A walk before sunrise……..

This morning I walked in the Holy hush of pre-dawn light before the fingers of the sun had yet to reach over the top of the Superstitions. A silent witness to the earth’s preparations, I was not a participant, only a watchful observer.

I saw newspapers shrouded in their wrappers……words waiting to be read over coffee or tea, dead words in their plastic shrouds. Life is out here, where I walked.

I passed Mama dove where she sat tucked in her nest inside the cactus, fluffy eyelids still closed in slumber. It was still too early even for her.

I passed the house with the big pickup truck that barely fits in the driveway and saw a cat sitting like a sentinel. A man approached with a dog on a leash and I wondered why the cat didn’t run…..the dog didn’t bark.

He saw me looking and exclaimed, “He usually comes with us, this time he didn’t want to.” I smiled and walked on. Rounding the next corner I saw hummingbirds already busy, hovering from blossom to blossom like little jettisons.

One paused to light on a branch and I called to him softly. There he was, so very small and yet what a contribution he made to my walk, what a presence.

Further on, I was treated to a flowering cactus with large trumpet like blooms……the bees too were wide awake. And all this before dawn……

As I made the turn down my street, the sun was a gold blaze shimmering behind the mountain, announcing her presence. The call of a quail came from a nearby rooftop…..rooster of the desert.

I thought that this too, even this quiet walking can be a form of worship, a form of prayer. All this walking, and watching and noticing is me agreeing with God that it’s all good.

All before dawn.

Meeting God in-between

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; Acts 17:24-27

From little morning chore to little morning chore. That’s where I find Him. In the flat times too, when the air is still and the earth holds her breath, He comes to breathe life through His words, which I pick up first thing; Looking for hope in between its pages, I find it.

Poets might die, but the words always live on.

I wait here, in the Holy moment before life rushes around me on the bench by the garden as the shade pulls away slowly to reveal the scorch that is sure to come. I watch as the lone bee settles on the tomato blossom……doing what God made him to do.

The doves hover, waiting for the fountain and I marvel at the white stripes patterned on their wings as they fly off. Once again, I think that He has truly made it all good, as bad as this old world might seem as it groans on its axis along with us.

A new TV series called “Mistresses” would have been considered porn not long ago. And Dr. Phil is turning “Springer” with mediums and numerologists leading tearful, grieving people astray.

When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Isaiah 8:19

It’s not wrong for them to want hope.

Meanwhile poets die, but the words always live on.

Hope is here.

He never left.

Meanwhile, the heat will not be deterred.

The desert settles in for the long haul, and so do God and I. Inside and outside of time,

we wait together.

RIP: Maya Angelou

Company on the Trail

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” John Muir, The Mountains of California

When I got up this morning the wind chimes were clanging again, and the patio umbrella trembled in its stand. Yesterday, some of the neighbor’s roof shingles had stuck up straight like a bad comb-over. Today I guess the wind had shifted because they were back down flat, but it was going to be another windy day.

I wasn’t going to go to the mountain, but sometimes you can’t let the weather stop you. I needed my little slice of nature such as the desert can provide. I parked the car and crunched up the trail, once again so glad I shelled out the money for Merrill boots. The gravel and sharp stones on the desert trail can be merciless on shoes. In good shoes you can let your feet do what they were meant to do and you worry less about slipping.

As I walked I felt the familiar buoyancy, my soul untethering itself. It’s a bit like coming home, the trail is. It doesn’t look a bit like the trails of my childhood, there are no pine trees here as there are high up in the Sierra Nevada but somehow it doesn’t matter. That’s the thing about hiking. Each trail is really an echo of the one before it and they all eventually join each other.

Hikers know this.

