"You want proof there's a God? Look outside, watch a sunset." - Frank Peretti

Me: reading a book, by the window, completely encompassed in what I'm reading and fully closed-off to the world outside of my book.  I'm not overly impressed by what I've read of the book, so far (I've become a fiction snob I think---they all sound the same to me anymore), but I keep reading it anyway; waiting for the next page to redeem the first page and so on.  What a waste... to spend a whole God-given hour of a God-given day reading a book I don't like.  Life's too short for that.

But, I read deeply.  Like I sometimes think deeply.  And when I've committed myself to reading something I'm not easily pried away.  I turn another page.

The window next to me is open a crack.  From the world outside, a quiet orchestra of noises cushions my thoughtfulness: birds bickering, leaves brushing each other in the breeze, gravel crunching from the driveway.  I sigh contentedly and look out the window, turn back to my book.

Then I hear it: the long, loud, dramatically-mournful bleating of a goat in agony.

I snap from my book back into the world.

Stupid goats.

Always getting their heads stuck in the fence; always finding invisible holes in the fence and escaping down the driveway; always running around the fence and never running back in through the pasture gate.  Stupid goats.

I get up off my cozy spot by the window, stuff my bare feet into my trusty rubber boots and trudge out the back door into the warmest, laziest drizzle of summer rain.

"Ooh," I breathe, and stand there for a moment, holding out a hand to catch the warm drops.  "Oooh."

Guinness and Molly and a couple of cats follow me up to the goat pen.  I open the gate, shut the gate, make my way through the thick pasture grasses and toward the brown goat whose head is stuck---for the seven-hundredth time---in a square hole of the fence.  Thunder claps from somewhere and its deep rumble echos through the valley; feels like it echos through my whole body.  "Whoa," I think, and stand still for a second.  The goat rolls its yellow eyes in my direction, because it can't turn its head to see me, and sits down on its knees; letting out a pitiful "Bbblll-e-e-e-h-h-h," in its vibrato voice.  I free it and stand up and look out across the Southern Oregon horizon.

And see this:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.  I pray that according to the wealth of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

-- Ephesians 3:14-21

"What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?" asked Meg, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other.

"Going out for exercise," answered Jo, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

"I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough!  It's cold and dull out; and I advise you to stay, warm and dry, by the fire, as I do," said Meg, with a shiver.

"Never take advice!  Can't keep still all day, and, not being a pussy-cat, I don't like to doze by the fire.  I like adventures, and I'm going to find some."

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women 

Ahh, summer's flowers...

If life was a bowl of soup:

I haven't written anything in a long time.  A really long time.  Not on my blog, not in a letter, not even in one of the many notebooks or journals that float around in my bottomless-pit of a desk.  For me, the girl who writes out every musing, thought, frustration, inspiration, humiliation, contemplation (you get the idea...), this months-long writer's block is a complete oddity.

Typically, I enjoy writing stuff.  It's an outlet for me!  It allows me to rant when I've got pent-up frustrations; it helps to un-muddle my brain when I'm overwhelmed and confused about life; it's a canvas for words and ideas when I'm feeling creative and inspired.  My brain itches and my fingers tap when any of those moods I mentioned comes upon me... and I gotta write somethin'.  I just gotta.  Words build up in my head, and flow out through my finger tips and viola!  Something---however meaningless or, occasionally, significant---gets written.

But nothing's gotten written lately.  Not from my head's compartment of thoughts, it hasn't.  And I can't explain why---because I don't know why.  It's the strangest thing, really, because I haven't even felt like writing anything (whaaat...?), and when I've thought something, or seen something, or heard something that made my mind's eye blink and I said to myself, "I should write something about that", I couldn't.  I'd sit starring at a blank page---or blank screen---and wait for it; the "it" that always comes.  It never came.  It hasn't come for a lot of months now.

Weirdness.

But, then, here I am: writing.  Writing about not being able to write.  Hah!  What an oxymoron.

Maybe the deal is I haven't had a lot to write about.  Not much.  Not really.  In fact if this past year was a soup I'd describe it as, bland.  Yup.  That pretty well sums it up, sadly.  Very little flavor; small amount of spice---just spoonful after spoonful of flavorless broth.  Know what, though...?  It's my own fault.  My soup is what I make of it, darn it---and if it's bland, then I'm the one who's been sparring the salt and pepper!

I'm only guessing... but I'd say this kid's pretty
happy with his soup.  Heh. :D

I'm changing that.

No more bland-soup-life for me.

And no more focusing-on-only-myself-and-forgetting-the-people-around-me, either.  Because I've been doing a lot of that, too.  Too much of it, way too much.  There are other people floating around in my soup, and they have their own set of taste preferences: "Don't be selfish; don't live to make a good impression on others.  Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself.  Don't think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing."  (Philippians 2:3-4)

So... it looks like I might be back on the random-writings-and-uncommon-musings band wagon, peeps.  And it's weird as usual.  (Soup?  Really?)

Albert Einstein said: The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.  Well, Sir Einstein, my thinking process is obviously changed forever: I now think of life as soup, and all the events that happen in my soup, as salt and pepper.

May we all stir full and flavorful soups.

[Almost] Nothing beats a camera in your hand and a sunset in your own back yard

       Show me the path where I should walk, O Lord;

     point out the right road for me to follow.
Lead me by Your truth and teach me,

     for You are the God who saves me.

     All day long I put my hope in You. 

                    

 Psalm 25:4-5