Another P.S.

For those of you who faithful friends who watch out for my very blotchy posting record, I will continue to use this blog for my five months in Honduras--that is, when the time and internet connections allow.

Some choose to begin a new blog to chronicle their missionary experiences, and yet I believe that to separate this journey from the tale of my life would be to sever it from all that has led up to it and leave it dangling, cold and vulnerable, for the owls to snatch.

Exquisitely Guided and a Winged Horse

It is hard to believe that I have spent the last fifteen-and-a-half years in school, and nearly as difficult to realize that the thirty-first half will be completed as soon as I turn in one last, finished assignment this morning.

And that will be it for now, for the next five months, unless one counts a sixteen hour drive home in the snow as the final test of the semester.

A month from today I board my first commercial flight as I leave Boston, MA for Honduras, flying to a land of Spanish and guava fruit and scanty communication, and beginning my post-school life before my schooling itself is finished. Am I frightened to embark thus? Well, perhaps, but only as jittery as any one might be while on a runaway horse that has promised not to kill you and yet is racing at full speed toward a cliff. I have chosen to believe that the Horse has wings.

A Question

Does God grow us in straight line, ever onward toward one end like the sleet pelting against ones nose and backback,

or does He nurture us more in a circling pattern like the first snow flakes of the season tickling the tree branches, teaching us to revisit old thoughts in a new manner and learn anew from past experiences,

or does He gently mist His will and His purity upon us like an autumn rain, only in such amounts that we will be able to bear it,

or does there have to be one answer?

Sometimes I am as confused as the weather was today.

Out the Window

If she meets you in the bathroom

with a sad look on her face,

and a yellow shoe in each hand

dangling from a long white lace,

And she tells you that she's washed them

but the stain can still be seen

and they're really, really wet now,

and she can't remove her screen,

Then open up your window, friend,

And let the shoes hang out,

In company of the golden tree,

And the wind all whistling about.

If she takes the long thin laces white

And ties them in knot

And, coolly, on the hinges there,

she drops those shoes she bought,

And she tells you that she'll leave them there

a-drying in the sun,

until no water droplets drip,

from soles or yellow tongues,

Then open up your window, friend,

and let the shoes hang out,

in the company of the golden tree

and the wind all whistling about.

Old 100 After One Hundred Musings

The number 100 plunges into my brain and triumphantly hauls out a memory or two...

Here's blond Natalie, standing beside her project that was required to be made out of one hundred "somethings." This time, the "somethings" were eggs and she spent days blowing out the gooey innards.

And Dad used to count to one hundred so speedily when we were playing hide and seek out in the woods that I couldn't rightly hear each number, but of course I knew that he wasn't cheating.

Then there's Gramdma, standing at the front of the little Drewsville, NH stone church, her Bible spread out before her. "I will be reading Psalm a hundred," she says with a smile. And she begins: "Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness, come before Him with Joyful singing...

For one hundred posts I have been trying to do that, trying to serve Him through memory, through song, through creativity, through experience, through being me. And He is yet there, much more consistent than my scanty and forgetful musings. He is beyond the regularity of my studies and the enthusiams of my inspirations. And He is much, much more faithful even than the 100th hymn that I sing far too infrequently:

"Great is thy faithfulness, oh God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with thee
Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.


"Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.


"Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.


"Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have need Thy hand has provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."

Love and Autumn

Today is one of those thoughtful days. The eighth anniversary of my grandfather's death, nearly a month marker since I began my fourth year of college and left my family in Vermont. And it is the first day of Autumn, the first day of fall 2009 which officially began at 5:18 this evening...

Every morning as I sit at the registration counter, I hear an insistent banging at the door at around 9:00 and look up to see them coming in, pushing their daughter to work in a wheel chair. It seems rather switched up-- they up and active, she looking tiny and frail, her hair white and fluffy and thin around her head as if it is one delicate dandelion puff that a sudden breeze might blow throughout the lobby. The unusual trio always looks up and wishes us all a good morning as they pass through and into the hallway, always cheerful, rather together-like. Several minutes later the elderly couple walk slowly back past my desk. I always notice then that they are somewhat stooped, their heads white too, and that they aren't perhaps the spry folks they once were. But then my eyes always stray down a little further to their hands for what I know I will see--fingers strong and tightly twined together.

