Happy Monday--

December 24, 2007

O Holy Night

There is a bit of a legend in our family about a Christmas Eve and Jake. Although I don’t remember the exact year, we were living in the first house we owned in Houston, north of the airport and I had been graced with all three sons by that time. That makes Jake no older than 7 or 8 for this particular Christmas Eve. My mother, and if memory serves me right, my brother and his wife, were visiting our home for the holidays, and we had sat down to Christmas Eve dinner in the little home, all the family assembled. Back then we said Grace all the time at the dinner table, and I honestly don’t remember if Jake asked to say Grace or we were just reminiscing about the coming day, but Jake, not as quiet and shy as he would become as he got older, took the floor to speak. This part I remember distinctly. As we all sat around the table, not quite knowing what to expect, Jake, small for his age and with fly away blonde, straight hair, began:

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”

I don’t know how or why Jake could recite the entire Christmas Story from Luke. I remembered half way through it, wondering if he would possible remember the whole thing. Maybe he had watched the snoopy special enough times, maybe it was just the robustness of young memory, maybe he heard it at church, but one thing I am for certain. God took the truth and good news of that Holy Night, and forever etched it in Jake’s heart. I can remember Jake’s voice, the child’s voice, full of powerful words. As Christmases passed in our family, we reminded Jake of that childish contribution. It was one of those moments that your heart rests in wonder and joy.

Merry Christmas.

It’s my prayer that this season God brings you a precious, shining, promising, moment of joy.

December 17, 2007

Howdy and Happy Monday to you! Hope you are having a better time at getting your Christmas shopping done than I am. I rarely go to the malls even when it’s not Christmas time so the idea of holiday crowds makes me nervous. As scrooge-y as it might appear in the telling, getting out there in the miasma of people at this time of year is considerably unappealing. It’s getting to the point now though that I am worried about it getting done. Despite my reluctance to perform the tasks, I do value giving the people I care about something I think they would love. My procrastination is because of my loss of patience. I find that in the last couple of years, I have very little ability to just be in the moment, a mental place where you take things as they come, intending to enjoy whatever comes up. I know what I am doing instead. I am always thinking I should be making sense of life. I spend a lot of time trying to figure things out. It’s a strange kind of impatience; it’s manifested in always hurrying to get somewhere where you can think things through. It can steal the joy of spending time with the people you love, showing the care you have for the friends who make your life rich, for finding new friends who the promise of friendship is just a warm smile away. I was stopped in my tracks the other day by something my John said. We were having one of those conversations that have always been a part of our family life, but have been difficult to know how to do since we don’t have Jake playing his role. This family talk, this time of philosophy sharing, was a direct answer to numerous prayers sent heavenward the last several months. John was speaking from a pastor’s heart and it was in response to the responsibilities a minister will have for those who will call on him for answers. The context of why John said what I am about to tell you is not so important as they conclusion that his own thinking process had taken him to. Basically..

“There are things in this life that just aren’t explainable. There is no way to explain Jake’s death.” My mind went through a list of people, each of them going through unexplainable things. I thought about those who have gone through events that are unexplainable. And as much as we might not like it, no matter what your take on faith and God and religion, there will continue to be unexplainable things. It’s the way this world works. One of the most comforting activities for me these last two years, is to consider what and why I believe the things I do. But maybe I took it a bit too far. John went on to say thing that he and I both know firsthand. God has provided us the path to our ability to deal with these unexplainable happenings, even provide paths to making a difference with your life, but it should not be our expectation to have complete understanding while we spend time on this planet. One thing we can be sure though, no matter what, we can never let our questioning take away moments of joy. Those are as much a part of God’s destiny while we are on this earth as the brains God gave us to spend time questioning.

I think today I am going to take a lesson from my three sons, who have turned out to be true Christmas gift givers. Generous and open hearted to the man, they have commiserated and searched for gifts that expressed their love, doing so because they wanted their loved ones to see how much they cared. It’s what God felt when He gave His son to us. True joy is found in giving .I am going to enjoy the moments this week as I venture out to find things that my loved ones will know how much they mean to me. I am going to do my best to find things they will enjoy, I am going to be faithful that they will understand the love behind the gifts, and I am going to trust on the other side of unexplainable things, the power of love.

Today and the rest of this week, I hope you have the chance to live in the moment as you celebrate Christmas in the act of giving because of love.

Bible verse for the week: 1 Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

December 10, 2007

Letter Sweaters and other things

A sandy haired, gentle-smiled boy named Danny gave me a cleat when I was in the 7th grade. I was to wear it around my neck, on a dog tag chain and it meant that Danny and I were ‘going together’. In case you are wondering, cleats are the things off the bottom of football shoes and while I haven’t kept up with athletic shoe evolution, this was a time when cleats were replacable (and givable) because you could screw them into the bottom soles. I doubt that cleat giving is a possibility now. Danny’s offer of the cleat was an arranged “going together” event as far as I could tell. The popular girls all had ones from the popular boys and being on the fringe of that group, the status and right of passage into the romantic world of teenagers dictated that Danny and I were in the same spot of junior high pecking order, hence a perfect couple. Poor Danny. Once that cleat was around my neck, the one and only day I wore it, from then on I believe I never uttered another word to him. I hope he was as shy as I was, otherwise he might not have understood my apparent lack of interest.

For the next several years, I longed to wear someone’s letter jacket. The truth of the matter, I didn’t long to wear just anyone’s jacket, there were a couple of three whose favor I dreamed of, who unfortunately but predictably were most often the choices of the majority of each and every one of my female peers. It’s a curious thing when you think about it. The letter jacket, decorated with letters and patches, the emblem of young male prowess and virility, an outward sign of his potential, chivalrously offered to keep warm the shoulders of the young girl he chooses to favor. No matter where we are in time, we are never far away from biology. In high school at least part of that yearning for the right guy to let us wear his jacket was about acceptance. Well, okay well maybe a large part of it was about acceptance. But all wrapped up in this whole idea, was the exploration of love. We were practicing what it meant to care for someone so much that we could be reminded of them, have a part of them by bearing or wearing something they owned or treasured or signified who we knew them to be. We were practicing the art and method of romantic love. I watched my three sons as they each added stars and stripes to their own letter jackets as they began their journeys into adulthood. I recognized that they faced the same doubt or wonder and hope that certain shoulders would wear their jackets. The real lesson about love that would come with time and practice, as we were chosen or not for letter sweater and jackets, as life reminded us we are brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, as life turned us into mothers and aunts, fathers and uncles, our practices at love pointed us to one inevitable conclusion. Love, real love, the kind that captures your heart and will never let it go, the kind that makes a difference is about sacrifice, not romance.

On my right hand, I wear a distinctive, burnished gold, man’s ring. I wear Jake’s Aggie ring. It’s too big and it makes my old hands look older. One day it will be in his brothers’ care, in fact that is who Jake intended it for if he wasn’t the one wearing it, but for now my sons let me wear it. There is nothing like an Aggie ring to bring out discussion. I have felt a kinship with a border patrol who proudly wore his and I have recognized little, brittle smiles of disapproval for those who consider the Aggie spirit a bit more than necessary. Mostly what I remember is how much it meant to Jake. This past weekend, John, with trepidation, asked me if it could be used as a prop in the church Christmas play. You see John was to play the son, the one who stayed home, when the prodigal son left. The ring would be the gift the prodigal would receive upon his return, a symbol of the undying love and faith his family bore for him. That old Bible story that tells us of how powerful faith and love and hope are. I took that heavy old ring off my finger and handed it to John. I was a bit lost without it burdensome weight. I have worn it for two years and thought of being close once again to my son, by the mere act of carrying something with me, always close, a token of what was important to him. I understood immediately John’s request. On this weekend, that ring was to be a symbol, a connection to my John, my Jake, those two Aggies of mine and a reminder and promise of many things that help you understand and accept and hope. I can’t help but imagine, in that soul inside of me, that God and Jake were smiling to see that Aggie ring, center stage, part of the telling of a story about the most enduring, perfect love there is.

