bushwhacking

Many of my closest friends know that turning back is rarely an option for me. When I decide to do something I have prayed, analysed, prepared (but not planned--I like to keep my options open), and thought quite a bit before I jump. But sometimes (often?) a key component of my decision is based on intuition. I know, sense, that this is the way to go. Yes, I have some facts to back it up, mostly.
[This reminds me of a time I won a game of Clue on the second round--I knew the answer but my reasoning (while proven true) was so unsubstantiated that one of the players refused to ever play with me again. But I digress...]
Anyway, I don't like to reverse. Jump ship, change course, perhaps. Likely. But go back? No. It's not that I've burnt bridges--in the area of employment for example I've returned to a previous employer in four different instances. It's more of an adventurous there's-more-to-explore attitude. I want to find a new path, a new way of doing things. Pioneer and all that. Once I've mastered it it becomes stale (which is probably why I was never fitted for accounting long term).
Speaking of paths those closest friends I mentioned can also tell you that if you hike with me and let me choose the route I won't get you lost...eventually...but there will likely be some bushwhacking involved. My sense of direction, inherited from my beloved geographer father, is pretty good but sometimes the people who make paths neglect to connect them or put them where I feel they should go. One time I ended up with two friends outside LA climbing an almost vertical hill to get to another path (because we had taken the wrong turn and, well, I don't go back when the goal is so close). Not one of my brighter moments as the little jack russell still had stitches...but fortunately he emerged unscathed and uninfected. In Bangkok I almost got attacked by a pack of wild dogs when I left the touristy area. Another time some blackberries were involved...
Leaving the well-traveled trail is never the safest route. You might get a few scratches. Maybe you could have got there another way. But that's not my story. The best stories lie outside of the mainstream and the courageous few get to tell them. And I do love a good story...

Karfreitag

i pass row upon row of empty 
houses soaking in splendid sunshine
home to bees and bugs cavorting
in eerie wrinkled time as if the
world is holding its breath while
humans hide from the fate common
to all and i marvel at this moment
on a day to remember One who 
never hid walking boldly where
no other could go and took the
sting and the victory so that we
could come out fig leaves gone
yet so many are still waiting in
fear and folly finding comfort and 
security in edifices built on sand
refusing to turn to the only true
the only way coming out of the
crypts sitting warmed by spring
heat yet lifeless this good friday

Fear nothing—not wild wolves in the night,

    not flying arrows in the day,
Not disease that prowls through the darkness,
    not disaster that erupts at high noon.
Yes, because God’s your refuge,
    the High God your very own home,
Evil can’t get close to you,
    harm can’t get through the door.

~Psalm 91

charity, chainsaws, and change

The trees are over 50 years old. My great aunt probably planted them not too long after they had the house built, a deciduous pair near all the evergreens. The powers that be decided the trees exhibited little signs of life and being precariously close to the house the time had come to take them out. In one day, the chainsaws destroy 50 years of painstaking growth.

As the chainsaw hums its staccato tune, I watch branches with solid cores and green leaves tumble down. The trees, welcoming spring had put forth leaves in spite of their moss-covered trunks, as if begging for the chance to live another year.

I ponder the grace that grants me one more day. The stay of execution based on the love that desires I also bear fruit, since the axe is already laid at the roots of those trees that produce nothing good (Matt 3.10). While I have breath I can grow and change, bringing forth love, joy, peace, patience and the like.

Sometimes it takes long years to see significance, to see the leaves unfurling, to see His glory reflected in my actions. Sometimes I forget that the goal is not my achievements and I despair until I remember another lesson of the trees: always point upward. That, by His grace I can do.

gathering dust

Sitting on my shelf is a new iPod touch, purchased for my trip. I haven't turned it on or set it up; it's still in the case. I got it a couple weeks before I was scheduled to leave and just a few days before Apple decided to close all their stores. I cannot return it...at least not right now. Maybe I don't want to return it. It sits gathering dust while I relegate it to that part of my mind that is half in denial the world is as it is and not as it should be.

It's a holding pattern. More than a week passed before I unpacked my bags because, after all, am I staying? Will I go again? What would staying even look like? No job is temporarily suspended, no jobs are really available in this climate. Of course, would I even want one if one turned up? Waiting.

Avoiding decisions like the space grey iPod. After all, most decisions are out of my hands. Even Costco doesn't want my temporary assistance. The few clamouring voices I can tackle may include what to eat and when to exercise and whether nine hours of sleep on a consistent basis is healthy but they seem hollow in light of the silent ones like what now, God?

Restlessness stirs some moments but most pulse with a hesitant expectancy. When the whole world lays aside individual freedom for a perhaps overrated virus something big must be coming. At the very least, life as I know it is over. Like Frodo we can never go home again. It's a brave new world.

Maranatha