Prayer for a Raging Tempest

The sun, as it rises this morning, 
is tranquilly bobbing in an apricot sea.
No rain in the sky, no rain on the radar, 
no promise of rain for the upcoming week 
Cracked and parched, limp and wilted, 
pale green of despair--are the fields that compel me to offer this prayer:

Lord, alter the winds 
that swirl in from the oceans
Send us clouds full of water, 
great sheets pouring down
Mists and drips, 
drops and torrents, 
splatting onto the rooftops
And thunder, that shatters the skies with its sound.

I'm not fond of lightning, but I'd gladly bear it...
Just send us some rain, Lord, I know you can spare it.





Alter; verb: Change or cause to change in character or composition, typically in a comparatively small but significant way.

Fond; adjective: having an affection or liking for; affectionate, loving.

Tranquil; adjective: Free from disturbance; calm.

So, Do you Think I should Lose a Few Pounds?

On dieting advice, you will find
That your sweet friends will say: Nevermind,
My dear, you're a star 
Just the way that you are!
Better find one who's brutally kind.

Sweet, Syrupy, Sweet
Delectable, Sugary,
Sweet, Sweet, Sweet Poison*















*As you might have deduced, I'm still on my diet. Sigh!

Bocce

So what are all those people doing standing there? They're playing what I call "poor man's golf" or "an activity for all ages to enjoy out on the lawn on a neither cold nor hot afternoon", in short Bocce Ball. 

 One person throws a small white ball, called a boccino, out on the lawn somewhere. Then everyone else takes turns throwing a colored wooden ball toward the boccino. Whichever ball lands closest to it gets a point for that team.

 In addition, any colored balls from that person's teammates, which have landed closer to the boccino than any ball from the opposing team also earn a point. If someone else's ball hits your perfectly placed one and knocks it away into neighboring yards, too bad.

Since each round must be played from the spot where the boccino rested last, each new throw causes the players to migrate.

It's a pleasant game for a warm evening...but I wouldn't rely on it for exercise.

Erratic, Luminous, Omen

The job of toy advertisers is to make toys look fun. Little children, beholding a picture of other children laughing and dancing wildly as they play with the toy,  are drawn to the promise of future thrills.  My grandson brought a new toy with him for this summer visit, and since the weather was warm, we had to try it out the first afternoon.


There is is: an inflatable ball connected to a hose.
In theory, the water flows through special channels on the outside of the ball, making it bounce erratically all over the grass, chase screaming children, and bring the joy of cooling sprays. Sitting quietly on the lawn, luminous in the summer heat, it did seem like something that would provide at least thirty minutes of gleeful entertainment.

But there were problems. First, the ball refused to dance all over; it just sat there and spewed water.
Ah! it seems the movements portrayed on the box were initiated by the children. In short, they had thrown it up into the air.

Now it's hard to grab and throw a sprinkler when your arms are "child-short". Zaya got around that problem by kicking the ball, an adaptation that worked--for a minute or two. Then the cord twisted; the water supple stopped; the ball just sat there.

It took five minutes for me to untwist the cord which was a convoluted mess. Finally, the water began to spout again while he kicked and shouted whee! (obviously something one was supposed to do while playing with toy--according to the picture on the outside of the box). Then the hose kinked and the water stopped. Zaya helped with the untwisting, shivering in the wind. This cycle was repeated about five times before he announced that he was tired, cold, and ready to do something else, like read a good Foxtrot comic book.  


 
Meanwhile, Mim had been observing the entire scenario from the dry safety of the porch swing, reluctant to get sprayed in the face. I feared her sad face was an omen of a melt-down to come, so  I consoled her with a promise that she could hook up the spray gun and water the flowers.

Zaya came and sat beside us. He had only one comment: "Dumber than advertised!"
At least he was still smiling.

The toy is sitting out on the grass. I'm using it to water the lawn on a rare, windless day in Western Oklahoma.

Mim's Photography

 Mim's been taking pictures all week-end and I promised her we'd upload her pictures and look at them on my computer. Of course there are the usual blurry "I'm learning how to hold still when I shoot" pictures, and lots of "making funny faces" pictures, but among them are some excellent shots as well.

It becomes apparent almost immediately that her perspective is different. Grown-ups really look big when they are shot from a five-year-old's level.

 No, Art's head isn't about to crash into the ceiling, but it certainly looks like it.

 Her brother, Zaya, willingly poses for the camera. Years from now these pictures may show up in a senior slide show or in a "this was your life" album, but right now it's just fun.  I suggested that maybe it would be good to get the distorted, making-faces pictures out of their system so they wouldn't be tempted to post them to facebook when they were in junior high...but Carina said, "We'll see."
Most likely, with technology moving as quickly as it does anymore, there won't be a facebook; that will be an antiquated concept.