Today’s verse
Luke 15:11-32
Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

December 3, 2007

I guess everybody is like me, trying to get ready for the holidays. I am not having much luck at it, the getting ready part of it, that is. I am wondering if I could possibly do all my shopping over the internet, thinking about the crowds at the mall almost makes me shudder. Should work since I am sort of addicted to EBay. Can’t seem to get up the desire to put the ornaments on the tree, should bake a few cookies, and put some lights up outside. If I don’t do it quickly, it will be too close to the day, that it won’t seem worth it. But what I am feelin’ good about is the reason for the season. I am glad I live in a country where I have three freedoms that I do.

My mind is not on a lot of words and thoughts today. Hopefully, next week. In the meantime, I continue to hope that you are happy and healthy and finding your own way to get ready for the season.. Happy Monday, well, almost Tuesday.

Today’s quote:
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~Charles Dickens

Today’s Bible Verse:
John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

November 26, 2007
Atmospheric Anomalies

I knew I was leaving to go to Mexico last week, but in the worry of the trip, I forgot to plan ahead for not getting to wish you a Happy Monday. Basically, my anxiety overwhelmed me. I was worried because the plan was to take four guys I had never met, a film crew as it were, to my beloved field site. The trick and the trouble was that we would have only one day to try and get to every beautiful place through every locked gate in a place where ‘hurry’ is not the asset for which it is treasured. I knew it would be difficult and it was, beyond my expectations. The prearranged schedules I organized failed at every point and a glitch in my understanding of what was to be filmed filled the day.

First, you need to know why the crew wanted me at Cuatro Ciénegas. You see, in a bid to provide a documentary to explain how it came to be that our planet, of all the ones we know of so far, is the only one that has oxygen in its air, they asked me to show them the little critters that are making that O2. Imagine, if you will, for a minute, that a special group of bacteria (some of you health nuts go to the health food store and buy them and know them as blue-green algae and some of you believe that bacteria are only BAD) are solely responsible for oxygen that we breathe. I knew my job was to point them out down at Cuatro Ciénegas because despite not being able to see them with the naked eye, if you get enough of them together, like say billions, in one place, which is what happens at Cuatro Ciénegas, then you can make a documentary of them for others to see. What I didn’t know was that the intention was for me to do a lot of this explaining and demonstrating on camera. I can safely say that no one would rate me a ‘10’ when exiting the water with bacteria in one hand and a mask pushed up over my freckled, age-molded face and a snorkel seemingly sticking out of the back of my head. It was far more humbling of an experience with regards to personal vanity than I want to go into. I answered their questions as they led and encouraged me in what they felt like I could share. As I did this, in the hot desert sun, with sweat dripping down my nose and the camera inches away from my nostrils, I concentrated on what a privilege and blessing has been mine, to be able to study and think about the wonders of this earth these last 15 or so years. I thought about the sheer freedom of thought and time to detective out the ‘how’ and ‘wonder’ of biology on this planet. I stand in amazement and gratitude at how I got here. The four guys I didn’t know? A multicultural bunch, Brits, and French Canadians, and a brown skinned Sicilian, I may never have laughed so much nor had as much fun watching a band of creative minds, give and take, plan and replan, as they went after their own goals for the documentary. It’s amazing really, the range of talents and abilities that are at work in humanity on this planet.

When I got back home, it was time to leave for my brother’s for Thanksgiving. On the ride up to Fort Worth, we entertained each other, regaling stories and few could top mine, although my John tried. (Destroying a rental car in the field trumps almost any other story.) When we tired of that, I looked up at the sky and we traveled north, I thought about how wonderful this planet is, how the unseen things that make up the atmosphere around us are so important and most of them invisible to our naked eyes. We can see their effect, in flags and birds and autumn leaves as they are tossed about in the very same air that we suck into our lungs as we run or sleep. I thought about how so much of what we see in other humans, is first about the color of their eyes or the color or texture of their skin. As we spend time with them, work with them, play with them, begin to appreciate them, only then can when we begin to appreciate the invisible things that only hearts and souls can see. We begin to understand the defeat or joy mirrored in their eyes and written in their face.

As the Thanksgiving turkey came and went, I sat near the window facing north in my brother’s home. I closed my eyes and gave thanks and as I did so, I thought about heaven and its unseen properties. I never mentioned my love for God on that trip to Mexico. I wondered for a moment if that hurt God’s feelings, after all, it was all His idea even down to the moments I spend in Mexico. Maybe those guys, knowing at least why something of the sadness that marks my earthly face now, also recognized that laughter from the heart comes from a spring that only something supernatural can provide. In the middle of my reverie and confession, my brother shouted for me to come outside. Looking out the window, to my amazement, against the green of trees that had yet to see enough cold winter days to even color their leaves, fat, fluffy snowflake drifted towards the ground. I watched as millions of them, coming down from a leaden grey sky, filled the air around us, lay upon the jacket and the only-lightly-grayed hair of our mother. They fell upon the dog and hissed away as they fell into the fire Neil had created in his kiva. They drifted, floated, and fell, as far in the distance as I could see, and as far up as I could see, sending little splashes of water across my upturned face, as they melted against my skin. I watched, once again, sitting in my chair, for at least an hour as they drifted and entertained me, each one disappearing once again, drops of water amid green grass and leaves.

My heart is so full. That snow felt like a blanket of God’s love. I know how it felt covering me, I know how special He made me feel with what I could only consider a series of fortunate events culminating in an atmospheric oddity on this Thanksgiving Day, 2007. What’s amazing is that I know He could do this for me while blanketing the rest of the world in any number of other ways, letting each of us know how special we are to Him, how much He loves us. Its’ why we are soon to celebrate the most wonderful day in all of earth’s history. I hope God’s plan is for me to continue to study ‘how ‘His world works. I know it is His plan to continue to teach my heart ‘why’ it does.

Happy Monday, ya’ll.

Psalm 148
Praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD from the heavens,
praise him in the heights above.
Praise him, all his angels,
praise him, all his heavenly hosts.
Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars.
Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.
Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded and they were created.
He set them in place for ever and ever;
he gave a decree that will never pass away.
Praise the LORD from the earth,
you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,
lightning and hail, snow and clouds,
stormy winds that do his bidding,
you mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars,
wild animals and all cattle,
small creatures and flying birds,
kings of the earth and all nations,
you princes and all rulers on earth,
young men and maidens,
old men and children.
Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted;
his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.
He has raised up for his people a horn, [b]
the praise of all his saints,
of Israel, the people close to his heart.
Praise the LORD.

November 12, 2007
The Winds of Change

Gulf coast winters are almost all about mild, which means if you are the kind of person who likes to watch and poke a campfire in almost never below freezing weather, Houston is the place. Even though I live in the city, I have my refuse pile ready to stoke my little outdoor firepit and just as soon as I step out of my shorts and flipflops for more than a day or two, I am going to start one. That refuse pile has more than a few things that I intend to burn, things like boards from 30 years ago from a an old railroad desk that served a newly wed couple in all manner of makeshift furniture, a few other things that I couldn’t throw away while cleaning up and yet couldn’t keep, all to be released as a pleasing smoky aroma rising to the heavens. So I am ready. But mostly what I am ready for is the winds of change I sense are coming…

I don’t know how change comes to you. For me, there have been times when I labored under the illusion of control of my life, and then there have been those amazing times, far more often that I deserved, when doors opened that I didn’t even know I was standing in front of. There are the times like now, when a few doors have closed. While I sit on idle, I am gearing up to move forward, clearing whatever path that looks promising. Behind this all, I am trusting in the reality that if everything did go the way I thought it should, my life would have been less rich. So recently I have gotten it into my head that if God is willing, maybe the country life, a place where these two crazy large hounds I have won’t be so interested in chewing on sprinkler heads, a place my family can sink their hands into something other than Houston gumbo and clay, and a place where my insomniac tendencies in late night meanderings won’t appear so disturbing is where I am headed.. If you consider this kind of change, you can begin to think differently about your firepit options.

