This’n’that

Finding God in the Desert

Peace in the midst of thorns
Take a walk, a drive, if you dare, pass the golf greens and the shopping malls, the Walmarts and the Kohls, the Starbucks and the trendy restaurants and you will find something wild and untamed, the desert. But tread carefully with your eyes peeled. Be aware that this is not your home, it is theirs. This is a place where you must pay attention, for it is merciless. But approach and you will find a beauty you didn’t expect, but only if you turn your senses up.

There are no bright lights here, no big colorful signs that attract. But if you look closely you will find a desperate beauty that will touch your soul, remind you that even in the midst of a dry thirsty land there is life. The desert speaks to us of death, of what we fear, but it also speaks of courage, of survival. Of a big God.

Go to the edge and look in if you must, but I invite you to take a few steps beyond. You will find God there if you are looking, in the plaintive cry of the quail, the circling shadow of the hawk, the impossibly bright bloom amongst the plant of thorns; the lizard as he scrambles across the rocks, lifting his belly up and down to cool himself. The always industrious cactus wren, impervious to the heat, flitting here and there, always with a job to do.

Hear the unexpected voice of God in an afternoon thunderstorm……..and then afterward lift your eyes to the heavens as He paints the sky in sherbet. Stay beyond sunset and hear the silence of the desert that is like no other…..as the relentless heat has a bit of mercy and reluctantly loosens its grip. Wait, and you will see the sky fill up with His diamonds, try to imagine what He has named them.

In my silence, I can hear Jeremiah’s lament as he longs for his desert lodging place to flee to……
John the Baptist, crying across the desert wind, preparing the way for the Lord….
Hosea speaking tenderly to Israel there….
And I can see Jesus, walking resolute and strong, as the Holy Spirit carries Him out to His own battle in the desert…..

From a hole in a towering saquaro the face of an owl appears. Joining the crickets evening song, he beckons all who have hid in their dens and holes away from the merciless sun to come out. Stay longer and you will hear the coyotes come out to play, their howls echoing, their wildness touching the edge of our civility, two worlds colliding.
I wonder how we ever thought we could tame the desert?
I wrote this after my morning walk yesterday when I saw the dove nesting in the cactus. I was reminded of  all the many times this desert’s beauty has astounded me with its many paradoxes, like the dove resting among the thorns. God has surprised me with this part of His creation, and reminds me that beauty is everwhere if we keep our minds open. The desert will leave its mark on me forever, wherever I go. It has worked its way right into my heart along with the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Ocean I love so much…..

Scripture readings: Jeremiah 9:2, John 1:23, Hosea 2:14, Luke 4:1

Prayer belongs less to time than to eternity…..Thomas Merton

Merry-Go-Rounds and Roads

Looff Carousel 1911, Santa Cruz Boardwalk

Many summer weekends were spent at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk when I was a kid in California. Disneyland had nothing on it as far as I was concerned. It was pure magic. Oh, the memories of that Boardwalk! Corn dogs, called Pronto Pups that seemed a foot high, entering the Fun house through the clown’s mouth, riding the train and anticipating when that roaring dinosaur was going to rise up from the lake, standing at the fudge shop window watching the taffy pulling machine, mesmerized as it pulled and pulled and never broke. And the beach…..

Holding it all together in the middle of that magic, the piece De resistance was the Carousel. All I had to do was hear that organ music and I was over the top. Keep in mind, I camped growing up. We didn’t stay in fancy hotels. We didn’t have the money and also, my folks thought is was important to teach us about nature. I’m so glad they did. So this Merry-Go-Round was for me, the highlight of our visit. I had my favorite horses, always the ones with head reared back, teeth bared. (I must’ve thought those went faster)

I am happy to say that my niece has inherited my love of this Merry Go Round as well. I got to go on it with her one of my trips back home and I felt the same rapturous joy as I did all those years ago. My brother even caught the ring!

What started this whole memory was that my friend and I were talking after church Sunday and I asked her if she got excited about that Merry Go Round as well, since she used to go there as a kid too. I expected her to light up with the same memory I had. “No,” she said, “I never really saw the purpose, you just go round and round and never get anywhere.” Well, yeah, there is that…..Instead, she shared a special memory of her own with me. She said one of the highlights of her childhood was when she and her brother got a quarter a-piece and went to the store and each picked out a matchbox car. Back then they came in a little box. Her job was to build the roads.

They would come home and she would build elaborate structures out of mud, complete with bridges with support beams underneath, freeways, overpasses, and tunnels. Even back then, she had the mind of an engineer. Her parents never even knew it. When she went to high school and tested extremely high in math and engineering, the counselor told her she better think of something else to do with her life, “because girls just don’t do these things.” After that she pretty much lost interest in the whole educational system.