As I walk, I find myself thinking about the wind and how sometimes it can be a Holy thing to go out and join up with the weather when it’s less than perfect. Harnessing ourselves to something uncontrollable is what we do when we give God control of our lives. The Holy Spirit can make you do some unpredictable things. Like one minute you’re minding your own business listening to Michael W. Smith sing “Majesty” and the next minute you are kneeling on the kitchen floor with your hands in the air.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

As I walk on, I pause along the way and look at some things close up. A bird’s nest tucked inside the arms of a spiny bush, a scraggly tree covered in miniature purple orchid-like blooms. I relax into the rhythm of my footfall and find myself thinking of my Dad. He taught me that if you are really quiet, nature will talk to you. He also taught me that while nature should always be respected, it should never be feared.

He also taught me the wild freedom of peeing in the woods and that it’s okay to blow your nose right out there in the open, even if you’re a girl. The wilderness gives you permission to do things you’d never do anywhere else.

Another thing about the trail, it sets your mind free to meander down its own path. Somehow the conversations you never find time for at home, you can find time for on the trail; almost as if it’s safe to take them out since you know the trees and rocks and birds don’t listen.

Or maybe they do.

Sometimes the trail brings surprises too, in the form of friends who meet you there. Thank you E! You showing up was the perfect end to the hike, I had no idea you were there!

Ring of Fire

Last night I stayed out on the patio long. I was feeling what my Grandmother would have called “a bit blue.” Lately, I have felt out of step with the world around me. Like I am a few beats behind everyone else. Sometimes it helps to go outside and sit very still, to listen to the bigger rhythm. It’s like putting your finger on the earth’s pulse when you can no longer trust your own.

I lay my head back in the chair and was surprised by the moon directly overhead. I don’t know why it surprised me but I didn’t expect it to be there, it was too high in the sky, but who am I to argue with the moon?

This morning I stumbled over both the previously frozen peas and the ice pack that I use at night to beat back the flames that rise like coiled snakes that come from nowhere. I picture a cartoonish Satan in a red suit, shoveling coals, stoking the furnace within me with a gleeful smile on his face. I am up about 3 times a night exchanging the frozen peas with the ice pack and vice-versa.

My Doctor recommended a place that sells things that may help but she told me it was cash only. What does that even mean? She is into a more “holistic” approach to medicine and I agree, I don’t want to take synthetic hormones. Someone told me about Black Cohosh so now I am taking 540 mg a day. I can’t be sure it’s helping but I will keep taking it for now.

There is an upside. If sweating is healthy, I can’t have any toxins left in my system. I am my own mini-sweat lodge.

I move heavily through most days with a leaden soul. I miss the old me. I miss the self I used to be. I have fleeting moments of happiness and then it’s back to the dull gray wash. I have learned that sometimes all you can do is move through the moment obediently and grab onto the joy when it comes.

I feel like a bit player in my own life and an imposter at work going through the motions. Like on “Seinfeld” when George Costanza got that job that he didn’t really get and went in to work everyday making up things to do in the office that wasn’t really his.

I joined a gym to beat back the ravages of time as well as all these symptoms and it does make me feel better, but I haven’t lost a pound. Most of the time I want to eat whole pies and plates of cookies. It seems, the same furnace that stokes the flashes, stokes my appetite as well. If I am at home I look for things to graze on continually. I have sunk to dipping cookies in frosting, I am worse than an alcoholic.

And attached to everything else in this new phase of life, I feel a profound sense of shame that I am becoming “less than” “diminished” “devalued.” Being shown the back seat by the universe. I know that what I am feeling is temporary, and I know that God still strives with me.

He brings me little things like doves and blooming flowers and the moon.

And people I love who are always there for me. Above all, I haven’t lost my gratitude because I still have so much.

Despite it all, He remains my well that never runs dry. I will come through this, victory is mine. It always has been, through Him.

For Life

We admire the doves because they mate for life……..as do the albatross, the wolf, the puffin, the penguin, the beaver, the swan, as well as the symbol of our nation, the bald eagle. I have seen their nests, they are incredible……..as big as my volkswagen.

In many of these species, the Dad takes an active role in child rearing, egg hatching and food gathering. The Dads are needed as well as the Moms, as an intergral part of the perfect equation.