I liked the idea of a cast iron stove. Thinking about it, I had visions of the old camp house we had, and that rusty old, long, heavy stove, with us huddled around it, Dad teaching us about damping and warning about sleeping with a live fire. If you move to the country, you’re bound to have a barn, and then, well, an old cast iron stove inside it is only fitting. So late one night, on an eBay auction that seemed meant for me, I purchased one, well over 100 pounds a bargain at the 25 dollars winning price, pick up only, Shiner Texas if you please.

It took an all day Friday jaunt to get it because even though I had looked at the map, the old farm where we were to pick up the stove really was in the country and closer to Victoria than Sealy. Texas IS big ya’ll. We drove through rolling fields and up the soft-dirt, rudded lane to an old farmhouse that was at least fifty years old. The seller, Rhonda who I would come to like instantly, had told us to just come on to the back porch where the stove sat, if she wasn’t there. When I saw it, it was all that I hadhoped and on this warm fall day, my vision was taking hold. I could see my barn, not yet built, and knew that this old stove, would make a warm welcome for whoever or whatever should visit my barn. Bob took hold of one side, I got on the other side, mother stood back and cheered. Sweat beaded on Bob’s forehead and we didn’t budge that stove one inch. The seller wasn’t kidding when she said the thing was heavy. Chickens and farm cats formed a curious but distant perimeter which wasn’t nearly as distant as the gap between the waiting Honda and where we had inched the stove. Rhonda pulled up. Giving us permission to close the gap between car and stove across her yard, we three women offered suggestions to Bob, who was clearly going to be the brawn to accomplish this part of my dream. It turned out most of Rhonda’s suggestions were the most helpful and while my first thought when I saw this woman after negotiating with her online, was she that was pretty, she turned out to be just as pretty on the inside. A mix of feminine, clear blue eyes that looked directly at you and independent farm woman, she had an internal joy mirrored in her smile. I think she too once found a reason, a passion to move to the country for solace and peace. It would be her stove, purchased by her from the original owner that would grace my barn yet to be built, only a dream, a path I was preparing in the event that it was my fate to travel this road. As we pulled down the lane, waving goodbye, the old stove creaking as we maneuvered the unpaved roads, I wondered briefly if I had maybe lost my mind. Between a distinct feeling of déjà vu that was more a remembered sleeping dream of this moment in time and the fact that neither my husband nor my mother thought it necessary to remind me that this preparatory event might be a bit preemptive, I watched the afternoon sky surrender to a waning sun. The sky to the east looked strange, rays radiating in the wrong direction as our car bumped across the road, and Bob said, “That’s weird, but pretty, huh?” I thought about unexplainable things.

It just might be that one day or night, you come to my barn and if it’s a chilly southwest Texas night, I will build us a fire in this old cast iron stove. We will sit around its warmth and I will talk with you about whatever you like. We can argue politics or we can talk about the big questions in life. We can think together on hard questions or talk about the day to day things that turn molehills into mountains. If you are inclined to projects, well I will have one we can work on. I can share with you your sorrows and your triumphs. We can sit and be quiet and although I am not as good at quiet as I am with noise, I am learning the value of it, so if that’s the comfort you want from a communion with me, we will stoke that old fire and watch the embers and master our own thoughts separate but together.

I don’t know what these winds of change are that are blowing. I am not in charge of where they blow. I am not sure what I am sensing and maybe God’s plan has nothing to do with barns and stoves. But I know it’s a sanctuary that I crave and I desire to share it, and whether God provides it in a barn or somewhere else.. well its up to Him. I do know that dreams and hope are what keep us alive and unknowingly preparing for new paths we never dreamed of. So whether I am crazy or not, I think that old 25 dollar stove dream is a bargain. Frankly, I have already gotten my money’s worth. Happy Monday, fellow dreamers.

Today’s quote
“I use to think..oh well if Icant get there on a horse, Iam not going.” M. Campos, 2007

Today’s Bible verse: And my people shall abide in a peaceable habitation, and in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting-places. Isiaha 32:18

November 5, 2007

Howdy and Happy Monday! I missed talking to you last week. I have a lot my heart wants to write, Mexico always refreshes my soul and I saw parts of it that I never have seen before. I long to describe to you so you could be there with me, even if only in your mind, wonders like fog grass that made the desert valley floor look like it was misted despite the bright winter sun. Another Monday, I will tell you about more of those natural wonders but today I am getting ready for Josh’s deployment and its all I can think about. My soul searching for this time in the Siefert household has made me consider that God graced all three of my sons with the hearts of a servant and I pray over their choices of duties to satisfy that heart. In my times of quiet and reflection these last two days I have prayed for Josh’s safety as well as all the soldiers and families around the world, you know of course it is what we beg God for, but I have realized something very important. It was one of those moments that I have explained to you before, where God puts something in my heart that I never expect. "Janet," He said, “Certainly pray for Josh's safety and just as Jake told you of the times he knew I protected him, I will do the same for your Josh. But also pray that Josh will grow in knowledge of the power of faith, as he goes through each day, serving in that far away country.”

I sit in Josh’s home in Harker Heights this morning. Josh has made some great friends here in central Texas. They love him. I know how important that is from the experience that Jake’s friends have given us. It’s God’s plan to have relationships. Last night, we sat around Josh’s dinner table after cooking steaks in the unusually warm Texas evening, and the assurance of love and faith and caring was all around us. There was laughter. Bottom line, it felt good. We are where we are supposed to be. Next week Josh will be surrounded by another group of people , people who will be his temporary family in a land where our faith in God has its roots. He will form relationships, find friends, and seek wisdom for his soldiering duties and those that this service will bring him into contact with. My heart now knows that today and every day that Josh is deployed, I will be praying that each experience, each person he meets, each life he protects or has responsibility for, every decision he must make, that he will first ask God, and as he speaks with Him, he will come to know more fully the power that will guide him towards the wisdom that comes only from God. Life is a process and this is part of Josh’s, one that I might not have chosen for him as his mother, but its one that God is in control of. Josh’s service will change him. I know this because it changed Jake. So I am praying that the changes that will be woven in Josh will be centered around knowledge that only God can put into his heart. When Josh returns, I look forward to how God will use that servant heart of his.

Josh isn’t the only soldier, or the only person whose sacrifice of time and effort is more than some of us might be willing to provide… to each of you I know by name, for each of you that I know by association, for each of you who God knows, I thank God for you and pray for you.

October 22, 2007

Autumn comes to those of us on the gulf coast on tentative winds. We anxiously await the first cold front of the season and by the time that first arctic air has traveled the length of our continent, it holds little sway with the warm gulf air. But - the hint of fall comes, and despite continuing 90 degree days, the sun begins its annual slide towards a different angle and the promise of respite from long summer heat begins. The tallow tree begins to show out, whether from drought or cold or just the sheer fact it misses China and the quiet, floating oak leaves, like brown snowflakes, will fall until well after Christmas. But promise they do, the cycle of cooler days. My Texas sky is often a cloudless blue, but its that blue of an Indian summer, and once autumn has passed, will give way to damp, gun metal gray winter ones. Today, as I sit and ponder this Monday, the Houston sky is that gray one that in other climes could promise snow. The wind is howling down from the north and I am going to have to put on sweats, the first time in a while, as I go about my work. The clash of cold north wind and warm gulf air makes the atmosphere around me turbulent and if I was in another frame of mind, disturbing. But today, it’s sweeping my heart clear and there is lightness in my being, because of something that happened yesterday.

A young injured soldier spoke in church instead of the pastor. It was the one year anniversary of a horrible life threatening injury he suffered in Iraq. He had one story to tell and the second he started talking, my soul joined with his, because I knew what he was talking about. When you get to the lowest place, the most lost, desolate, scary, powerless place that a human can go, when you have made the decision to give up, you have two choices; you can give up to God or you can give up without hope. No matter where you stand on religion or faith, it turns out the options are that limited. David Patrick Moran raised his hands and looked out at the congregation, his wounds obvious, the burns leaving scars and clearly a year’s healing was only the start of recovery, he said, ‘I am not ashamed of my scars, because despite all that has happened, my heart is unscarred. Every day my father, while washing my wounds and tending to me, said ‘Remember, son, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Patrick went on to describe his talks with his Heavenly Father and as he spoke it was clear that his Heavenly Father was at work, washing Patrick’s soul of bitterness and earthly questions. I don’t know what you count as a miracle, but in the realm of supernatural things, this seems obvious. How many people do you know, who without this hope, this faith, have been felled by their circumstances? Patrick and I, we are fellow sojourners. I have been down this road and I too, know of the only hope evidenced in Patrick’s words and shown in his eyes. What a miracle, when someone I don’t even know, can tell the same story I know deep down in me. We are kindred beyond this earth. What grace and comfort, for the times when my humanness creeps back in, and my faith wanes, I will think of Patrick and the others this very day, whose situations I know to be hopeless, yet harbor hope for things unseen. I will thank God that I, like Patrick was surrounded by a father and mother, who pointed me in the right direction for hope and was blessed with three sons whose souls know where their hope resides.