The trees have begun just a little of their rosy-cheekedness around the parking lot and today the misty rain warmed up what will probably be the last wave of summer campus flowers. But there is a solemn beauty in it all that summer's ecstasy can't quite match.

Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?

She is my hero. I want to tell the world that she can take a shower by herself, that she can go on a trailride, that she will help sweep the the bathhouse with a bit of coaxing. I want to call home and tell them that she let me float her on her stomach in the swimming pool, that she let me braid her hair for church, that her love for bananas no longer keeps her from eating anything else.

I met her last year, a bright eight-year-old who bopped noisily into my cabin and claimed her bunk for the week. I didn't really no what to do with a child with Aspergers, and neither did she know what to do with me, a new authority figure in her world who didn't allow stuffed animals to come to dinner time and who asked her to stay with the rest of the cabin. And so we spent our week in some sort of warfare, physical and spiritual, both of us with tears in our eyes, though tears of rather different sorts. But I wanted to see her again.

This summer, if anything, she waltzes into my cabin with more zest for life, ready to introduce her Webkins to me, telling me to close my eyes and simultaneously unzip her bulging suitcase. I half expect the contents to burst out at me like a well-wound jack-in-the-box, well trained by their exuberant master.

I see immediately that she has grown. Her bright yellow sneakers are undoubtedly larger than last year's shoes, her figure a little taller. But throughout the week I watch as she initiates games with her cabinmates. I watch as she tries new food. I listen as she asks for prayer. I listen as she sings new songs she's learned. I feel her arm sneak around me in a hug at line call. Becky has grown. Something inside her has responded to love. Something inside her has awakened in response to the many prayers surrounding her presence at camp.

She's the one who gives me the words one Sabbath afternoon as the rest of the campers and I sit out on the porch, enjoying solitude and sunshine. "Hey--hey, do you want my signature?" she asks me, coming up with a stamp in hand. "Sure, Becky," I say, curious to see what will happen next. "You--you say. . . " she instructs me as to what I must ask her in order to receive the honor. Then I say what I've been dying to say all week: "Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?" And there on the yellow paper she plants her seal: the name JESUS inked in red and BECKY childishly scrawled below.

Camp Cherokee

And again: what can be said in a mere smattering of words that will adequately sum up a glorious six-and-a-half weeks at Camp Cherokee?

Of course there were many fun things of which I shall litter about some documentation...

Slaloming for the first time

Lovely Algonquin

Muddifying my legs

Visiting friends and picking huckleberries

Rustling bulrushes while watching over baby Moses

Swampy ventures with good friends

Choco and croc larks fueled by yummy breakfasts

Teaching horse lessons with the assistance of our hooved staff

But that is not half of it, or at least it ought not to be. It is about a heart altar and full submission.

It is about quiet moments with God on the dock. It is about a unified staff. It is about friendship and brother to sister love. It is about trial and prayer and repaired bathhouses and fixed swimming pools and righted wells. It is about stories of changed lives.

And it is about these ones.

Especially this one.

And there will be more.

True Friendship is a Knott Which Angel Hands Have Tied

And so it has happened. The White and the Blue Nile have joined into the one Nile, a river flowing through a desert land, a great swell of water that is life and a blessing to those around it because of its mighty Source...

Yes, I have cried tears. A brilliant blue bridesmaid dress could not prevent them, and neither could a reunion with my whole family. But they are droplets shed for an era past, not of real sorrow--they are for my childhood, our childhood. We grow, we blossom, we move on. And it is the acculmulation of all those growth spurts and transplants and waterings and buddings that has led to this celebration of two lives led by God's caring fingers. And I think that it is just as much for the wonder of this new and happy journey, for my brother and new sister, that I cry--joyful tears.

