shouts of joy

I'm afraid of losing a good thing, until I remember the days before. I forget that nothing was ever mine and each good thing truly is a big present wrapped up with ribbons and attached to it a note that says, "I love you, my daughter." I too often, take for granted those gifts. With each step along this journey there have been gifts, some small, some huge, and some I misinterpret all together.  Today, in this commonly warm inland empire it rained under dark, heavy clouds, drawing me back to my Western Oregon root. This week I'll be leaving this sunny state, where I've received blessing after blessing with my hands wide open, desperately reaching out. I hadn't expected so many good things at one time. I hadn't expected that it would become commonplace here in this big sunny state. The last thing I had expected was to fall in love with this smoggy, crowded, hot hell of a place. Love is a thing for the strong. Macrina Wiederkehr writes: Giving yo...

The space in between two peaks lies a distance that seems dream-shattering. We look for the trail, the bridge, some kind of escape, but there isn't one. Our human eye can only measure a mean distance. The space is so far, the trek is so long, the goal seems out of any man's reach. But with time it won't matter, because it's the time that will bridge the distance, providing us a season to climb down from our peak, into the valley, through the abode and back up the next peak. It was just yesterday I sat in church. As I sat there I fought to hold in the bursts of laughter that wanted to escape during the reverence of the song service. How ironic that I, a lone high school teacher from Salem, would be sitting in a sanctuary in Portland in a row of seven of my own classmates from college. The boy on my left: a fond, old memory of camping trips, rock climbing, long weekends spent at Priest Lake, and a cousin of my best friend. There on my right: another kind of fond memor...