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.