I think faith, the promise through God's Son's sacrifice, is just as steady and true as our knowledge and surety that the seasons will change every year. It has to be, because I have seen that promise work its magic. So today, no matter how gray life might be on the outside, my insides are showing the most beautiful start of a Happy Monday God ever made... I wish it for you too.

Quote for the day “Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Martin Luther King, 1968

October 15, 2007
My dad told me, “Janet, don’t ever judge how someone grieves”. He said it in a voice that was at once commanding but filled with saddness and resignation, his thoughts on the loss of my uncle who died too young and suffered considerably. The family was swimming in grief, lost in the currents. “They will find their own way, don’t listen to any criticism you might hear how they do it.”

I never thought too much about going to Colorado to see where Jake’s accident happened. If evidence from all the homemade crosses and flowers scattered along roads is evidence, journeying to the site of a life-changing loss is one way people look for peace. Jake’s Uncle Brian went back and his prayers and the homemade cross he placed there were healing for him and me, when he shared them. Several of Jake’s friends have found their way up that mountain, each grieving in their own way, and as their journeys have been shared with me, some have found what they were looking for and others have not.

This past week was Bob’s first trip back to elk camp since Jake died and for reasons that didn’t have so much to do with me, I offered to share the drive up from Texas. He seemed glad and the plan evolved into Bob and I sharing the drive up that he, Jake, and Brian had traced two years ago, driving through the night and arriving at the old elk camp with enough time to make a pilgrimage to the tree and pray. We would drive back to Grand Junction where Jake’s journey to heaven was completed and I would kiss my husband goodbye, he would leave for the new elk camp and I would take the plane home, the same route I took two years ago to get here, a symmetry that seemed fitting. The whole way up Bob didn’t seem as nervous as I was in side. I prayed often, the words were “just hold me Lord”. I had made a wooden plaque, not high class, but then neither Jake nor I would have ever been described as high style, although we might have liked to be once or twice.

The trip up was good. Bob shared with me the whimsy, the pee stops, comments, and jokes they all played on each other. At one point on the ridge of a beautiful canyon, Jake wanted to hit a golf ball into it. Incredulously, Bob asked, why, Jake we won’t even be able to see where it goes?! I smiled, wiped a tear, that was my Jake.

Bob showed me where the helicopter picked Jake up as we passed through Paonia and began the climb up the mountain to their camp. Bob made a comment about how many roadside memorials there were on the road. Other families had journeyed up here, their hearts bound in grief. Rounding a corner I knew we were at the place. I was surprised at high up the accident site was, I was surprised at close to camp Jake was when it happened, but the place was just as I had seen in my mind. The whole way up I had been resting in God’s hand, praying that he would let this visit not be devastating but healing. Bob and I got out the car and dark dead fall woods were thick and overpowering. I didn’t go there predetermined for what I was going to feel or God was going to show me, but I didn’t expect the wound of my heart, which I know will always be there, to be opened so easily. I was surprised at how… bereft I felt, how sad the site was for me. Frankly, it was overwhelming. Bob sat in the spot where he held Jake and I sat with him. A long time, but not long in real minutes passed and finally, we got in the truck, my spirit was very torn. We didn’t have enough time, I wanted to go by myself there, I wasn’t able to be still and let God although I think He was trying, I didn’t know if I could ever go back, why did I feel so bad, Where was the peace?

Trying to understand, I did what I did most of the trip, I just let go and let God. There was nothing else to do. In the meantime, current reality took over and we had to get to the airport. We had right under two hours to get there in time for my flight. Neither Bob nor I could remember anything about how to get anywhere so he was relying on me and my GPS. In some ways, even though I wasn’t there, Bob and I were reliving that horrible time of getting Jake to Grand Junction and then once there, reliving my trip from Texas to the Grand Junction airport. Basically, every decision we made was the wrong one, got stopped by a train, backtracked, lost half an hour, got behind trucks, got to the outskirts of Grand Junction, saw a sign that said airport, headed down that way and it looked like it was going to the middle of nowhere, turned around (mistake), went through town, raced through everything light, asked stopped people on the street to see where the airpot was. This trip was fast going down hill, with Bob and I at the bottom, emotionally drained. We got to the airport as my plane was taking off and I told Bob I will spend the night in the airport here or take the leg to Phoenix and stay there so that Bob could go onto Elk camp. When it turned out neither of those was an option, I tried to steel my emotions for the possibility of a long night in a Grand Junction hotel alone. This last half of this trip was turning out to be a trial that I honestly hadn’t expected, one that left me wondering. What are you trying to tell me God? While I was asking this and rescheduling my ticket for the morning Bob was talking to Elk Camp. I got in the car, and Bob said, “You care coming to Elk camp. They guys offered”.

A bit stunned, I had not counted this an option. Women are not allowed in elk camp and while I knew that men wouldn’t be that hard headed about the rule if special circumstances dictated it, this wasn’t the time to go. Geez, I have always wanted to be a part of this, thenhere when I am at one of the lowest times emotionally, I am going to elk camp with clothes I have been wearing night and day for 36 hours, inappropriate ones at that, I haven’t brushed my teeth, forget what my face looks like after crying all afternoon, and Bob is upset because we haven’t eaten. Fast moving up old hills to this new elk camp there is bound to be nowhere to eat now and I have no idea how I am going to be received. It’s not just so much about the exclusion policy but this is also the first time some of these guys have been back with Bob. Some of them roomed with he and Jake. If you haven’t figured it out yet, let me give you a hint. When you ask God for something, don’t second guess Him. Sometimes you have to get to the worst place for God to get you where He can give you what he wants you to have. The camp is at the top of the mountain, we rode a ridge for an hour that was precipitous on both sides. In the dark you couldn’t see where mountain slashed down to valley and the night sky studded with stars began. When we turned into camp, it was a clearing, wide open, and the terrain was very different than the dark wood falls of where the accident was. In one direction, you could see the lights of Grand Junction. When we arrived, all four guys came out to meet us and I was nervous again. They could break the rules but they didn’t have to be happy about it, and besides this was the first time they had been together with Bob and not Jake. We unloaded our truck and with a great deal of pride, they took me on a tour of the camp, the outhouse, the heater that fed warm air to the sleeping tent, the hand washing station, and the mess hall. This being a tradition for 10 or so years, this is a real camp and while I knew there wass a lot more to hunt camps then the shooting, I was beginning to sense how much. Then quietly, without much fanfare, and with open hearts, they showed me where they had made me a bed on a cot, in the tent, we would all sleep under one roof, apologizing ahead of time for male behaviour. Kenny, the alpha hunter, had elk burgers going and asked if we had eaten, they would be ready in minute, beers all around. We sat over food, they showed me maps of the region. I learned how a hunter thinks and plans, as a group, when the daylight comes. I listened to their anticipation and their joy in being here together, in having the opportunity to understand the natural world around them, in the commaraderie and bonds that had and would be forged, as thy spent time together. They got around to talking about Jake, gently steering into conversations about the various pranks he had played on his uncles. There was congenial laughter, bawdy remarks, tempered or so they assured me, and they took me into elk camp that night, despite my gender, the same way they accepted Jake’s first and last trip with them. The talk whined down, plans were made for my return to Grand Junction in the morning and it was my turn to hit the outhouse. Jake’s uncle Jim showed me where everything was, the outhouse faced out to the mountain to vast Colorado below it. I told Jim I didn’t need the light and as I sat there on the toilet seat, (yes, it was that fancy) listening to the sounds that only happen at the top of a mountain, in Colorado, where the trees are losing leaves and fall is coming and you have the chance to be a part of something special. I looked out at a million stars, no light other than those, and not sure I have ever had a more perfect place to pray and never a more unusual one. When you need some alone time with God, he can supply the place. Each man had his role for turn- in, light the heater, secure the trucks, I guess mine was just to be thankful. You might not think to call elk hunters gentlemen and they might not think of themselves as instruments of ministry from God, but these men were. I was so grateful that they talked about my Jake, they let me share in elk camp, and they treated me the only way the lone woman invited to elk camp should be treated, not any differently. I realized then that if I hadn’t missed that plane, I would have missed a big part of what Jake’s last week on this planet was about. Jake loved male camaraderie; it was part of why he was such a good soldier. This was as much what that week was about as the accident was. We got up at 5am to leave for Grand Junction and I walked outside the tent to wait for Bob. I looked up at the night sky, soon to have an eastern morning glow, so close to Heaven on that mountaintop. The stars were the most peaceful I have ever witnessed.