But God doesn’t care about what some counselor says. Years later she ended up doing engineering work anyway at Intel, Corp. And she is still building things. She can visualize anything and build it, she is a project queen and should definitely have her own show on HGTV. She is a bridge builder between people, in every job she has ever had, she has been asked to be a mediator when situations needed smoothing out.

When God creates you to do a certain thing, it glorifies Him when you are doing those things!

I have always felt a compulsion to write, and I know that comes from God. That is how He created me. Sometimes I have no idea if anything I write makes sense but I still do it because I feel it’s one of the things God made me to do. Sometimes I feel my prayers go round in circles because I still see so many things in me that need changing. But as I look back at all these quiet times of prayer, I see a closeness I have with the Lord now that I didn’t have before. It is a beautiful sculpture that I can only see glimpses of, but when I close my eyes it comes into focus. I see and hear the music, the colors, the joy….and God behind it all. Sometimes life does seem like one big circle, but we can say, victoriously, this is a circle that has purpose. It has no end, and it only gets better!

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:12,13

I’m listening, God.


God has a way of making us sit up and pay attention. He does this many different ways. Life events, accidents, close calls, His word, other people. There are some things you just shouldn’t ignore. We hear the warning bells and we just keep plodding ahead anyway, as we straighten our blinders. All the while God is saying, “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Sometimes nature gets our attention too. I love nature because God has left His imprints everywhere in it. In the calm of the sea after a storm, in the beauty and hush of a snowfall, in the roar of the waves and the warmth of the sun…… Sometimes people get so caught up in nature they start to worship it instead of God.

Nature certainly got our attention the other night. We were sitting at the neighbor’s house calmly talking, when we heard a “Woosh!” of wind and then a loud bang. We thought someone crashed into the carport! It is very interesting what happens in a situation like that. Not one of us sat and thought about whether we would get up and investigate, we all just sprang into action. The only one that didn’t is on oxygen and very elderly, but she was on her way out of her chair too, calling out for us all to be careful!

It was a summer storm, a microburst that came through, bringing with it high winds, rain, and thunder and lightning that was very close. Not unusual for Arizona this time of year. It was a rubbermaid chair exchange, Bob’s chairs flew across the street and Larry’s chairs came over to Bob’s house! Nobody was hurt and no property damaged, luckily. It did set our hearts to pounding though.

It is good to pay attention; to nature and to God. Mostly God. Sometimes nature reminds us that He is ultimately in control of everything. I like that reminder.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Selah. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. Psalm 46:1-3,7

Let the Fire Fall!

Photo provided by Google
Ann Peterson Bedard wrote at 2006-07-03
Yosemite Fire Falls & Elmer History:

First in 1996 I brought my grandkids to visit Yosemite. Standing at the ampitheatre in Camp Curry,looking up to the top of Glacier Point. The towerinig 3000 foot of the granite wall forces heads to leaned all the way backwards. My grandkids asked:
“What’s that white strip? Was that a waterfall a long time ago or something?”

“No that was where the Firefall was”

“Firefall? What is a Firefall?”

“Well, it’s kinda hard to explain. It certainly was not a natural phenomenon.
It actually dates back to 1874 when a James McCauley built a Hotel up there.
Business was pretty sparce. He got this brillant idea of shooting off fireworks to get people’s attention, something to make them look up.

It worked. Then he began to make fires and push them over the cliff. Campers 3000 feet below were awe-struck at the display: “Do it again” the people clamered, “do it again”. Hence it grew into a tradition.

It stopped after he died but was brought back by Mr Curry in 1894.

“How did they do it?”

Well,every morning a Ranger would gather a pick-up truck load of redwood bark, pine cones, dead firewood. They they would back the truck to about 12 feet from the edge.
I was up there once when they did that and I am here to tell you that was the scarriest thing to watch. My stomach turned for fear they would back right off the cliff. But of course they never did.

Then they would shovel it off the truck making a mound about four feet tall and say 12ft. wide. They would light the fire at about 4pm allowing the entire huge pile of bark to burn down to glowing cinders. Then at 9pm every night some brave guy with a long wide steel rake would slowly begin to push these glowing ambers over the edge.
Okay, that’s the why and how of it.

But the magic it produced for those enchanting 15-20 minutes every night almost defies words. If I were to put it into a word, I would I have say it was the:

SILENCE

Because it was an unwritten law that everything and everyone in the valley STOPPED at 9pm. Mainly so you could hear the guy up from Glacier Point.

You see, there was one guy posted at the top of Glacier Point with a mega phone and one guy posted 3000 ft below at Camp Curry with a mega phone.

