There is Something Lonely about a Sunset...

Rich, velvet color fled my darkening world and dropped into clouds beyond the little hills. I wanted to grab it with both hands, like a blanket, and pull it back over me. Alas.

Standing on Shoulders

One of the most disturbing postulates of the Emergent movement expressed at our conference last weekend is the one which states that the value and validity inherent in scriptural interpretation is directly proportional to the age of the idea...or put simply--new ideas are better than old ones.

A speaker stated that he used to argue with his father about doctrine until his professor pointed out "of course you argue with your father; you are standing on his shoulders". Whereupon, with the mystery explained, the man was able to acquire a new respect for his father and his antiquated views.

This is sad, somehow, because it assumes a rise in intelligence and reading comprehension that isn't born out by the record. It also silently proposes that great men of faith throughout the ages haven't been granted the insight or inspiration claimed by post-modern theologians.

I feel the fallacy has been fueled by our scientific leaps in recent years. Men discover DNA and now we have libraries of knowledge about it. Computers are invented...and now they are being used to invent. A microbe hunter makes a successful vaccine and suddenly there are explosions of antibiotics and serums.

But--ask language educators and makers of achievement tests--our modern comprehension of literature and linguistics has lost, rather than gained, ground. And the message of the gospel hasn't changed any more than the original documents have changed. They have been there all along, and we aren't suddenly going to understand them better through modern cultural relevance and the rosy glasses of wishful thinking.

A Foggy Sunrise

Fog veils the valleys
Hovers o'er the horizon
And smudges the sun

Conference on the Atonement

Over the weekend I attended a church conference in the city. It was called over a doctrinal issue of highest importance, and those attending were intense, fervent, and contemplative. Literature coming out of our seminary seemed to be striking at the core of one of our basic beliefs and we were compelled to investigate and see if this were indeed the case, or if we were simply misunderstanding poorly written textbooks.

The seminary was well represented there as were our churches in this district. We were cautiously kind to one another, explaining, tiptoeing, and examining.

Beneath those high-ceilings and within those brilliantly windowed walls, I felt like one of many little mice, scurrying around on a marble floor, examining a cat track--discussing at length the depth of the footprint and whether we could live with scratches on the floor.

Meanwhile, no one was allowed to bring up the subject of the large cat--the one sitting in the middle of the floor and smiling.

Family Pictures

I finally got a copy of all the wedding pictures. We just bought the disc--copyright and all. Now wouldn't that have been a neat thing to do years ago at our own wedding? I'm remembering that long ago...33 years now. Actually, there are a lot of neat things you can do now with a wedding and most of them involve a computer. You can print your own programs and invitations, make announcements and updates on facebook, thereby receiving instant reactions from friends, make slide shows, post videos. Life is much more simple ...and of course more complicated at the same time. There are more pictures here than I could possible post...let me see...which ones do I put?

Go Read This Poem

I don't do this very often, but I have to recommend a post on my daughter Carina's writing blog-"A Part of the Main." She wrote this poem for two prompts--(Sunday Scribblings was "wait" and One Single Impression was "Choices"). Today we all got the sad news that a friend of ours had been killed in an accident. He left a wife and two young children. In the light of that news, this poem is especially moving. Please read it. It's called Painless.

charm, feast, robust

Their pizzas were truly a “must”--
Meat-lovers with double stuffed crust,
The feast was quite charming
But, rather alarming,
For my figure became too robust!

Wait...

My son and his wife, along with a few of their friends, have chosen to spend Labor Day weekend climbing this mountain in Colorado--a fourteener by all accounts, which means it's well over two miles high. That's a little ambitious for "not used to the altitude" flat-landers. They left excitedly in the wee hours of the morning, after Turtle had spent half the night trying to give them a crash course in survival. Their pile of stuff was formidable: compass, whistle, space blankets, first-aid stuff, sun screen, mole skin, tent, sleeping bags, matches, flint and steel, water purifier, and lightweight sporks in brilliant colors. Even more impressive was all the stuff they didn't have room for: a net to dry the dishes, a handy, dandy little mess kit all shiny, a cook stove with fuel, a Backpacker magazine with an article on "surviving in the wilds".

Although it's just an easy trail they are climbing, with the temperatures and the altitude, I'm a little nervous. My phone is charged and ready to get that text that says: "We're down."

Wait.

And while I wait I remember a similar trek that my sisters and I once took, up the side of Popocateptl Volcano near Mexico City. It was cold in brilliant sunshine. We hiked four and a half hours and reached a spot about half-way up the snow-covered summit. From there, only the professional climbers went on. We practically ran back down. All of us. My parents were along that time. I was only twelve years old. Here's a picture of the mountain we climbed.

I think climbing is easier than waiting.

A Window from Inside the Earth

I was sorting through old pictures today and ran across this one. It was taken from deep inside the earth--Marvel cave at Silver Dollar City to be exact, and my camera was zoomed in to capture it. I was standing on a deck-like platform and this sky was high above--completely inaccessible.
"What would it be like to live down here," I wondered, "damp and quiet and all shaded in brown, dank air without breezes, except for the periodic wing-flutters of bats headed out?"
I could see the green and yellow overhead. From far away I could even hear the strains of a lively music and the excited voices of children playing--or was that only imagined? For now it was gone.

This is our life on earth, I thought. Up there is our whole understanding of Heaven. We see so little, but even that's enough to make us want to look for a ladder.

