Early June 2016

                                         Early June, 2016

A small yellow bird in a small blue cage, dancing along his perch, backwards,
forward, two steps forward; one step back.  All his young life he has been in cages, pressed close with other tiny birds, hopping and fluttering around his whole world in the space of two seconds. He sees his chance for escape and takes it, grasps it, nipping gently the sweet brown hand, the restraining hand that sought to keep him safe.

A golden glowing flame flashes through the trees- a little bird like a tongue of fire licks up towards heaven, the bluest of blue skies for a roof and the tall and ancient birches limitless places of rest.
He circles round and round the house, exulting, triumphant, beautiful - he was born for flight, his strong young wings flying swifter and swifter.

 Is this how it will be for me, when I'm set free from this often beautiful but so limited world? Will the colors burn more brightly with God alone as sun? Sometimes I long to taste that freedom, to adventure without fear and to return home with no regret.  
                                                     
Go softly- go softly, my love.

J u n e 2016

                                                                  June 2016

       The wind was warm and the sand was hot, the silty inlet deliciously cool after our long walk down to the beach. Chloe and I go alone together to the end of the strand, where a small creek flows through the salt marsh to meet the ocean beyond.

    The delicate legs of a sandpiper are skittering along the shore as the little mother bird tries desperately to lead us away from her nest, "Oh, come away Mother, come away! We're scaring her," Chloe says.

   We count nine sandhill cranes with their strange calls and wheeling formations outlined against a cloudless blue sky, and a pod of beluga whales, the first I've seen since my childhood, are rounding through the gray water.

    A beautiful place, a quiet place, but there is little peace in my soul, the argument Tony and I had on the way here still echoing in my ears. Perhaps we will be whole one day, perhaps we won't; but it won't be today. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next year. Hope stirs in my heart, blazes up. Dies. Blazes up again. 

     A hawk or perhaps an eagle floats high in the sky, drifting half a mile above us, slowly circling. Naomi in blue with her golden head and soft petal cheeks- what a gift she is, every day of her life. A gift to me. God, make me worthy.

     I've been storming my way through several authors this summer, cresting wave after wave of new thoughts and dipping into the wisdom and insight garnered from the lives they lived, walking close with their God. 

     There is a similarity between these men and women, standing tall in their generations and speaking  truth in their varied voices; all different, but all with this same vein of Truth linking them together, this same Person speaking through them. The exact way you can get an inkling of the beauty and grandeur of God by seeing the beauty and intricacy of creation, you can also see the humility, compassion and loving wisdom of Christ by the way he shines out of these people who love him. 

To eat, to breathe
to beget
Is this all there is
Chance configuration of atom against atom
of god against god
I cannot believe it.
Come, Christian Triune God who lives,
Here am I
Shake the world again.

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Francis Schaeffer