They found a long stick of bamboo. I didn't remember a bamboo plant being around there and thought the stick had most likely been thrown by the recent storms, as a large tornado had passed within a few miles of there, but Zaya said it was growing in the southwest corner of the property and he ought to know.

 Here's another shot of furniture--twin bunk beds that are really quite low, but somehow look high in this picture.











There were several rabbits hopping around behind the well house. Ashley and Mim were both snapping pictures. This time, Mim was steady with the camera, and the picture turned out fine.

 We all went for a walk and found lots of material for photographing. I'm including this one because I like the red color.

 Here's Turtle, mowing the lawn.

 Zaya took this picture of Mim with the bamboo pole. She's wearing the camera bag, but was willing to relinquish the camera for long enough to record this moment.

When we uploaded all her pictures, Mim helped me decide which ones to delete and which ones to post. She insisted on this one because she thought it looked "three-dimensional". I'm not sure what technique she used to capture it, but I suspect it's called "running out of batteries".

Questions and Answers

I'm keeping the grandchildren for a few days while their mom and dad go search for a house in the city where they are moving. Our conversations have been quite interesting. I'm trying to catch them as they actually happen, so you can experience them as "off the cuff" as I have.

Zaya:  "Grandma, do you know what makes radiation?"
Me:  "Nope. Haven't a clue. Do you?"
Zaya: "Well it's caused by...um...well, take Uranium for instance, something triggers and it explodes and makes helium because of separating particles, two protons and two neutrons I think but I'm not sure."
Me: "It always produces helium?"
Zaya:"Well, if it's uranium. Anyway then it explodes and explodes and explodes and finally produces lead.
Me: "So is that why lead is poisonous?"
Zaya: "No, lead is not radioactive. Only all the molecules that exploded along the way are radioactive and their exploding makes radiation like in a nuclear power plant."
Grandma: "Where'd you learn all this?"
Zaya: "Library book."
(pause)
Zaya: "Do you know how rigor mortis sets in?"
Grandma: "Yikes. Was that from a library book as well?"
Zaya: "No. Garfield."

The Flock

They sit on Sunday morning all in rows,
Just close enough to nod, to touch, to talk.
The old ones graze,
the youngest scamper loudly.
They are the sheep, the lambs.
They are the flock.
It's been a fearsome week for some of them;
They've seen a wolf;
they've heard his howls at night..
And others suffered pain--they still endure it--but they smile and push the agony aside.
The headstrong try the fences, never settled.
The wounded hide from the balms they badly need.
My job is still to tend them, teach them, love them.
His mandate was that simple: Feed my Sheep.

Turtle Rock

You might have to use a little imagination to see this turtle...but keep looking.
See it?

When You Lose Someone You Love...

...to all my students who have lost someone precious this year. 
I'm sorry.


When you lose someone you love, you may feel a lot of nothing...at first...just a numb shock as your mind sits very still within your body and the words keep echoing over and over in empty halls. Everything outside will clamor around you with its normal, blatant brightness, while inside, in shock, you sit blindly--without lights, without noise, without feeling--reluctant to understand.
This will pass.

When you lose someone you love, you may feel a lot of anger--at yourself, at God, even at them.
"How could they leave me all alone? Why didn't God intervene this once? How was I supposed to know that things would end this way?"

Take a breath. This too will pass. And come again. And again. Be ready to deal with it.

Don't coddle anger. Release it. Give it a way out. Don't embrace it as a friend, for anger--even the kind that's born of grief-- is a bitter acid that makes a soul raw. Cast it off. Reject it. Accept instead the awkward comfort of your solemn friends, their speechless looks of kindness because they don't know what to say, their flowery little cards and tentative pats on the shoulder. They are standing there; let them hold you up. And pull close around you the tacit, silent peace of God like a sweater. You need it more than ever, especially today.

There will be guilt too, days of it.
"Why didn't I say this? Why didn't I do that? What could I have done that I didn't do?"
If you hang onto it, you'll be wrestling with a cactus, and although, at first, the pain of these wounds might seem to overwhelm the greater agony, you mustn't let the stinging splinters stay.
Pull out the spines of guilt and burn them before they fester, lest the morphine of this moment become the poison of a lifetime. Whatever guilt you hold against yourself is yours alone. The one you love released it long ago and it is gone forever...unless you keep it. Let it go.

Yes, waves of grief will frequently blindside you...but do not sorrow like those who have no hope. Say goodbye, knowing that there will be a bright morning once again. In pain, do not stop praying ; in depression, do not despair. One day a sudden stream of joy will come shining out of no where. Life will burst through. You will start to heal. Healing takes time.