The Wonders of Algebra

While I was working diligently in my classroom after school today...(well ok, it wasn't altogether diligently. I was finishing a biography of Clara Schumann that I was afraid would spoil if I left it in the room over a three day weekend but was too close to finished to tote it all the way home and back) I heard excited little feet and voices in the hall. My grandchildren had come to pay me a visit. With them were their two little cousins, whose mother was coaching volleyball in the gymnasium. After my usual bribe of candy, they all embarked on an exploratory whirlwind tour of the room, not missing anything.
Zaya wanted me to explain, in great detail, the synthetic copy of the Rosetta stone hanging on the wall to which it was delegated a few years ago to make room in the library for the much more educational "Drink Milk" posters.




Where was I? Oh yes. I explained about Greek and Demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphics and how important the stone was to interpreting the latter. When I paused and said that I couldn't remember why it was called the Rosetta stone, Zaya put in, quite confidently,
"It's because they found it near the Rosetta bank of the Nile River. I read a book about that."
Oh.
And all along I thought I was enlightening him.

Well. Meanwhile, the three little girls had discovered the chess table and were playing busily. I slipped over just in time to hear Mim say as she picked up a piece.
"Hi. I'm a queen and this is my little pawn son. Can we come over for a visit?"
"Sure," replied Jaida
So the black queen and her little bald son took the knight/horse and they all made a procession across the squares over to the white manor. Chess re-invented.

Zaya borrowed my camera and took pictures of items around the room for a while. Then, while Carina and I were visiting, all four children decided to play at the blackboard.

First, they dipped their fingers in the chalk dust and made comet trails as high as they could reach . Then Jaida and Mim began to write words like hat and all the rhymes to it while Zaya did math problems for fun. After he did an addition problem and a simple division, he wrote Y x 4=6 and asked us to solve it. We did, which led to another serious explanation of what a variable was and how you didn't need to put an x to multiply it; you could just put 4Y=6. We showed him a simple equation that he could do: 3X=9.
"Now wasn't that fun?" I asked
He smiled a huge smile and said happily, "The wonders of algebra!"

(If you think that's amusing, you should play a game of pictionary with them.)

Sunrise, Sunset

This morning's sky was all blue, white and pale--an optimistic bursting through the clouds. By noon it was blazes and heat.

When I stepped out into the hot yellow sky this evening in order to contemplate a walk, my skin felt a couple of raindrops--and I almost kept walking. In fact, if I hadn't seen lightening nearby, I would have done it, because the idea of being soaked to the skin with warm rain is a delicious one after so many days of watching dry skies and hurting for the parched grass. If I had, however, I would have missed seeing the sudden formation of a bright rainbow over the church. It was huge--too large for the camera. I took a few random shots of right, middle arc, and left, then Turtle and I jumped into the car and headed to the edge of town so I could get far enough away to capture the entirety. Alas. By the time we got far enough west, the rainbow had faded.














The sun, however, in a radiant spurt of sparks low on the horizon cast flood lighting on an approaching storm of cloud circles. It was truly majestic.

This last month has been an emotional whirlwind for us and for our church. In the space of thirty days I've attended three weddings and three funerals. We have been through loss and disappointment, and our souls are weary of trying so hard. Yet there are still hungry hearts and lonely people who need us. They need the message of hope that Christ offers. So we carry on. . . and God sends a rainbow to cradle his church. Joy and Sorrow.

Break, Negative, Surface

Eyes watch the water
Empty hands break the surface
It's a negative.

Old Pictures

My daughter "Carina" wanted me to post some old pictures of her being a flower girl at my sister's wedding. Unfortunately, I don't have a few hours to sort through the cabinet with all the little albums in it, so she's going to have to help me find those particular individual pictures. I did, however, sort through the cabinet with the big albums in it and found several pictures.









The first one is a group picture of my sister's wedding and Carina is being a shy, little flower child. Notice how tightly my hand is gripping her shoulder to keep her from dancing away from me. I think she is three years old. In the second she is four and, once again, being a flower girl at a cousins wedding. In the third she is five,the same age that her daughter is now.

The bottom two pictures are not of Carina.
They are of my husband and of our son.
Notice any similarities?

Such a Fine Sight to See

No. This is not a posed picture. They really do work this hard...and most of the time too!

Western Oklahoma

School was out today so that all the teachers could attend the funeral of a dear lady--one who had faithfully attended all our concerts for many years--the choir director's own mother.

Her name was Ruby, and, like her name, she sparkled as she lived her life. The wife of a pastor, the mother of three sons, the grandmother and great-grandmother of many, she shared with them her gift for music and her love of great songs. The service reflected this. It was a celebration, replete with all the old hymns we have come to cherish as outward proclamations of our inward hope and comfort.




We drove north in the early morning and saw sunlight glitter on windmills in the dawning.Passing through several small towns, we saw elevators with wheat painted on the sides.

Coming home we took a different route, so the afternoon found us in northwestern Oklahoma with little traffic and steppe-like terrain. The day was hot; the skies were blue, and the clouds were just poofy little fluffs.

Walking in the Rain

Swiftly to the edge of town
We walked to watch the sun go down

We saw the moon behind the cloud
And heard the crickets trill aloud

Somewhere West we saw it rain
On dusty fields and dry terrain

Saw the cloud bank pink and gray
Saw the lightning skip and play
We hurried home and the clouds gave chase
And we were soaked; we lost the race
But the rain felt wondrous on my face

The Fairy Princess Geek

Yesterday we celebrated my granddaughter Mim's fifth birthday. She has turned into a real "girly" girl whose favorite color is pink and who loves tiaras and necklaces. At the same time, she can't deny her father's engineering genes and instruction, and she often asks her mom if she can play "Think Geek" on the computer. What that means, of course, is can she peruse the website catalog and add desirable items to her "wish list". So after the excitement of the Edwardian dollhouse book, the strawberry princess cake and fairy costume with a real wand, she and her brother settled down to play with the gear machine.