Happy Camper

Burnt Granola

That indescribable odor that picks up just where the fragrance of warm vanilla oats leaves off curled my nose hairs so violently this morning that it finally woke me up. I probably got downstairs in 2 seconds flat, less time than it takes me even when I hear a cat getting sick down in the living room. The heated mixture was out in another second and I stood grumbling my eyes at it in disbelief.

Such a small thing. Extra toasty granola, still edible, but little better than a chore to eat. They've always told us not to cry over spilled milk. And yet I found myself musing on my granola still by the time I left for work an hour or two later, and occasionally throughout the day. I oughtn't to say it is the waste that bothers me the most since I just told you that the granola was not burnt, merely much darker than I enjoy it. Neither am I distressed solely by the fact that my brother is returning from Bolivia in two days and that he deserves much better than conversation-deafening crunches for breakfast. Perhaps it is the dismay that such perfectly tasty ingredients--the right ones, the right proportions--can so miserably be turned into delightless fodder by the mistake of an extra hour's heat.

One good thing about chewing something for a while is that it eventually because soft enough to swallow. This morning I could hear only the noise of my burnt granola in my head-- the little pinch of a small failure-- but upon working on it most of the day, at least some extent of digestion occured.

As children we are taught that when we make mistakes we must suffer for them, and that, to a great extent, is true. If studies are neglected, 'A's do tend to be rather shy. If we take too much food, well, the polite thing is to finish it. If we stay up too late, we will be tired in the morning. We are trained to believe that we will "pay" if we do something wrong. Life has therefore taught us that if we do something foolish like burning our granola, we must suffer through it and eat it until the very final toasted oat breaks between our teeth and makes its way through our bodies.

And yet, what are we as humans but perfectly wholesome ingredients gone awry? We are chosen, created, prepared, grown, nourished, perfected, confirmed, strengthened--and then we go and burn our granola. We rebel. We backbite. We scorn. But here is where the life-long lessons of justice are spun until their limbs are splayed out and then set shaking and confused on the ground: God doesn't work like life. God is merciful. As we recognize that we have burnt our granola, He is the one in the bakery, turning on the oven to just the right temperature, lovingly making us a whole new batch with His warm hands, and showing us how to do better next time.

Oh, For the Artsy Travelers

They tell me she sounds crochety. But that is after I have already boisterously agreed to drive several hours across the state to meet her. I wouldn't have been able to resist anyway. Another opportunity to get lost, and this time in pretty countryside, sounds intriguing and worth the gas to get there. And what can be sinister in hillsides bathed in baby leaves, misted with a light drizzle of fog?

It's all a wild goose chase. She might not be where I am supposed to meet her, in St. Albans, VT. Her phone number is wrong on her website. My boss shakes his head and jokes to his wife and I that we had better watch out for these artsy people who have difficulty with concrete and objective things. Like directions? Like equations? I squeak up a minor protest.

So here I am in Cambridge, VT after a wait or two here and there in Barnet and Morrisville. I've already gone past the Johnson Woolworks, the place where, according to my boss, they make the original red and black plaid wool shirts in a factory that has been working at least one hundred fifty years. I've already passed Hardwick too, with its bold yellow signs saying "WATCH OUT FOR SNOW FROM ROOF" and Jeffersonville with the yellow signs emboldened by a tractor figure. I pull off the main drag and call the webdesigner, this said artsy person. I am surprised that I have cellphone service.

I immediately decide that I like her. Crotchety? Bah humbug. I barely get it out that I am calling in behalf of my boss when she cuts in with a "yes, I know all about you, Emily." She won't let me call her Ms. but insists I call her Claire. She tells me that she will meet me in a few minutes at a "nice looking little gas station and convenience store" that will be off to my left in a few miles.

I beat her there and wait in my car. Perhaps the little gas station is nice looking for these hereabouts. And then she arrives. She is almost a second Paul Bunyan--decked out in a fishing vest, large glasses, and dark blue dungarees. I shake her hand and give her the information for the school website.

