New Years: A New Clarity of Mission

Now is the chance to look at where you have been, a dangerous clifftop shrouded in fog, and see where God has brought you this year. The change may have been gradual, and hard to believe, and scary, but the ending is a morning of fleeing shadows and blossoming sunshine-- a winter morning all the same, but the best possible... the future is before you, a gift.

As you enter upon a new year, let it be with an earnest resolve to have your course onward and upward. Let your life be more elevated and exalted than it has hitherto been. . . . Aim to honor God in everything, always and everywhere. Carry your religion into everything.

-Ellen White

Muse no longer on the snowflakes filling up your hood or the cliffs with seemingly no end, ragged and brutal and cold. Even as we speak the Wind is moving, guiding the mist away as you have the faith to believe He can do it. And there it is before you, a clean plain of snow, awake and ready to be blessed by fresh tracks.

More Snow

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow...
-Christina Rossetti

Arabian snow- slightly yellow
with freckles

My little horse must think it queer
to stop without a farmhouse near...
-Robert Frost

Tamaracks in their winter best:
white instead of green or gold

Cheery: A little yellow house

In a Word

Very cold here, rather below zero but
Every minute of it invigorating and delightful,
Refreshing to the core.
Most snowy here, rather two feet of it
On the ground and trees and roof... and me,
Not respecting personhood but covering all,
Touching even the sky with a hint of falling gray.

Tiny Matters

Think about snow for a moment; each flake a design that might fit on a pinhead, each cold little piece of precipitation an extravagant scrap of lace formed around a grain of sand. Just one tiny speck of dirt is necessary to form that jot of pure white, and likewise each intricate snowflake is needed to create what we call a snowstorm, the falling of these many small pieces of wonder onto our earth. With that in mind, try to imagine the numbers accumulated in two feet of fluff, attempt to wrap your mind around the sheer immensity held in such a flurry of creativity.

Lafayette- November 24, 2007

Frosted with an edging of snow, living trees, hikers,
and inanimate signposts alike seem to be soaking up
the sunshine of azure sky. Chilly? Let the wind warm
you with its power. Tired? Let the mountains inspire
you with their immovability. In need of sustenance?
Forget the cold food and icy water in your backpack:
Taste the blue, and the white, and the freedom.

"And by His good grace I will praise Him still"

Here it is a scant several days before Thanksgiving, the mere twenty-four hours which so many of us fill with food and family, forgetful of the Giver in our busyness, and I am grateful. Can I ever analyze all that God has done for me and rationalize that I have deserved it? Can I do Him the dishonor of attempting to number His extravagance into a list of tangible blessings? That is what eternity is for. But in the meantime, why wait for Thursday? Who woke me up this morning, right on time? Who has sustained me since birth? Who has brought about all my trials in order to polish me as a gem? With each word and action a carefully crafted prayer of Thanksgiving let me begin now... and continue, ever filled with gratitude.

Ravenwood Sarmone (Grayson)

14.3 Hands to Leap On

Flea-bitten Grey
17 Years Old

Egyptian Arabian
7 Year Friend
All Ears (Forward)

4 Athletic legs
Honest as they come
100% Teacher (For the Brave-Hearted)

Not for Sale

A Dash of Salt- October 27, 2007

Windy, damp, and enlivening: the coast of Newport, RI on a overcast day, anything but dismal with the sound of the waves dashing themselves repeatedly against the snail encrusted and seaweed draped rocks. With the crisp scent of salt tingling in one's nose and the air buffeting one's clothes and hair and body added to a day of rest and the company of friends, it has just the right amount of seasoning.

October 20, 2007

In short, I feel forgetful. Here it is two weeks and one day later and I am just now remembering; it has taken 15 days worth of essays, quizzes, and discussions for the light to once again appear, finally showing itself much like the sun streaming though these branches in Heath, MA.

But is that the only thing I've forgotten? It seems as if another lesson can be brightened though the illustration of this beauty--I have been called to be a sunbeam, a witness to those around me, as if they are indeed like these solemn woods and autumn leaves, in need of illumination. And there is joy in such remembrance, and wonder, and enthusiasm: sure, I will not deny that cloudiness happens, but God has granted renewal and I am once again filled with a mission... might I only be as gentle as the light playing about the forest floor as I attempt to fulfill it.

On Yesterday's Completion of Her Trip Around the Sun

They tell you it was chance
That brought your parents together;
You burst as a happening
Like everyone else miniscule
And uncared for
Toward death everlasting.
They say that your brain
Spontaneously developed
What you would someday be
All a muddle of cells
Randomly concluded into you,

But What of Him?

He says He knew You
Before You were He was
Forming and birthing
Love and joy
Miraculously you
Mary, precious annointed
Girl for Him for ever
Culturing every blink, every trip around the Son
Yes, evolving You
Becoming You, His glorious intention,
An Eternal Future

Tribute to a New-Englander

Perhaps the sharp detail of this digital photo speaks most clearly of its recent taking; except for this and the green truck we might imagine this as a picture of yesterday, painstakingly taken, carefully developed, and lovingly hand-tinted. One might indeed feel that such a copy would have been more realistic, doing true justice to the care and love and energy put into the splitting of wood- especially in this case in which the work was completed with an axe, my grandfather's heart-warming effort spent at nearly eighty years old. To almost carelessly take such an image hardly captures the emotion, my only comforts being in my own experience of satisfaction in a well-stacked woodpile and the priviledge to peek in on such a moment while on horseback. To quote the native New-Englander Robert Frost: "Whose woods these are I think I know..."; thank you, Grandpa.