" Thou rushing wind that art so strong,
Ye clouds that sail in heav'n along,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice,
Ye lights of evening, find a voice!
O praise Him, O praise Him!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!"

On the plane to Phoenix, God spoke to my heart. I had a thought about what would Jake say to me about going to the site and elk camp and everything, if God allowed him to come down here, to help me through this. This is what Jake would say. “ Mom, You felt sad at the site because it was sad, it was a horrible thing, just like all tragedies of life on earth are. I ‘m really sorry you and Dad, and John, and Josh and Grandmother and Uncle Brian, and Uncle Neil ( he would list everyone here but I am hurrying to send this and no slight would Jake have allowed to anyone who might read this) had to suffer about this. But Mom, God knows what he is doing. Trust Him. I did and it’s going to be okay in the long run. When you come to heaven, you will see. Love ya Mom”

Bible verse today : Ephesian5: 15-16. There fore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

October 22, 2007

Autumn comes to those of us on the gulf coast on tentative winds. We anxiously await the first cold front of the season and by the time that first arctic air has traveled the length of our continent, it holds little sway with the warm gulf air. But - the hint of fall comes, and despite continuing 90 degree days, the sun begins its annual slide towards a different angle and the promise of respite from long summer heat begins. The tallow tree begins to show out, whether from drought or cold or just the sheer fact it misses China and the quiet, floating oak leaves, like brown snowflakes, will fall until well after Christmas. But promise they do, the cycle of cooler days. My Texas sky is often a cloudless blue, but its that blue of an Indian summer, and once autumn has passed, will give way to damp, gun metal gray winter ones. Today, as I sit and ponder this Monday, the Houston sky is that gray one that in other climes could promise snow. The wind is howling down from the north and I am going to have to put on sweats, the first time in a while, as I go about my work. The clash of cold north wind and warm gulf air makes the atmosphere around me turbulent and if I was in another frame of mind, disturbing. But today, it’s sweeping my heart clear and there is lightness in my being, because of something that happened yesterday.

A young injured soldier spoke in church instead of the pastor. It was the one year anniversary of a horrible life threatening injury he suffered in Iraq. He had one story to tell and the second he started talking, my soul joined with his, because I knew what he was talking about. When you get to the lowest place, the most lost, desolate, scary, powerless place that a human can go, when you have made the decision to give up, you have two choices; you can give up to God or you can give up without hope. No matter where you stand on religion or faith, it turns out the options are that limited. David Patrick Moran raised his hands and looked out at the congregation, his wounds obvious, the burns leaving scars and clearly a year’s healing was only the start of recovery, he said, ‘I am not ashamed of my scars, because despite all that has happened, my heart is unscarred. Every day my father, while washing my wounds and tending to me, said ‘Remember, son, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Patrick went on to describe his talks with his Heavenly Father and as he spoke it was clear that his Heavenly Father was at work, washing Patrick’s soul of bitterness and earthly questions. I don’t know what you count as a miracle, but in the realm of supernatural things, this seems obvious. How many people do you know, who without this hope, this faith, have been felled by their circumstances? Patrick and I, we are fellow sojourners. I have been down this road and I too, know of the only hope evidenced in Patrick’s words and shown in his eyes. What a miracle, when someone I don’t even know, can tell the same story I know deep down in me. We are kindred beyond this earth. What grace and comfort, for the times when my humanness creeps back in, and my faith wanes, I will think of Patrick and the others this very day, whose situations I know to be hopeless, yet harbor hope for things unseen. I will thank God that I, like Patrick was surrounded by a father and mother, who pointed me in the right direction for hope and was blessed with three sons whose souls know where their hope resides.

So today, no matter how gray life might be on the outside, my insides are showing the most beautiful start of a Happy Monday God ever made.

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Martin Luther King, 1968

October 8, 2007

The last couple of times I have been in church, I have caught myself wondering whether or not we are getting bigger or smaller? Not sure why it’s become an important metric to me because it never has been of much concern for me before. Maybe it’s because I am getting old and I just don’t like to see things not be successful. Maybe it’s because my John has joined the ranks of ministers and I know that its something that as his life’s vocation, he will be concerned with it. Maybe it’s because understanding exactly what I believe and why has become so important to me, I think everyone else must feel the same. Whatever the reason, every Sunday for the last several, I have wondered to myself, are more people coming or are more leaving? I have tried to gauge it from sitting where I always sit, in the back of the church on the left hand side, but that didn’t get me the right perspective. Then I decided to take notice when I stood in the choir loft, singing, up high enough to have a good vantage point. Looking at the congregation that way it sure seemed to me to be more empty red chairs out there then I remembered seeing. Then something astonishing happened. During one song, an especially good one, one that I am certain God was hearing and maybe even singing along on, people began to stand. It took only a few minutes, and the whole congregation was standing, singing as if in one voice, and the red seats, well I couldn’t see them any longer You remember I told you that my Dad told me and I know for a fact that sometimes God bends down and whispers in your ear a truth? Well, there is was, as plain as day, another truth, straight from God’s heart to mine. God was illustrating to me, his child, something very certain and it wasn’t really about church attendance. Standing up, for whatever you believe in is as about as powerful as you can be. Numbers don’t matter nearly as much as having the courage, or the fortitude, or the wherewithal, or the conviction, or the courage to stand. You can get caught up in the wrong questions, you can figure that little day to day decisions about being courageous don’t matter, you can be afraid to do what is right for a hundred reasons, but if you want to make a difference, stand up for what is right, or good, or worthy. Sitting, will never work, even if there is a whole church full of you, or a whole family of you, a whole team of you, or a whole board room full of you.

Happy Monday, my amigas and amigos, I hope when you get the chance this week, and you are bound to, that you stand up!

"Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway."
John Wayne

October 1, 2007

My heart has a lot to say, but no words come to my paper this week… Might be because my computer is on the blink, might be because we are thinking about moving, might be because my Josh will be deployed and John just started seminary. Might be because week I will travel with Bob to Colorado. Might be that my mind needs to to slow down and consider that life is about keeping things simple. In that case, maybe it just a time for me to wish you Happy Monday, pure and simple.
Happy Monday. Have a good week.
Love, Janet

Lord, Give me courage to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdome to know the difference.