"At least you got to see a lot of Vermont," she says as she walks to the driver's side of her dark green Chevy.
"Uh huh, especially after being in Michigan so long."
She leans on the roof of her car. "What're you studying?"
I can barely reply "English" before she is nodding her head.
"Excellent!"
I grin and look up at her in time to hear the rest of her sentence: "...and a perfectly useless degree." She beams back at me. We share the glow for a moment and she gives me a knowing nod.
"Yep, we English majors are poor, but we sure lead interesting lives. Keep at it. Oh, and by the way, they make great sandwiches in there," she says, pointing her chin at the little shop.

Dirt Under the Fingernails

It is raining lightly--I suppose it is about time since we have had three days in a row of sunshine.

Mum and I tromp down the bank to the garden, stomp on the tops of our shovels, and begin cutting away the grass that has crept into the soil. Within minutes my hands are nearly black from pulling up the chunks of sod and shaking the mud out of the roots.

These two weeks at home will grant me the extent of my gardening experience for the summer. Even so, they are infringed upon by the gut-deep guilt that I should be doing something to earn money. And yet, what can replace these hours of grubbiness, these conversations with Mum, these wet heads? The worms whisk slickly into their holes as we disturb them. The spearmint that has taken over the far corner of the garden also claims a patch of the surrounding air and I am so tempted by the fragrance that I grab a leaf and chew it. "We could pick it and dry it," I say, thinking of cups of hot tea come wintertime. "Yes," she replies, her eyes all chipper-like, "we could make our own toothpaste." We laugh. But I've always liked wintergreen better anyway.

Somehow it is peaceful down here, sandwiched between the blueberry bushes and the pond, and I have trouble leaving when we go in to make supper. I tell the garden that I want to return; no, not just for a visit to this little plot later on this summer, but to the whole mindset when I have the space to plant my own tomatoes. It is safe here, restful, necessary. No amount of money can change the fact that most of us, come about five o'clock in the evening, feel the questioning murmurs in our stomachs. No amount of efficiency can hurry the growth that God is in charge of. No amount of stress can erase the recognition of His bounty. Yes, I will be back-- hopefully in time for the blueberry season too.

Some Thoughts on the Present

This morning my father took his five students--ranging from fifth to tenth grade--out for a paddle on Joe's Pond. With very little convincing I came along as a driver, a boat loader, and as the second person for one of the canoes.

Dad stopped at nearly every curve in the channel to point out something. There were the methane gas bubbles, rising to the surface from the decaying process underneath the mud. There were the kingfishers and the swallows, fleet by wing, bugcatchers, nimble. There was the loon on her nest and the crow in a treetop standoff with protective redwing parents. There was the mayfly in the short non-larva lifespan of some three days. Dad talked about the lily pads beginning to grow as soon as the ice goes out, gradually uncurling their reddened leaves into the sunlight. He mentioned that only a month ago this particular pond was still covered in ice...

---

When I was in elementary school and highschool I took it for granted too. There were always the camping trips. There were long walks on Sabbaths in which we learned how to sit quietly on mossy streamrocks, listening to the water gurgling across old leaves and smoothed stones. There were the horses that came along, the cats, the dogs, the turtles--all gifts that I could hardly see because they were as much a part of my cheerful bubble as sleeping was at night.

---

Last night I went to see Grayson. It has nearly been a year since he came to his new home, and I was not surprised to once again find him in excellent health, good spirits, and with an unsatiable desire for May green grass. When I arrived back home later in the evening, my parents mentioned that next weekend they had decided to go visit my grandfather's little old cabins and property in the woods of Heath, MA. Coming off from my slightly wistful visit of my childhood buddy, I found myself free to answer that I would love to go, noting that I was unconfined by a horse who would need his supper back home.

---

And neither will my present moments return--the tiny world of a university campus, the flexible job schedule, the opportunities and freedom to go anywhere, do anything, as long as the money holds out. Working at a summer camp, taking the morning to help my parents cut and split their winter wood, going along as a driver on my father's school-outings...

Ask Mr. Renkins, the old Vermont farmer who stopped by yesterday morning as we ran our neighbor's wood-splitter, the same guy who watched me ride my white horse "king Arthur-like" through all the green fields as a homeschooled highschool student. He would shake his head again and say that I still haven't found it yet either, in the same way I watch my father's students squabble amongst themselves, not clear whether it was a kingfisher or a barn swallow who just flitted in front of them, and wonder where they will be in the next five years.