I look at my Mom and Dad, still together after 60 plus years. In them and so many of their generation, I see the beauty of staying together over the long haul. Most of the time they can still laugh at each other and themselves. They get mad at each other, sometimes really mad, yet through the years they have discovered the beauty of compromise, while somehow managing to keep the integrity of their individuality intact.

Now, I hear so many talk of divorce, even in front of the kids. Before they walk down the aisle it’s already a lurking threat, an unspoken presence in the relationship; a reality looming in the minds and hearts of both parties. If it doesn’t work I’ll just bail out.

If they don’t make me happy, I’m outta there.

If I see someone better, younger, fitter…….I’m gone.

Even if It’s not said out loud, it’s a reality just the same. But do we enter a race without first mentally and physically preparing to win?

Do we do the same with our careers? Our kids? Even our homes? We worked hard for that degree so we stick out the first year or two of being the low person on the totem pole; we stick with that tough adolescent and love them through to the other side, long enough that we don’t want to strangle them anymore; and we take care of our home in hopes of paying off the mortgage someday.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to say that there is never an option for divorce. There is abuse, both physical and emotional…….and unfaithfulness, it happens. Or maybe you didn’t even want a divorce, for you it was forever, but it wasn’t for them. And now you are in a living nightmare you never asked for.

I don’t know much but I do know a few things about God. I know He’s just and He’s true. And I also know that He would never bless something and call it good without giving us the means to do it successfully for life.

Wisdom begins when we start to see things as God sees them and when we realize we have no hope of carrying if our successfully without His help.

And when a society as a whole reduces the physical relationship that should be part of marriage between a woman and a man to nothing more than a physical act, perfectly permissible between anyone, at any time; something to laugh at, joke about, even brag about, that society begins to cave in from the inside out.

And the end result for the individual and for the society as a whole will be despair, emptiness, and a longing for something which can never be satisfied, only perpetuated until someone breaks the pattern.

If you are married today, consider it a gift. If you are single, consider that a gift as well. You can have the assurance of knowing that God will supply you with whatever you need to enjoy whatever state you are in.

Lastly and most importantly, we all live in the state of His grace. If you are suffering through a divorce, or a broken relationship, or the loss of a loved one; if you’re tired of being single, tired of being married, the way of help is always through Jesus. He always stands ready to give you a new start, a new season of hope.

There is always time for a second chance, a new start for each and every season.

Something about a garden

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed……Genesis 2:8

There is something about a garden whether big or small, intricate or humble that infuses us with hope. Even the birds seem to know it. Yesterday after E. had restructured the watering system and dug up all the old dirt she sowed the seed that will produce fresh tomatoes and watermelon and fresh spinach and okra. Yes okra. This Yankee girl has fallen in love with the slimy vegetable that seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the vegetable world to hear others talk. I believe it’s all how you cook it. Douse it with a bit of flour and cornmeal and fry it up hot and summer comes to life.

After the bubblers were turned on and everything was in good working order, the dove promptly hopped down between the furrows and started drinking from the fresh drips. It was almost like a confirmation that yes, this is a very good thing.

Gardening in the desert is a particular challenge which makes the victory all that much sweeter when you start to see those shoots pushing up through the ground that you’ve so carefully cultivated. The artichoke plants on the side of the house are flourishing. As of yet, no artichokes…….but if last year is any indication there will be more than we can eat.

This morning I went out and opened up the umbrella and had my coffee at the table. I arranged the gnome in his corner of the garden where he will keep watch….with his surfboard. He has a long wait for waves here in the desert. But he still hopes. A bit of my Aunt Esther also rests there in the form of a garden angel, a duplicate which E. made of the one she always had in her garden, which she loved. When I look at that angel, I think of her coming in after picking tomatoes, sweat rolling down her face which was easily as red as the tomatoes themselves.