September 24, 2007

Dear Jake,

Happy Monday up there in Heaven. I wanted to tell you about something, son. Remember the time you took me to Mulligans to listen to your friend Mark's band? It was just about this time two years ago. It had been a while since I had heard them and you wanted me to hear their new guitarist, who plays in the style of Stevie Ray. You and I spent a lot of listenening time with Vaughn, didn’t we?. Your dad was out of town and I asked you, ‘do you really want me to go with you on a Friday night?’ I was thinking to myself, your dad was a lot more familiar with most of your friends, he has been around them more than me, and maybe it’s embarrassing to take your mom to something like this. But, true to who I know you to be, you were comfortable with the invitatation, the desire to share something with me strong for you. My thought was to just stay for about 30 minutes or so and leave. Well, you know how it is, we got there around 7 because you wanted to do your manager duties and then the band didn't start playing until 9::30 or so. I can remember two things vividly. One was what you were wearing. You had on shorts with those strong, light brown hairy calves showing, a t-shirt, with a mostly white, nobby-textured button down shirt over it. It was unbuttoned. You also had on these flipflop made from some kind of tubing. No one was dressed like you. It wasn't that you looked strange particularly, it was just such a personal style. The second thing that I remember so vividly was how much so many of the people there seemed to genuinely like you. They hugged you affectionately, openly, both the guys and girls. You weren't the kind of guy that came in and was the center of attention, not loud or sanguine, quite the opposite really. You were the quiet Jake I knew you to be. As much as you hated being short, I thought then most of the people in that room looked up to you. I decided that they respected who for who you had been to each of them. For a Mother, that was a heartwarming truth to know. I remember trying to tell you how much the evening meant to me as you and I got in the car at 2am and we drove home together. I remembered thinking at that time, what an usual memory was now painted on the walls of my heart. Not knowing the paths the future would bring, I knew how precious that memory was even then.

So this past Saturday your friends gathered at Mulligan’s again, just like they did the year before, to party after the golf tournament. There was poker and karaoke this time and I saw sides and talents of your friends I didn’t know they had. Cody ran an auction on his hair. Yeah, son, the haircut his friends gave him to sport for the next week was awful. Things have changed. There have been marriages and heartbreaks, there have been babies and loss. But I realized something very important this past Saturday, the need to be loved, the deep seated desire to know someone truly cares for us, is what binds us all. I looked around that room and I thought about each person there. It’s taken me two years to understand why those friends of yours still care. I keep thinking they will lose interest, life will move on and their memories of you will fade. And this will happen to some extent, sooner for some, never for others. But I finally got it, son. The reason your friends still love you, the reason they are still showering the same on your dad and I, is because you loved them and they knew it. Love is miraculous in what it can do. We can try a lot of things to find love, a lot of them fruitless, some of them necessary, but the bottom line is love is necessary. We hope to find it in a mate, we try to find it in our family, we can look for it with friends, but the truest love, the one that makes a difference, is the one that you knew, my Jake. Those times I caught you reading your Bible or your head bowed in prayer, you were letting God’s love wash over you and asking him to tell you how to love those around you. One day son, you and I will walk the streets if Heaven, we will talk about this again, and maybe we will be listening to Stevie Ray in person. In the meantime, I’m going to try to be a vessel that God works the miracle of love here on earth, like I believe he did in you, as he is doing in legions of others, despite our imperfections. I am going to be a person who those around me know they can count on one thing, to love them.

You know of course, my Jake, I love you too
Mom

September 17, 2007

Today is my brother’s birthday. If you ever wonder if your prayers are answered, Neil is an example of one. When my sister Gloria died at the age of 3, I began praying for my brother. Every night I asked God to give him to me. Without fail, I petitioned and finally one September day, along he came. My dad was proud but nervous and Mother was beaming. Dad worried that he might be sick like his little sister before him, but with a Mother’s calm heart and no doubt the faith that the certainty of her own answered prayers brings, Mother recognized the reality of God’s gift to our family. There was evidence in Neil’s loud and lustful cries. I stood over the bed and watched his flailing little arms and legs and cried too. A worrier even at that young age, I thought his crying meant something was wrong with him. Mother, reassuring two children, both with different needs, cradled us both and did so joyfully. Our family was blessed with Neil.

Neil, my brother, on this fall day, the celebration of your birth, thank you for being the kind of brother I prayed for. The trevails of life have buffeted us both and they will continue, but with little exception, we have rode those waves together and I pledge to continue. Thank you for the hands and heart and mind that spent the hours restoring my bicycle; not because it is shiny and new like it was when I bought it 30 years ago, but because you did it for the freedom, the joy, you wanted to give to me to have it that way. Thank you for the heart of that pure of a gift. Thank you for fossil hunts, sail boat rides, low-wing airplane God’s eye views over rolling patchwork country, and for placing the hands of my sons on the throttles of diesel locomotives. Thank you for your effort and desire for things of this life to be perfect; they remind me that expectations are what temper and try us to hope for the best. Thank you for being a good son to our Mother and for caring whether she is happy. Thank you for being a man whose love and generosity know no bounds, whether as a husband, a father, or an uncle. Neil, I love you, I still pray for you and it is my gift for you to know that I always will.

1 Corinthians 13:1-8a and 13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails....And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ~Vietnamese Proverb

September 10, 2007

To wear a hat or not.

For as long as I can remember, my dad wore a hat. He used it for his switchman’s railroad work and he wore it when he fished. For the role it played in his wardrobe, he complained it was likely the reason he was going bald. I always thought my Dad was handsome, I guess most daughters do, and defiantly his hair thinned considerably as he got older, but whether it was from the lack of circulation a hat caused, I am not sure. I thought to myself, that had to be a pretty tight hat to cut off that much circulation and since Dad was a logical man, he was either pretty tough or maybe it was the best of possible evils to explain things. My father’s American Indian ancestry was evident in smooth brown skin that held few wrinkles, wood-colored eyes, and in his thin, straight dark hair. As has been my observation about most men he was not alone in his fretting over the possibility of baldness, and for as long as he wore a hat and complained of its effect, he tried to countermine its blood-stopping, hair killing effects. He used Vaseline hair oil. Vaseline hair oil was among the few meterosexual options of his day, and it’s a far cry from the chemistry available now if you seek to tame or fluff or make there seem to be more hair then there is. Vaseline hair oil was a staple on our grocery list and in our medicine cabinet. A few drops would do it, in his palm and he was would rub into his scalp, which was increasingly easier to find. It made his freshly clean hair oily, and while his hair was likely not as dark as I thought it, it looked that way with the oil. But you have to do what you have to do and a hat, for a working man, is a must.

Dad wore a switchman’s hat, grey, indistinct in color surely, with a bill but not close in the crown like a baseball one, more like the army issue of our working soldiers. It had a circular piece of material at the top. It was as far away from a baseball hat as you can get and still be a cap. Hats were good for keeping your head warm in the winter and for keeping the sun off your head in the summers. “Heat is exchanged at the top of your head,” Dad would say, “sometimes you want to lose it and sometimes you want to conserve it;” Uh huh, yeah..they really mess my straight, fine hair up in ways I don’t like to think about. Besides this was advice from the man who says his hat is cutting off the circulation to his head?! However, as you get older you realize that the war between vanity and sensibility is either easier to blur.. or maybe its clearer to see. Hell, what I mean is that a hat began to make more sense to me.

I would have never worn a switchman’s cap unless forced, as a young woman which I was a few times, but when I married a whole new world opened up to me. Among the many strange and foreign items and ideas my husband brought to the union, was the presence of tens, no maybe hundreds, at least thousands of gimme baseball caps. Well, okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, it probably only got into the thousands once my sons came on board. Of my three sons, Jake was the one whose cap was as much a part of his adult identity as anything I recall. He rarely left home without it. Among those thousands of hats laying around a home, a dedicated cap wearer’s mentality is concerned only about two things; shopping for the best one he has yet to buy and maintaining the evolving character of his current favorite. Men take to the sweat and the dirt and the folds and crease of their cap to heart; they’re like the maturing lines and creases of good pair of jeans. A good palm reader could probably tell you more about a man by looking at his hat rather than his palm. Certainly, for the men in my life who wear them, I can hold their hats in my hands and feel almost as connected as holding their hand.

Jake tended to the low-profile baseball cap, and not knowing this distinction he described to me the less stiff and low crown. He frequently rolled the brim nicely, between his palms, his hat and the brim a frame to face the sun. I think Jake also liked his army-issued ‘kepi’, structured much like his grandfather’s railroad grey one and in an odd quirk of soul or genes, he shifted it on his head just like his grandfather did the switchman’s version. There was a constant fight with Jake and his grandmother, she washed her husband’s caps and she saw no reason not to do the same for her grandson. It took a while and she never relented in principle, but Jake’s hats hang in a favored place, creased, worn and scented, a testament to the joy he had in wearing them.

