeeze my thighs

When I don’t own an accentuating dress,
When my banquets hike on mountains,
When I grin at your hinting flattery—

I see it bothers you
That my ironed, desiccated, hair
Will skip back home to curls

Joyful, no matter what you say,
Content, ambiguous,
After soaking up the rain.

God of Wonders, Beyond Our Galaxy

2008-04-06T23:08:00.004-04:00

The view from a mountain of other mountains boiling about me, the sun westernizing its circuit, and the rocks around me glistening even as they shelter me for a moment from the wind can hardly be more Awesome-- and yet, there is Something more incredible, reaching beyond this little moment, and this one place, and this great galaxy...

"Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth;

Keep watch over the door of my lips.

Do not incline my heart to any evil thing,

To practice deeds of wickedness with men who do iniquity;

And do not let me eat of their delicacies.

Let the righteous smite me in kindness and reprove me;

It is oil upon the head;

Do not let my head refuse it..."(Psalm 141:3-5)

Looking Toward New Places

2008-04-06T22:39:00.003-04:00

Where He leads me I will follow, even if the new mountains are flat ones

And even if the new adventures involve no slushing through corn snow.

Young Moon, Old World

2008-03-10T21:12:00.003-04:00

Month after month, the moon returns to an infantile state, as if once more giving this world the opportunity to scrape all its misery up into a heap and begin anew beneath a new moon.

But somehow, even as the moon becomes one sliver of its vast potential, attempting to inspire our earth to grow with it, our globe remains as it is, a mere finger nail clipping--when it might be the whole finger in God's hand.

It is sobering to imagine the day when the moon will no longer shed its innocent light on cold hearts, or demonstrate humility with its monthly reduction, or teach renewal in its luminous growth.

Shadows of Days Gone By

2008-03-10T20:40:00.009-04:00

Ice Crystals and Beaver Trees- 16 Feb 08

2008-02-23T20:06:00.004-05:00

Winter is hanging on by a tenuous thread of frozen water and a
tired shred of woody fiber in South Lancaster, MA. Even with
yesterday's eight inches of fresh snow, the sun is triumphantly
warming up all the cold places to the dripping stage and I am
delighted with both the beauty of a winter day and the brightness
of a spring promise:

"Revive me according to Your lovingkindness,
So that I may keep the testimony of Your mouth" (Psalm 119:88)

Sing Me a Riddle

2008-02-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

A certain assignment of mine was to try my hand at writing a riddle. I must admit that my fingers have never tried their skills on such a project and so am curious if anyone can figure it out... a certain MLK is not allowed to post her guess as she already knows the answer.

I come bearing blossoms

Sweetly heralding the bride of summer,

Vestured newly in the ivory of Lily of the Valley.

Grandparents sigh and point smiling to see me

Scattering Hepaticas

As I mince my way down the springy, new, green carpet,

I have slipped off my snowy sandals,

Flaunting my fine toes in their own brown flesh.

My voice is fresh:

The laughter of a child,

The chirp of birds made cheerful

In familiar places.

I am five, always young again after many years

Mostly past weeping except for in my joy.

My tresses are garlanded with baby Beech leaves,

The May-flower called Trailing Arbutus,

The Pea sprouts of a new planting,

Green twigs, perfuming my paths with growth;

All nourished by my warm nature

And the sunny smile of my wide, blue eyes.

February- 4 Feb 08

2008-02-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

Spring I think, has been sneaking in
To visit my little grey horse,
Coaxing his long fur out
To play and swirl in the damp air.
It falls driftingly about me
Much like the snow still on the ground,
Clinging to my coat,
Melting into my hair,
Turning me into a frosted lump
Personalized by white;
Aging me suddenly with silver,
Springing upon me
An essence of warmth
As I stand here shivering
With my furry horse.

Three Grecian Thoughts

2008-02-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

1. Dorm Room
Cell of solitude and endless productivity,
Often forsake for laughter and sunshine

2.
Give me not a book of philosophy, concerned with
Turns of speech and logic,
Give me a mountain and a horse without reins
And I will learn from the Master

3.
A mix of vegetables and protein we call Greek,
And many cultures make up America;
I do anything to you, you call it hate--
Where is the broad assumption for love?

Shagbark Hickory- 2 Feb 08

2008-02-10T16:01:00.000-05:00

Beneath your shards of flaking skin

I admire your stretching arms

Spanning the blue sky about you

In an embrace of time.

You make my eyes shine,

They catch the sun as I look up at you;

Your girth makes me feel slender

As a willow, next to you

I am tiny and bright

And wondering.

Imposing giant, your feet

Reach far below mine, your crown

Watches my hair

Blowing in a lower breeze.

You've weathered days I cannot fathom

Storms that would leave me shivering

If given sway.

But while you taste the sky

I am rooted,

While you groan, I laugh.

For you, days melt into days,

Snow and mud about your trunk

Until you splinter, never knowing

Today, or me, or Sabbath.

A New "Hebrew" Psalm- 1 Feb 08

2008-02-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

Your servant is overhwhelmed by Your mercy,
Your child is in awe of Your character;
Your daughter will sing Your praises,
Your dear one lays herself at Your feet.
Oh Lord, You have allowed her to be tested,
You have surely brought her into narrow places.
You have placed Your hand upon her;
With Your fingers You have shown her Your way.
In Your kindness You have revealed that which will hurt her,
Yea, even the dangers of self-will You have made clear,
You have freed her from her bondage
And now even with self she praises You;
With Your graces she opens her mouth,
Her tongue moves at the urging of Your love.
Her being is filled with Your wonder;
At Your feet she awaits Your bidding with song.

Praise God for Words

2008-02-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me know that I am not a master of spoken English... I use a lot of "ums" and "likes" and "you knows", and I stutter sometimes, and in general, I have the unclean lips of Isaiah 6:5. But tonight God did indeed touch my lips with His living coal and I can only praise His name. I hardly remember exactly what I said or even the experience in general, except that I suddenly felt comforted as I stood in the front of the College Church, looking out on the faces of my peers--God was next to me, and as I spoke of His guidance in my life, I knew that He had guided me to that very spot. Yes, sometimes we will be led where we don't want to go, to the podium perhaps in order to speak at a student week of prayer, but God most certainly will give the right words in due season and will purify our lips.

A Rebuke, But a Comfort

2008-01-26T19:08:00.000-05:00

Feelings of unrest and homesickness or loneliness may be for your good. Your heavenly Father means to teach you to find in Him the friendship and love and consolation that will satisfy your most earnest hopes and desires. . . . Your only safety and happiness are in making Christ your constant counselor. You can be happy in Him if you had not another friend in the wide world.

-Ellen White, Our High Calling