There is balm in work so carry on. Pick up a broom; go mow a lawn; wield an axe, or a wildly colored paintbrush. Take comfort in caring for little children who are swift to shed their sorrows and prone to sudden smiles; mingle with them and forget to be woeful for a while. Dance on the lawn in the rain. Make yourself move. Learn to live again. Let go.

One sublime tomorrow we will all realize that this life--for all its grandly blasted notes and furious clashing discords--was only the "warming-up" of an exalted orchestra.
Nobody has yet heard the symphony...but it will be glorious.
I promise.

Sky Scenery

Since January we've only had seven tenths of an inch of rain.
Everything green is in shock. No lawn mowers. No harvest.

Black cattle graze parched, yellow fields.

This morning the air was still and heavy--humid, gray and promising, but it wasn't until afternoon that rain came, a splashing and pouring, straight-down drench. Not much moisture, just a tiny taste, but rain, nonetheless.

I attended a function thirty miles out of town, and as I drove back in around seven o'clock, I pulled over to take some pictures of an unusual sky.

To the East there was a fan-shaped light in the clouds. That seemed odd because the sun was in the West.

Above and to the South large puff-ball cloud shapes hung lazily and shone as if full of light.

Toward the Southwest, a calm sunset quietly took place as if there weren't large hail and tornado spins an hour away from here.

Orville and Wilbur and Mimsy

I had to add a picture at the end of this one to make it long enough for movie maker to edit. Here's another one that's amusing. I guess I could call it cooperation. They aren't really playing the melody here, but I think they are getting the rhythm.

Take Somebody With You

It's always easier to do a hike if you take someone with you. That way, if you are balanced on a shaky bit of rock and they have already negotiated that particular route and are on solid ground, they can extend a hand to steady you and prevent a nasty skid into a patch of cactus, which grows wherever there's a bit of damp algae and may boast fragile flowers but isn't really friendly to human limbs.




It's difficult to comprehend the size of the Eagles' aerie from the valley. Those rocks which look like a little mound of pebbles are really huge boulders jutting out into the sky. There's only one way to appreciate it. Climb up there.

I took Turtle along and we helped each other find the trail, which had a habit of disappearing into pockets of scrub and thinning out over vales of rock face.

We didn't get too close to the aerie; Turtle didn't want to incense the eagles and give my blog the exciting ending it really needed for this post. Oh well. I did get a lot of great pictures as they flew overhead.

Look Behind You Every Now and Then

Since the trail was a winding one, with areas of almost flat meadow, there came a time when I was unsure of the path. You may be too. And you may ask yourself:

"Am I still climbing? Is this trail going up or down?"
The best way to judge this is to look at the path behind you.
Turn around and see where you came from.
Are you higher today than you were yesterday?
Do the things you left in the valley seem smaller?
If so, you are climbing. Keep going.

Seek the Old Paths

I thought of our graduating seniors as I began my hike to the top of Quartz Mountain...all those days they had sat and listened to my advice, and so many things I didn't find time to discuss with them.
They are beginning a journey, a climb, if you will, and an adventure of the best sort, so every bit of instruction I was telling myself seemed amplified and meaningful for their journey also.

There was a trail head, of course, where every aspiring climber began. The path was well worn at first by the feet of those who only wanted to climb a few feet higher so they could get a better picture of the lake. After a few steep sections, however, it was little more than a line of flattened grass that sometimes faded away entirely. Still, if I looked for it, to the left, the right, or ahead, I found it, and was rewarded with an easier way to scale a rugged ravine or a way around a shower of crumbly rock. Someone who had climbed before me had found the best way up; and lots of climbers since then had concurred.

Life will be like that too. Sometimes you need to look around and see where the old paths run. Think about those people you respect--those who haven't made a wreck of their lives or an avalanche for others. What trail did they take? Can you see it? Did their footprints bend any grass? That trail may save you time and trouble. Seek the old paths.

Jeremiah 6:16
Thus says the LORD: “ Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls.

Soaring with the Eagles

On our end-of-the-year picnic yesterday, I abandoned all my supervisory duties and took a hike up Quartz Mountain. It's only a mile to the top and back, but parts are steep enough to crawl instead of walk--about halfway between an amble and a crawl, a clamber, I'd say--and it suited me. Up on the top, the wind was fierce, so I sat in the shelter of a boulder and watched three eagles as they swooped and slid on currents in the sky . They had an aerie not far from where I was, so I hiked closer and rambled around on top of the mountain for a while, marveling at the beauty of the lake below and the hazy, distant horizons. If you click on my picture and enlarge it, you can see the eagle in the distance. It didn't seem to disturb him at all that I was so close to the nest.

Isa 40: 31  They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength;
      They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary,
      They shall walk and not faint.

Munchkins in May

Just give them a magnifying glass
Send them outside to water the grass...