Tradition:
The guy below would yell up:
HELL-LO GLACIER POINT
The guy up top would slowly yell down:
HELL-LO CAMP CURR-Y
The guy in Camp Curry returns the call:
LET THE FIRE-ER FALL
Then the muffled voiced from Glacier Point could actually be heard if it were real quiet:
THE FIRE-ER IS-SSS FALLING

And every night the entire valley of campers was awe struck as these magificnet fire specks gracfully glided down the granite wall. Plunging down like a 1000 foot ribbon of fire specks. Then slowly they would disappear, falling on to the narrow ledge 1000feet below, burn out and fade away until the next night.

Doing that every night for years and years etched the surface of the granite to leave that 1000 ft white strip.

Sweet reminder of a time passed.

“Okay, so what does Elmer have to do with the Fire Falls?”

Well that story was old as the hills when I was a kid in the 50’s.
As I heard it:

It was maybe sometime in the 30’S or early 40’S that a kid named Elmer would drift off with his friends or something to their own place to watch the Firefall and every night after the Firefall his mother could have to call him back to camp:

EL-MER- EL-MER- EL-MER

And that my dears is the history of the Firefall and Elmer as I know it.”

As told to her Grandkids by Ann Peterson Bedard

I found this story on a Yosemite website and I can personally verify that this is exactly how it happened. I had the joy of experiencing this bit of magic myself growing up. I can still remember laying on a huge tree stump waiting with baited breath for the fire to fall….I also remember going out in the meadow at nightfall and hollering “ELLLMERRR.” And waiting for the answering call which was always returned. I recently found that the tradition is live and well in Yosemite to this day, see FB page here.

A bit of a departure from the usual subject matter, but thought I would share it with you as a wonderful memory from my childhood. May you sense God’s presence and peace today wherever you go….

The Gift of Memory


Remembering, we settle into the rocker on the front porch, the front porch of our minds, and gaze out at the view. Sorting through, we pull up the pleasant memories and settle in for awhile. The view is great, and it’s good to remember. Memory is one of God’s best gifts. Practicing selective memory we can even edit out the ones that weren’t so great and go on to the ones that were. Or if there weren’t any, we can even manufacture our own version of the past.

My friend and her brother had an interesting conversation with their Mom once. Their memory was decidedly much different than hers was. You see she worked all the time, wasn’t home, they signed their own report cards and what they heard most of the time growing up amidst the chaos was, “Get out of the house, I need to sleep!” She was saying that she made them cookies growing up. They both looked at each other incredulously, for she had never made a cookie in all their childhood. She didn’t like desserts, so they didn’t get them either. But they do remember making macaroni and cheese together in the middle of the night, that’s one memory they hold onto.

Ask yourself what your child will remember of their childhood. What sights, sounds, smells, images will take them back, and will it be good? Will they remember laughter, or stony silence? Animated dinner conversation or the crackling air of irritation, impatience, anger. Will they remember trips taken as a family with pleasure or will they associate those trips with a sense of anxiety?

The wonderful thing about all memories good, bad or indifferent, is that they can draw us closer if we let them. Even the bad times have a wonderful way of bonding us together when we have traveled down the road a bit. We just have to let them do their work.

God has a memory book called the Bible. It is His Book of Remembrance. If we keep it close we will always remember who He is and who we are. It is His way of saying, “This is what happened, and it is a part of you too, it is your heritage, filled with stories of My people and yours. Read it, live it, and it will become part of you. Most importantly, it will carry you into eternity with Me.”

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Deuteronomy 11:18

Not only that, the Bible is a living book, just like we are all living memories of what has come before and what will come after….

Keeping memories alive today with the counting……#401 opening tent flap disheveled to first heavenly cup of coffee, #402 a juice bar at the end of a hike, #403 rain on tent roof, #404 Mom’s hands curling my hair for picture day, #405 brother and I getting in trouble for laughing at Grandma’s table, #406 warm fronts, cold backs around campfire, #407 getting inside inner tube and rolling down Aunt’s hill, #408 something baked from scratch waiting on counter after school, #409 the sound of metal skates on cement, #410, watching Dad sketch and make a beautiful drawing from nothing…..

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The Compliment


I want to suggest a new Beatitude: “Blessed are the sincere who pay compliments.” I have just had a compliment, and it has changed my day.

I was irritated. Tired. Discouraged. Nothing seemed much use. Now suddenly all this is changed. I feel a spurt of enthusiasm, of energy and joy. I am filled with hope. I like the whole world better, and myself, and even you.

Lord, bless the person who did this for me. He probably hasn’t the faintest idea how his few words affected me. But wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, bless him. Let him too feel this sense of fulfillment, the recharge of fire and faith and joy.

Thank you, God, for this simple miracle so available to all of us. And that we don’t have to be saints to employ it’s power. Remind me to use it more often to heal and lift and fortify others’ lives: a compliment! Marjorie Holmes

On the drive out here we stopped at a Denny’s. After 8 hours on the road, the sign was like an Oasis in the Desert. It looked pretty new. It was nice and clean. The waitress came right away to ask what we wanted…..she smiled. The managers were walking around asking if everything was okay. And the bathrooms were clean too!