Well there is one thing left about hats to discuss and that’s something I have seen many men do, from the Mexican man with his sombrero to a soldier laying up against his backback in the middle of the desert with his helmet to my Jake whenever he wanted to block the world out – that is the use of the hat, pulled low down, a means for sleep or thinking. Lithe body, lounging in an airplane seat, I would admire Jake's serentiy as would draw the cap down and down over eyes, until resting atop his face, laying back, he would make a private place, blocking out light and interruption, until the cap is adjusted back in it’s usual place, signifying he was back in the world. I have seen his brothers and father do the same.

I had my favorite cap, the one I use for tennis that a friend of Jake’s gave me on my plane ride over here. It stands for my sons. It’s a low profile with Josh’s brass crossed cannons on the crown and a cross I hope to add that will remind me of John. In need of some private solace on a plane where too many people sit arm to arm in the intimacy of sleep, I pulled the cap low down over my eyes, adjusting in my seat, the world around me retreating. I closed my eyes and prepared to gain the stillness and peace that I had seen in men who took this repose. Through slitted eyed, I saw the world drawn in, and took in a deep breath. My eyes flew wide open, stifling a cough, I jerked the hat off my face and sat up. The smell of old, dried sweat, dirt, mixed with naturally greasy hair odor and soured sunscreen ripe in my nose, I made a decision. Some experiences are not meant to cross gender boundaries.

Howdy, Happy Monday Ya'll

September 3, 2007
When I go to my Mexican desert oasis, I go for several reasons. Most of them are professional, it’s a place of remarkable biology and whether or not you have knowledge or interest, you are bound to recognize the evidence in nature’s extravagance there. But the other reason, the one that is solely about personal privilege, is the fact that the place speaks to my soul.

Maybe it’s because the desert valley wears her antiquity like a badge of human perseverance. There are caves that evidence in picture and symbol of the men and women who traveled the boundary-less Americas more than 6,000 years ago. They left their mark in ochre, siennas, and sepia tinged reds on the roof of their shelters at the top of arroyos. At one time they left a small child whose death saddened a family’s heart, her bones still cradled in handwoven mats. I have climbed among limestone, tortured cliffs, and brushed my bare, freckled knees on native rosemary and stinging nettle, the aroma and sting intermingling. I have marveled at the chemistry God locked in small buttons of peyote nestled among desert crust and rocks and I have tried to place my life in context to the ancient people whose footsteps I trace.

Maybe it’s the fact that societies have existed in this place, creative in their use and respect of the land. They have mined ancient fossilized reefs for travertine and gypsum for dry wall from sulfur rich sand dunes. They have scoured caves of bat guano and stands of mesquite for fuel and charcoal. Today, they will stand over fire pits where wax from the candellia plant drips into vats, and will pay their family a wage of 150 dollars for a season’s harvest. Men and women, generations of them, have eked out livings in a valley where less than 1 inch of rain falls a year. Nourished by an oasis that is fed by waters percolating deep from volcanic fractures, the surface pools and wells provide sole source irrigation for a handful of communities in an mountain ringed valley, 700 feet above sea level.

Maybe it’s the sleeping man, a rock structure whose weathering visage suggests a man who, long asleep, and who will continue for much longer to sleep, is a tireless but ineffective vigilante of the valley. I have visited with the sleeping man, many mornings, rocking in a chair where we stay, staring up at him, listening to the crazy roosters, praying a little, letting this place and the spirit that rests in my soul, seep into my heart and bones.

This desert valley can be a trying mistress though. This last time, when the sun was hotter than I thought humanly survivable, this time when the desert sand could slow cook a roast if you buried it in it, this time when dry winds from an oncoming hurricane whose northern bands brought dust and sand, she made me work hard for the peace she has always been tireless to give before. To be fair, I made it hard on my valley, because I did the worse thing we humans can do, I expected things to always be the same. Life is about change. I walked the streets, a corner of the square, and realized this little town that has begun to change. I see a few more unusually placed body piercings, a few more young ones sneaking puffs from a cigarette, evidences that we gringos or Hollywood or just life has moved through television and ipods to affect, good and bad, the cultures they fill. Drinking in the cooling desert night air and longing for something to quench my thirst and ease my heart, I follow the young and old to the paleta shop. Popsicles and ice cream has never really been my thing, I am a chocolate girl after all, but I find that the thought of something icy sounds good in many ways. As I order, I think about Jake being in the Iraqi desert and Josh soon to be there, and the many deserts we all walk in and will walk in. I think about my John as he will pray for his brothers. The man who serves the paleta is young; he is here every night, his black hair shiny and smoothly combed back. I think he knows very little English, but he has a welcoming smile, one of the kindest, straight from the heart, and peaceful. The ice boxes are full of choices, bright fruity colors that only God could come up with. I know the melon drink will be full of cantaloupe chunks and the coconut will have shaved sweet and oily bits frozen around the familiar stick. There are fancy, full of cream choices, with nueces from the region. I choose a mango smoothie. There is nothing like it. I skim the first spoonful from my cup, and let the tangy, orange-colored ice melt in my mouth. What a privildege to take the time to savor this moment. I sit on a bench on the square and watch as young people flirt and old people hobble with stooped shoulders and bent knees. Life’s a journey with a few deserts. Thank God there are paletas. Happy Monday.

August 27, 2007
Howdy my friends! I missed you last week. I hope this Happy Monday finds you well. I am having trouble with words today so I am going to let another speak for me. Jake would like this… It’s from a young man named Miles Levin and when I read through his blog last night, the hope and energy that I had felt from my hot respite in the desert distilled into a quiet joy. I am determined to make this day special.

‘I went to the driving range the other day and I was thinking...

I was thinking how you start out with a big bucket full of golf balls, and you just start hitting away carelessly. You have dozens of them, each individual ball means nothing so you just hit, hit, hit. One ball gone is practically inconsequential when subtracted from your bottomless bucket. There are no practice swings or technique re-evaluations after a bad shot, because so many more tries remain. Yet eventually you start to have to reach down towards the bottom of the bucket to scavenge for another shot and you realize that tries are running out. Now with just a handful left, each swing becomes more meaningful. The right technique becomes more crucial, so between each shot you take a couple practice swings and a few deep breaths. There is a very strong need to end on a good note, even if every preceeding shot was horrible, getting it right at the end means a lot. You know as you tee up your last ball, "This is my final shot, I want to crush this with perfection; I must make this count." Limited quantities or limited time brings a new, precious value and signficance to anything you do. Live every day shooting as if its your last shot, I know I have to.

I found out today 5 year survival rates are just 20%.’

And two quotes:

'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' - Margaret Mead

'It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.' -Ralph Waldo Emerson

August 13, 2007

Howdy you all!!! YOU DID IT!.. With the help of so many of you who I send this Happy Monday to, you were a part of making our goal of the initial endowment for the Jake Siefert Texas A&M Corp Chaplain Scholarship! Despite the national heat wave, 76 golfers and a host of volunteers and family made the golf tournament a success.

I will be updating all the webpages within a couple of weeks with pictures and all the official news of the scholarship, tell you where we hope Crede Deo can go now, but I think my brother said it best, and although I don’t have his exact words I will paraphrase. The game of golf served as the bridge between Jake’s faith, the Grace that he knew and knows in Heaven to the difference that the Corp Chaplains who will receive the scholarship will make as they shepherd students at A&M. Behind it all was the power of love.

Our family thanks you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your willingness to help with our loss by giving to others.

God Bless you

The poem this week is from
Maya Angelou (discovered by my brother)

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

God bless you.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning.