Extravagance

Credit for top photo--Jodi S.

P.S.

This afternoon I went to check on the unsupervised boots. It rained yesterday. Perhaps they had splashed themselves into some trouble. Perhaps I simply needed an excuse to visit the river.

From a distance I could see the black blob on the edge of the trail. I grinned. Perhaps my hypothesis was right. The boots' person clearly did not intend to return to their task masters. No one had picked them up for charity either. . . But wait! As my own shoes dragged me down the hill toward the dark spot I realized that something was amiss. There was but one boot, black as ever, white topped, lonesome, pointing its solemn nose across the river to the cornfield.

I could go on, about the necessity of delivering oneself wholly into the sprouting and green-thumbed hands of spring and giving up both boots and squishing into the freedom of mud under all ten toes rather than holding onto a piece of bondage. But that would be silly. Both boots were here two days ago. Something had clearly happened to one of them.

That was a good excuse too. I peered into the water on the right side of the trail. No boot. I scanned the shallows on the left side. No boot. I looked for it as I ran down to the river access point. No boot. And up the hill again. And then I forgot about it when I clambored back up through the tree across the trail, and ran back to my jealous homework. And I forgot about the woodchuck too...

And what of the woodchuck that waddled over the bank as I descended toward the boots, the plump fellow who impudently sat up on his haunches some five feet below the trail, by the stump of a fallen tree, and looked at me? What better witness could be found for the story of the strange disappearance of the boot?

I shall have to go see about that tomorrow.

Leave Off Your Boots

There sat the boots in the middle of the trail; black, and as tidy, though not so shiny, as a show horse's squared front hooves.

The edges of the trail were licked with the sunlit dimples of the overflowed St. Joseph river, and the birds were singing around me. It was enchanting indeed, but not generally a place boots would go unchaperoned.

I half expected to find their walking mates as I rounded the last corner and came directly upon the river. I had a chuckle ready, suspecting a jolly fellow overcome with spring fever like the young fisherman I found in Lemon Creek yesterday, darting around after minnows with two sticks. But there was only more sunshine, and the eager river ascending up the banks, its cool mouth glad to take my sweaty fingers and then return them to me, wet but clean.

Here I was stopping again. It was cool by the water, unlike the heat cloud dancing after me on the pavement. There were baby green sprouts beginning on the bushes near the bank, and behind me the birds were insistent. I turned to go, running again, on the narrow spit of land between the pools of shallow floodland.

And there were the boots again. Perhaps their owner had already acquiesced to the calls of spring and dove in with them still on, like I longed to do, leaving the wet things to dessicate in the April sun with plans to return. Or maybe they left the boots for charity, counting on some thrifty walker to take them in, braving the damp smell. But I like to imagine the sudden leap into the air, the ecstatic howl, the kicking off of the boots into the April breeze, the pattering off barefoot; the happy person so tipsy with spring that the only things remembered in the drunken capers up the trail were the dutchmen's britches growing along the edges of the bank.

I never even found the socks.

Springtime in Vermont

Courage, Dear Heart

Lucy stands in the crows nest, high above the deck of The Dawn Treader, with an arrow ready on her bowstring. Ahead of her lies the dark tunnel, a lump of blackness and despair that seemingly cannot be penetrated with any physical light. She shivers. Her heart quakes as she looks ahead at this test, this foolhardy adventure, and in her heart she prays for the one light that she knows can go with her anywhere. As the ship nears the entrance of the dark tunnel, she looks back one last time at the Sun and sees something in the shape of a darkened cross against the brightness. She blinks as she sees it getting larger and then realizes that it is a bird of the sea, an albatross. And suddenly it is above her, circling around the mast, closer and closer until it whirrs near her head, surrounding her with a glorious perfume and the whispered words: Courage, dear heart.