Have you ever asked for a manager at a place of business for a good reason? Nine times out of ten, they automatically assume the worst. That you want to complain. I think that is very sad. So now I really try to give compliments when I get good service.

When I paid for the meal at Denny’s I made sure to tell her how great everything was, and left her a big tip. She was smiling when we left. So were we.

Ephesians 6:7 – With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men.

Beginnings and endings

Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

More often than not, when something looks like it’s the absolute end, it is really the beginning. Think of the cross. The Roman officials applauded. The Jewish officials rejoiced. “Finally we got rid of him, that troublemaker! We’re glad that’s over.” Yet three days later, He was alive again. What seemed like an ending was only the beginning. Chuck Swindoll

I am thinking of all those times during my teens when something happened and I thought it was the absolute end of the world, I couldn’t imagine anything worse, but here I am, here we all are. We got through, survived the emotional turmoil that we never thought we would…

“He who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5

The way things were…..


Is it just me or does it seem like the world is angrier these days? I asked my Mom about how things were when she grew up and she said, “Yes, the world was a much different place when I was growing up.” When she was in High School in the 1940’s they would all go miles away in carloads or by bus to the beach. Big groups of kids, boys and girls, and nobody ever had to be afraid of anything. None of the parents worried because there was no need. The girls were treated like ladies, and everybody danced with everybody, and not the way the kids dance now, real dancing.

None of the kids got drunk, nobody dreamed of committing a violent act against anyone else, and if one guy ever mistreated a girl, there were 10 other guys waiting to put him back in line.

Please and thank you were still said….doors were opened for the women, and men got up when a woman came to the table. Drugs were unheard of.

A group of young people walking on the sidewalk would never have dreamed of not yielding to an older person walking by, and high school students in my Mom’s class, in the 1940’s, would never have talked back to a teacher, let alone threatened or assaulted one.

Personally, I really miss decorum, and manners, and class. I wish children could be safe wherever they went, and if they were left out after dark, I wish we lived in a world where they could go up to any door and find someone to take them back home. It used to be that way in my parents world.

I would like to live in that kind of world. Although I would miss my IPHONE and my computer….

Things have even changed a lot since I went to school….I can almost imagine how it might have been back in those times. Growing up in small town 60’s and 70’s I got the tail end of it. A girl I knew in High School actually sang “Beautiful Savior” at an assembly and the students were respectfully attentive. Do they even have assemblies anymore? They certainly wouldn’t allow that song to be sung now!
What do you think? Do you feel like things have changed since you were a kid? For the better?

God loves happy endings


Growing up we spent a couple Thanksgivings at the home of my cousin’s cousins. The home of my Uncle Bruce’s brother and his family. It was an older home in Berkeley California, and I was charmed by it at first sight. It had a Hollywood driveway, the kind with the strip of lawn going up the middle and a big screened in porch just made for curling up with a good book. One of the most enchanting things about it though was the little bookshelf at the top of the narrow staircase. It was magic to me and I couldn’t wait to go up and explore the titles. Jackie was a librarian so she must have recognized a kindred spirit in me, a fellow book lover. I was invited to take any book I wanted. I knelt in front of it while everyone else was out playing, lost in my own universe.

In school I always gave a sigh of relief when they asked us to write a book report instead of solving a math problem. I love long books and I hate for a good book to end. But the great thing about reading is there is always another on the horizon. I am so glad there are those who just can’t stop writing! That, and reading is free.

God loves books too. He wrote a best seller. It is still selling like hotcakes. He is waiting for a happy ending. God is the eternal optimist! “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

The Bible is the one book with no ending, and we are all part of the story. God must not like for things to end either. He never meant for endings at all, only life ever after with Him. Open God’s book today. It will speak to you in the silence.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it,
except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.
~ Thomas ã Kempis

Happy Birthday America!


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness……

I am proud of our country today and proud of the people who even today are fighting for the rights of other countries to have that same freedom. America has historically always been the first to show up when help is needed….to offer aid, to rescue the weak, to never be afraid to jump into the fray in the fight for freedom, all the while knowing that they may have to pay with their own blood.

Freedom is worth it to them, and it is worth it to me.

I am thankful for America today, and proud of who we have always been. A beacon of hope for other nations, a light on the pathway to freedom.

I pray today for those fighting so that we can all enjoy the little things here at home, may they all be able to join us soon!

Enjoying hotdogs, watermelon, homemade ice-cream, fireworks against the night sky, joy in childrens faces, flags flying high, sleeping in safety at night, homemade potato salad, calls from loved ones, laughing through the tough times together……
holy experience