Encouragement

A spot of light in the corner
A pocket of good weather amongst the red-orange mounds
Of life

A winding rugged path
Roughly beautfiul in the awe of its challenge
Stretching in a tricky climb to the very top

Ah yes, there will be rain,
Just a gentle shower to water the thirsty soul.

A Different Place

What a contrast to my stuffy dorm room of books and clutter, what an inviting scene in comparison to my overheated cave of solitude, a stuffy place on a rainy evening in mid October. To think that I was on that spur of rock only five days ago, saturated with the blue sky and light-footed as a mountain goat on the heights, to remember that I and fellow hikers were drizzled with a few sparkles of rain on the way down is almost beyond my comprehension, it seems so long ago. It was indeed a restoring Sabbath, once again in the White Mountains, once again among rocks and chickadees and great people, among clouds... an airy trip, a blessed feeling--was it only a dream of heaven? From this hard wooden chair and dreary yellow light it almost seems so. Were angels holding up that slab of stone? Likely, I only have the pictures to prove that I was there.

A Week of Assonances and Noses

You know how it is when you are young and at the beginning of the book gobbling stage, how you are always coming across difficult words like alliteration and assonance, feeling at the same time that you are supposed to understand what they mean, yet not comprehending their full meaning and feeling embarrassed about it, much too guilty and shy to admit the truth, so going on in life forgetting about the words and living blissfully without them. But good terms like alliteration and assonance do not long go forgotten and hence it was this week that they once again appeared out of the mist and became reality for me, clear, concise, and truly beautiful-- and I had to laugh that not too long ago I stumbled over such delightful terms and let them fall out of my mind just as clumsily. I suppose everything was a little uncoordinated then, limbs too newly long for my body, the constant purple swellings on knees and elbows, the stubbed toes and jammed fingers. After a long calm of several years, this week I once again seemed to walk down memory lane, or rather into it as one runs into a wall with one's head. In my defense, it was a glass panel that did look like a door and who would have thought that my momentum would carry me forward when the supposed door did not move? Who would have imagined that I would have a growing lump on my nose and would topple over a few moments later in a second of unconsciousness? Certainly those details are beyond my comprehension-- but even a knock on the noggin cannot erase the impression of an assonance now: it is firmly implanted.

On Alarm Clocks

A piece of plastic wrapped around a battery... but how often I have trusted it to wake me up, grumpily slapping its top for more time when it does as I have asked. But likewise, who can explain the requested wake-up call of 6:17 on a Sunday morning, the rousing of a sleepy girl just in time to make her 6:30 working appointments, fully rested, and wide awake at that instant without any humanness involved? I do not deny that it still amazes me even after several months of such a refreshing experience, made perhaps more unique by a grateful heart and wonder-filled eyes, less violence, and a constantly tested faith.

Traveling Companion

I am no mechanic, but is that
An alternator belt
Chattering beside me as if lonely
Sick of traveling alone?
Hear her squeak that she is tired, weakened,
Frayed,
Demanding reinforcement nearly
At the end of her toils.

Somehow her niche seems familiar,
Amidst the churning parts
And dark greasy bolts of her world complaining
Screaming to see the light of day
In moments.
But today I am silent
Listening to her grinding,
On the way to an empty dorm room
And quiet.

White Mountains

It is amazing how small and insignificant one can feel, sitting amongst these huge protrusions of rock, soil, and trees, under the vast expanse of a blue sky and drifting clouds. In the same way, one Sabbath on Cannon Mt, glorious though it may be, is a fleeting thing in comparison to Eternity... but still... the one moment is special, just as I, in the eyes of God, am unique and loved in my miniscule self.

Wood Between the Worlds

As I sit for a moment on a hot and lazy afternoon, three days before classes start, my mind keeps returning to a particular moment in C. S. Lewis's Tales of Narnia and like Polly, I feel as if I am sprawled on the turf in the Wood Between The Worlds. Like the wood dimpled with pools and inhabited only by two children and a munching guinea pig, it is quiet here on campus and while I keep running into people that I have known, the mixed environment of relaxation and expectation makes the meeting nearly unfamiliar, almost timeless. And it is green here-- New England in the high time of summer, perhaps a little parched as it is August, but brilliant if not dazzling, sunlight drifting through leaves and twigs dancing in the merry little breezes, grass soft and inviting. Most importantly, as I am in such a place of stillness, it is a growing place: of patience, of trust, of cheerfulness, and of enthusiasm for a new experience just around the corner.

But I am here by way of something more enchanting than magic.

The Smell of Purple

My family has long been amused by my sensitive nose and equally inquisitive mind, almost as if it is a laughing matter to be endowed with the extremities of both. But how else is one to manage life if one is not allowed to follow one's nose? Where else would one find adventure than in a brownish scent, dank and dark and dangerous, or in the bliss of a rosy waltz, perhaps too filled with the bubbles of perfume that dissipate all too soon into the atmosphere. Even so, today as my busy walk was interupted by a tickle of air wild with the scent of ripe grapes I was reminded that one particular hue is mine to sniff out with all dedication, regardless of the so-called thrill of a varied experience: a narrow and confusing mottly of mixtures to begin with, but a royal and Heavenly path full of promise and fine taste and delight, edged with more than just a hint of beauty. Indeed, in is a Heavenly fragrance, deep and bursting with mystery, sweet as a wild grape.