Flashback

Our city park is antiquated. We don't have a lot of the safer, plastic equipment with cushioned areas nestled around them. In fact, these slides and swings are the same ones my children played on and yes...sometimes fell off of when they were growing up. Yesterday, since the weather was so perfect for it, we took the grand children to the park. It was a flashback for us. Old equipment or not, they still had fun.

Small Towns in October

The only way to really see a small town is to walk around in it...preferably in the early morning while all the people are asleep and the noisy semi-trucks are still parked somewhere at an all night truck stop.
We have one stoplight here, with a real pedestrian button and everything, but in the morning you can cross our only four-lane thoroughfare anywhere you wish with intrepidity.


I took pictures all along the route and saved a few favorites:
Here's an old car wash turned into a hay storage shed. Now in a city, where real estate is valuable along main streets, this would never happen, but here, well, as long as it's not in my own back yard, I think it's rather charming.













I also found an old car abandoned in a forest of weeds, its headlights peeping out at the newer, faster models that whiz by all day long.

Tea Party

A semi-proper tea party out of doors in the pleasant September weather. Aunt Claye made poppy seed cupcakes and filled a tiny pitcher with tea. It's becoming a ritual event for Zaya and Mim. She's still making faces for the camera. I wouldn't know where she gets it.

Foggy Morning for a Walk

It was foggy out this morning
I walked right through a cloud
and felt a watery mist upon my arms
So I took a different route
and chased some cooing doves...

The Wolf Spider

It was foggy this morning, and as I returned from my walk I caught sight of a wolf spider web on my neighbor's front lawn. Later, I showed Zaya and Mim, who were fascinated, of course. They immediately ran home and started playing "Wolf spider and grasshopper."



First, Zaya spun a web, walking in tighter and tighter circles. Then he sat in the center and spat viciously at the approaching grasshopper, who barely escaped with her life.


The disgruntled wolf spider was left scowling in his web.

September Sky

It didn't take much to get me out of the house
for a serious walk this evening. There were
clouds but no thunderous grumbles or lightning
threats. So I asked Clay, my faithful walking companion and somebody who doesn't mind my stopping occasionally, ahem, well, every few minutes to take a picture.The sun was setting quickly so we headed out of town where the fields are full of views. After four or five blocks, my camera gave me the dreaded "low battery" message, and promptly refused to come back on. There was a brief debate over whether we should go home for more batteries or keep walking so we could see what we would have been able to take pictures of. I was all for going home, but Clay pointed out that by the time we got back it would be too dark for pictures. We trudged on.
At the edge of town, we turned around and saw the sky lit up--like this but a whole sky hemisphere more impressive. I reached for the camera and turned it on. Nice. It came on...and stayed on for this picture and about eight more. Then it died again, but I didn't care. I had captured a little slice of golden September sky.

The Road Less Traveled By...

Gathers moss?

Well sometimes metaphors don't work in real life. Where are the builders of those ancient Roman roads anyway?

Re-telling an Old Story...

The spot was small and white and troubling; I had tried for many weeks to scrub it off.
"It's just the sun", I thought in a frantic moment, "The sun dried out that little patch and made it look so dead".

But the patches spread and lookers gasped and I found myself outside the camp. My family wept as they watched me from a distance--not daring to approach for the arms they craved around them. Alone I begged beside the path where once I proudly strode into my city, carrying cloaks and silken robes for wrapping wealthy shoulders. They threw me little scraps of bread, but their eyes now shone with fear--and a poor, pathetic pity tainted with disgust.

More than anything I missed a human touch...the little hand of my son grasped firmly, the gentle warmth of my wife against me ..my father's old hand on my shoulder...and the newborn daughter, a cuddle of softness in my arms.

I waited...and I wearied...and I wanted...until the day

Two men came racing in ahead of the crowd. From my hiding place I heard their tattered whispers. "a meddlesome man... coming into the city. .. better if he'd leave this region. Trouble brews ...and the priests are angered. He touches things that were better left alone. Breaks the Sabbath, so they say...
He touches..." and I strained to hear the rest...

From a distance in the graying, I saw them-- a little knot of men approaching--several ahead, and a weary one behind. They were hurrying to slip through the gate before night fall, but if I tried I might be able to intercept them.

I did not think. I only ran, with a burst of speed that drained me, feet stumbling over sharp and ragged rock, leaving tracks of desperate blood.
Then in the dust beside the road I crumpled, overcome with the enormity of my transgression in polluting the path. I heard my own heart throbbing...could not look up. I heard footsteps, tired...slowing....stopping. I dared. I saw the man. Not fleeing, and his face not torn by fear.

"If you are willing"....I began..."Sir, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

He smiled and touched me. I'm willing. Be clean.

He touched me! The untouchable! His clean enveloped like a radiant embrace and I stood there shaking in my joy. The spots were gone. My pale dead skin was radiantly alive.

"Go. Show yourself to the priests," he said. "Don't tell anyone who healed you."
The most marvelous word in any language--clean!
"Not tell anyone?"

Boxcar Children

Zaya has discovered the Boxcar Children Books. Someone donated a couple of them to his school and his teacher thought maybe he would enjoy having them read to him. So his mom handed him the first one on their way to see me this afternoon. He read all the way into town.

Later this afternoon, I read him a couple of the middle chapters. After supper, he stretched out on the floor while his mom visited with Turtle and me and his sister built towers and composed loud, lively songs on the organ.

He remained oblivious to everything , mesmerized by the idea of children living on their own and solving all their own problems. By the time his mom was ready to leave he had finished the first book, and proudly filled us in on the ending. The children had discovered that their grandfather wasn't mean after all and had moved into the house with him, but "guess what? He had the box-car moved into the back yard so they wouldn't be so sad and miss it!" Whew.


We smiled. It took us all back. Carina said when she gets home she is going to dig a box out of her attic--every boxcar book ever written, lovingly packed away by Zaya's other grandma when her son, Zaya's dad, outgrew them years ago.

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.