When you think about it, gardens are our heritage, handed down to us by God himself, the Master Gardener. Sitting by the garden I feel my roots, it’s a bit like coming home again. I think about my Grandma and Grandpa who could grow anything……I wonder if they ever imagined me as they sowed those seeds. My Grandpa’s favorite hymn was “In the Garden.” I think of him strolling along in the early morning hours, He and Jesus. I like to think he prayed for me. I can see him now, sitting in God’s own garden, surrounded by eternal light.

As I sit here in this place, I feel his prayers. The earth waits in anticipation, now all we need is time. Someday I’ll join him, but until then I will visualize him here in this little place. He, and everyone who has ever planted a seed in hope of a harvest.

A garden is the hope of salvation, a resting place and a promise of better things to come.

The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing. Isaiah 51:3

Why I Believe

I guess because I’m lazy. You see, when I look at light like this, I am absolutely certain it has a source other than the setting sun. For me, it takes more faith not to believe……..I like to think that nature is God’s looking-glass, others gaze at a sunset, I see His canvas.

And who can fail to see a reflection of Heaven in a newborn’s eyes?

I can explain God in a thousand different ways and yet, even this beauty is but a dim reflection. I guess the best way to explain God is in the unexplainable mysteries we still haven’t figured out. Tell me if you know who holds up the moon? The earth in place? Who could see this moon and not utter a prayer?

How can I count the ways He speaks? He speaks in the quiet of a church pew, at Holy light filtering through the windows on a Christmas Eve. On a snow filled forest when it’s hushed and the silence is filled with His presence. He speaks in the hope of a loved one’s smile on before death, because they know they are standing on the threshold of Heaven and there is nothing to fear. I have seen it.

And once, He even spoke to me through a painting. When I stood stock-still and speechless before El Greco’s painting “The Tears of St. Peter” and tears sprang from my own eyes because suddenly I understood how it was to see how Holiness could spring from a canvas.

He speaks in the poetry of the way a coyote springs as he walks. And in Chopin’s Concerto number 2 right as the sun comes though the clouds.

And when I open His book I see how it lives and works in the lives of people like you and me. Here, and now.

One thing that puzzles me is how someone who normally doesn’t give God a thought can blame Him for the worst of humanity’s ills. I guess they forget that He gave us clear directions on how to treat one another. We own that. Not Him.

I am thankful because it’s something I don’t struggle with, belief that He is. Though many do.

My prayer today and for all time is to be a conduit of His grace here in my own quiet way. To point the way of Hope, and that this is not all there is. May you be touched by His light today.

The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard.Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens for the sun. It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.

The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end. Nothing can hide from its heat. The instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living. Psalm 19:1-8

Recalculating……..

He whispered, “Remember the miracle.” And just then, I did.

Sometimes, well, all the time, God has to remind me to slow down. My mind leaps ahead to places He never intended it to go and jumps way too far ahead of everything else. I have to recalculate. It’s like when your GPS tells you to go a certain way, but you don’t want to go that way, so you go a different direction and then that voice: “Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating……..” Until it decides, “Hey I guess they really are going to go that way.”

This especially happens to me as it gets closer to Christmas, sometime around the 11th of December. I realize I haven’t checked nearly enough off that list I have in my head. And suddenly, my mind has veered off the path and careening wildly down a slippery slope. Someone somewhere hit a panic button and I find myself in stressful, chaotic, turbulent mode instead of where I was a week ago in quiet, calm, advent reflective mode.

So today, I am recalculating.

I will seek first the Kingdom. I will remember what He whispered about the miracle. Because we tend to forget so quickly.

Thank you, Lord for slowing me down again. Join me in pause mode, here.

I am getting small today again folks.

Take a moment to pray and thank Him for everything He is and everything He has done in your life……just yesterday.

“For a long time I have kept silent,
I have been quiet and held myself back.
But now, like a woman in childbirth,
I cry out, I gasp and pant.
I will lay waste the mountains and hills
and dry up all their vegetation;
I will turn rivers into islands
and dry up the pools.

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them.

But those who trust in idols: (my words in bold)

(money, possessions, tasks, perfectionism, electronic gadgets, knowledge, power, education, self-reliance)
who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’
will be turned back in utter shame.