* * *

I wake up overwhelmed. I am exhausted. It is still dark out, and I am already worrying about the outcome of my day. It is not merely that this single day has me stumped, but that the weeks to come are looking blacker as the February zooms closer to midterms. And this morning--I have a paper to finish, a bed to be made, and some semblance of physical presentation necessary before I arrive at work in so short amount of time. I take the time to open my Bible, to be assured that my strength is indeed inadequate and that God's strength alone is perfected in my weakness. All too soon I set about my other tasks and finally find myself running to work to make it on time, praying. Something moves on the ground in front of me at the base of one of the large campus trees, leaving the ground and flapping up to the lowest branch. I stop running, noting already by its size that it is a hawk, musing that it is likely the red-tail I have often seen down by the dairy. I am within twenty feet of it now, and it still sits there, looking around, seemingly unconcerned. I keep walking, and it flies to a tree on the other side of the side-walk, its brown and white speckled chest clearly visible. I walk nearly underneath it, stop, and gaze up at its eyes, at its folded wings, at its curving beak. I stand there and know that I am already a minute or two late for work, that my paper is not as I would like it, and that there are yet many hours until Sabbath. But that is okay. Courage, dear heart.

He Counts the Stars- Psalm 147:4

We very rarely begin a task without having a specific, self-interested reason for doing so. We attend school perhaps because we want to learn, but of course due to the reality that without an education, we do not have as much opportunity for making a living. In turn, we work not necessarily because we enjoy it, but because we wish to have the perks that come along with money. We are kind to our neighbors, hopefully in wishing to live as Christ, but as a practical means of ensuring our own support when we ourselves are in difficult straits.

He counts the number of the stars.

I daresay He does not need to know their number. He has told us that He can count the stars, and yet has never published in human tongue the exact number, like He might of if He were human--He has not printed it in the latest scientific journal, signed GOD. In that sense He has not boasted. And it is not as if stars are human beings, in need of at least the occassional meal or sip of water, or birds, desirous of twig-ball nests and leafy branches above them, or living creatures in need of His mighty hand for survival. To be sure, however, stars owe to Him their placement and their suspension in the atmosphere. But stars are stars: things we humans know so little about in the grand scheme of things; bright drops in the sky little children look at and imagine to be nail holes of light into the heavens, or rolling orbs of fire, or fireflies, forever placed and forever "on." What end is to be achieved by counting them?

He counts the number of the stars.

Could it be else, but wonder? Could it be else but uncontainable joy? John Ortberg writes in The Life You've Always Wanted that he imagines God saying to the sun each day, with the innocence and joy of a child, "Do it again," shine another day (62). And why not to the stars as well? To God, they have never grown dusty--each morning, each evening, like the first day, He kindles fire in them again, calling them by their individual name, glowing them.

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them

God told Abraham several times in Genesis that his descendants would someday be as the stars. In Genesis 15, we read that "He [God] took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' " God concludes His show-and-tell by reminding Abraham once again that his family will once be that numerous.

Are not we, by faith, children of Abraham? Are not we the uncountable stars burning little dots of light into the black around us?

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them

Like the stars, we each have our own name, given by an excited and fond-eyed Name-giver in a continual burst of creativity. We ourselves are evidences of God's laughter, delight, and star-counting extravagance; uniquely called and predestined and justified and glorified.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes:
“What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?" (150).

And so He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.

He has given us names that each take part in His wonder. He has given us pieces of Himself, bits of His starglow. And yet though we are too many to count, His light is not reduced by a fraction--It fills the heavens so as to take away need of the sun--it is only amplified by the gift.

Seeing Snow

Snow...

Has been crawling up trees like overly-large albino catepillars, or slugs leaving trails of white mucas behind them, or sub-sandwiches pickable and munchable

Snow has been clining to twigs like particles of pussy willows

Snow has been hugging limbs like giant rodents, balancing with the aide of long tails, attempting to soak up the sun

Snow has been capping scarlet berries with crystal drops of white

Snow has been pillowing woodland arches with wild wraps

Snow has been carved by the wind, flaked and shattered into pointed shards

Snow has been following winter-browned flowers with funnels of shadow

Snow has been skating around golden grass stems, leaving a history of subtle waves

And snow has been bluing and dancing and growing in reddened peach orchards

And growing in the sun