Isaiah 42: 14-17

Image from creative commons images, some rights reserved by Gabrielle Ludlow

Tell me…..

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angelsshouted for joy? God speaks, Job 38:4-7

Sometimes in the quiet, I wonder how it would be to stand on the brink of the world, where it’s so cold, to cold even for a tree. To experience that terrible wonder. To observe the creatures that live there, to see how they do it. I think I would be even more in awe of God than I am now.

To see the Northern lights, now that would be some miracle. I think I am almost obsessed with seeing them. To see how God paints the sky that way would leave me dumbstruck with silence like the moon still leaves me sometimes when I see it rise over the Superstitions. I will never lose my capacity to love nature and the God who spoke it all into existence.

And when I went on the Alaskan cruise, the thing that made an indelible mark was not the buffet, though it was incredible. It was not the beauty of the ship, though it was breathtaking. And it wasn’t the luxury of the room or the entertainment on board.

It was going out on the veranda and seeing nothing but water as far as I could see……God was so big there.

It was the light at midnight and the glow on the water……the mysterious silence that took my breath away.

It was an unspoiled land, and eagles nests as big as Volkswagens.

Those are the things I will never forget. This Advent, as always. I will pretend I have a bit of the mystery of Mary. I will treasure all these things up in my heart like she did. Pregnant with God’s Spirit, sealed for the day of redemption, Oh God, may that one thought change everything I do.

Never let it get old. Embrace the miracle you are, and this Christmas season, wait with me.

Along with Mary. With Joseph.

Wait with me here.

God is speaking…….

“Where is the way to the dwelling of light?
And darkness, where is its place,
That you may take it to its territory
And that you may discern the paths to its home?
“You know, for you were born then,
And the number of your days is great!
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
Which I have reserved for the time of distress,
For the day of war and battle?
“Where is the way that the light is divided,
Or the east wind scattered on the earth?

Photo from creative commons, flickr: Morten Nelson some rights reserved.

Church on the Mountain

“And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” Matthew 26:27-29

“I have an idea!” She said. “Let’s have church on the mountain tomorrow.”

“Excellent!” I said…….”Let’s do it, and we’ll have communion up there too!”

When you are between churches like we are right now, sometimes you have to be creative, leave a little room for the Spirit to work. So this morning, I packed it all together in my camera bag. Cranberry juice and oyster crackers stood in place of the bread and wine.

On the way up the trail, nestled in my bag, I heard them clink together softly and I smiled to myself.

Jesus and I had a secret.

I paused by a Joshua Tree, remembering the words I had read earlier that morning about how they pushed the cruel crown of thorns down on His brow until it bled in rivers down His face. God’s face.

As we got to the top, I paused to let a family come down. Their two little boys were very loud and I was ready for the quiet, for the moment to pause and remember. I waited for E to join me. She had to backtrack because she was talking to a lady hiking with her dog and got side-tracked and missed the turn for Huff and Puff.

We scrambled over rocks and carefully picked our way to the top and I jostled around looking for a flat place to set up. As I presented the heart-shaped doily and stemmed glasses, she laughed. “I should have known!”

Nothing is too good for Jesus, after all.

It was a bit windy, so she held onto the glasses while I aimed for the shot. This was our view.

While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Matthew 26:26

There on the mountain, we each settled with our elements in hand, having lost only a little a splash of juice and a few crackers that had rolled down the mountain. I didn’t even need to find the verses in my iPhone because the words were already in her heart, and they sprang free, flowing out like rivers of living water as she lifted her glass:

The words come naturally to one whose life has truly been changed. No rehearsal is necessary.

“Do this,” He said. “As a remembrance.”

The lady on the trail had asked if we were sisters. E told her yes, sisters of the best possible kind.

Soul sisters. Kindred spirits. Sisters of the heart. Sisters in Christ.

“For where two or three gather together as my followers,I am there among them.” Matthew 18:20

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

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