August 6, 2007
I remember the first time I heard about someone who didn’t believe in God. I was at church camp in Bogg’s Springs Arkansas and one of the prettiest girls there had some kind of meltdown that consisted of audaciously wearing spaghetti straps and wondering if there was a God. The rumor spread around the bunk houses that she had actually had these thoughts and these dresses and just as quickly, she seemed to have answered all her questions and found Jesus again. That was really scary and after the next few nights I walked down the aisle. (For those of you not familiar with reformed religions, this is the time of ‘invitation’ that you accept Jesus into your heart). I was still trying to get my head wrapped around the fact that it was REALLY important to segregate swimmers based on gender and now all this spaghetti strap stuff came up and although I had never heard of them, I figured out what they were. This added to the confusion. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with skinny little dress straps. With most of the trauma seemingly over, I fainted on the bus ride home and when I told my Dad that I had been saved, he said “I figured that might happen”. Okay, so that wasn’t the most reassuring comment. The next few years would find me openly questioning and for as gruff and as angry as my Dad could be, he was the one I told my doubts to. I would have told my Mother but Dad was the one who made that comment after all. Dad was never surprised at any of my confessions. He didn’t give me pat Sunday school answers and sometimes we just talked, but mostly as I think about it, what we did, sometimes without knowing it or believing it would happen, we waited on God to put the answers in our hearts. Dad called that discovering a “truth”. The simple fact of the matter is you can’t go through life without wondering about things. Questions like is there a God? What happens when you die? Why is life so hard? What difference does it make?

As Dad got older, more sober and wiser, and what I must conclude now, closer to God, after pondering something, he would eventually have a conversation (actually more of a lecture) with me about one of these truths he had discovered. A discovered truth is something that instantly becomes clear or you make a connection that you had never made before, usually about one of these big life questions. Here is an example: it’s not God that is surprised we humans question His existence, its only other people who are afraid that if you question God he won’t love you or maybe you are a bad person or maybe it won’t look right if you admit to fears and doubts. Well I don’t actually know why most people are afraid and I know that sometimes there are people who think you are weak and crazy, a fool for even going down this path of faith, but I know the Bible doesn’t describe God in any way that would make you think He would act like that and the fool issue was around during Jesus' day..

With Jake dying, I have thought a lot about Heaven and faith and God. I have spent a lot of time on my knees and a lot of time asking God to open my eyes to things He would want me to see, to understand, to give me simple truths He wants me to know. When I have been low on faith, I have just asked blindly, weakly and doubtfully. So I want to tell you about one of the “truths” I have learned only a few nights ago. One of Jake’s friends sent me a prayer chain for the soldiers. Nothing special about it, I get several a week, but I liked getting it from this friend of Jake’s. It meant a lot to me that he sent it. Especially since my Josh will be heading that way soon. That night I woke up in the middle of the night and that letter was on my mind and so I began to talk to God. Sometimes praying is hard for me, my intent was to pray for the soldiers, but my mind wanders and I started remembering about the time I met Jake when he stepped off the plane returning from Iraq. I stood at the tape that kept the 1000 soldiers families from getting to close to the tarmac. They announced when the plane was coming in and we spotted it from long distance off, gliding slowly, bringing those men and women home from a place we had all been in our hearts. I stood freckled shoulder to shoulder with a grandmother whose skin was brown and a little girl of about 6 whose skin was darker yet. I saw Jake the minute he got off the plane, he was one of the last and when he filed up to the line we made, cheering and waving flags and music playing my heart was so happy, he smiled so big and I was proud of how I knew he had spent his time. It was a difficult job in a lot of ways. He did his time with honor and he did the best job he could and he was glad to be home. Just then, as many times as I have recounted that memory over the last 2 years, a different thought popped into my mind. In my questioning heart of what could Heaven possibly be like, I heard God’s voice. Well not literally but I might as well have, because it was almost like he whispered in my mind’s ear, “Janet, this is the way I feel when one of my own comes home, its what I felt when your Jake came home. The heavens rejoice and all of us here in Heaven celebrate. I know you miss him, but rest easy my child, take comfort in this thought”.

Amazingly, I did and as I write this I do.

Happy Monday and fight the good fight this week, my friends.

2 Timothy 4:7-8 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

July 30, 2007
All this month my brother’s flights have allowed him weekly overnights in Houston. It’s been the rare treat to go down and pick him up for lunch at Hobby, talk a bit, and then see him off to fly around the country. Sitting at the Vietnamese sandwich shop sipping ice coffee last week, he said “Remember that time you were going to cut me out of the tent”? “What?” I said. “Yeah, don’t you remember.. the island and the storm?” For a minute, I didn’t. And then in that way of the mind, a memory I haven't thought of in years, flooded my thinking.

I was about 13, Neil was 5 of 6. With Dad’s new sobriety, we began to try to be less dysfunctional as a family. (There wasn't such a word then, you understand, we just knew we were obviously different than everyone else.) I also don’t think this was a formal plan, we were just trying to heal, so we started taking family camping trips. Mother would pack up enough stuff to make us feel at home and Dad took us wherever his fragile new start on life could handle. You don’t get very far away from your demons very fast, so you got to let time work its magic. What that meant to our trips was that being young in the sobriety game, Dad’s need for isolation continued. He had found an island in the middle of Lake Nimrod when looking for slab crappie and we were going to spend a week, just the four of us, away from people. Dad made a big deal about how we would take everything with us we would need, leave the truck locked and we would be on our own. Geez, I could see a lot of problems with all this, what if someone stole our truck, what if we didn’t have enough gas to get back off the island, were people just allowed to go camp on an island, who owned it. The plan seemed risky to me, but then that wasn’t really a new thing with us and there wasn' much up for debate. Challenges and Dad’s acceptance of them was who God made him to be.

Getting to the island took two trips. Dad hated big bass boaters. He believed in john boats. I didn’t know they were called that until much later in my married life and I always that that was kind of an unflattering name for our boats. I probably heard of Dear John letters the same time I hear of john boats and made some kind of weird connection. Despite our combined and learned prejudice against big boats, the Huddle’s remained faithful to a 12 foot aluminum job, which always leaked and water always threatened to overlap the sides. I don’t know if that was from overloading or just bad riveting but I remember a lot of trips across glassy, black water, with early morning fog making me shiver, and more than a few thoughts of what I would do if we sunk.

Dad could skull a boat like no one else I ever saw. Sitting at the front of the boat, he would brace the paddle against his left forearm, fishing pole in the right, and manage the boat with fluid motion, smooth, powerful figure eights, eddying the water around the paddle, pulling the boat. Anything requiring two hands, he rested the paddle, dripping on his lap, while he sopped around brush for crappie. This was fishing movement of course. For jobs such as moving to an island for a week, we used the 9 horse Evinrude.

Yet again, fearful of what I would do if we sunk, we loaded everything for a week into the boat, twice as I said, and headed for our private island. Once we got there, it was time for mother to make a home and for dad to take a nap. This was ongoing issue with my parents. Private islands sound very romantic, but even back then before we knew there was real entertainment like IPODs and DVD players to be missed, my brother and I were bored quickly, especially since our family’s main attraction was napping and Mother was kind of fuming a bit. Finally night came and we built a fire and wondering now what we were going to do, Dad brought the Coleman Lantern up a bit more and brought out a book. Dad could do three things that the only thing you can call them was beautiful. He could sing offkey, wavery, and deep when singing Lee Marvin’s ‘I Was Born Under a Wandering Star’, which is the only song I really remember him singing and the only song that he needed to sing. The second thing is he could whistle. There is no way to describe this, if I did justice to it you would just wish you could have heard it and since I don’t think people really do it much anymore, it would just make you miss the lost art of it all that much more. But one thing is for sure, Dad's whistling was as clear and on pitch as his singing wasn’t. The third thing is that he could read out loud. Whether he was reading poetry like Poe’s Raven or prose, the cadence and passion of his voice turned the words into more than ink on paper.

This night Dad had brought a book of short stories and he read one of them, more than 10 pages long, all the way through. It was a bit scary, about children ghosts and such, I remember the title was “They”. It was a bit melancholy and lonely and lost and yet, we sat around, this dysfunctional band, counting on God to keep Dad sober and trying to get the most of life, with eyes of hope shining in the firelight. I think Dad felt good about his life and his family that night. The darkness was all around us, but it wasn’t scary, because it was just us on this small island, nothing there but us, nothing could surprise us. We were in control. For a moment that island, those surroundings, fooled us into thinking we had solved the control problem.

During the afternoon, a gusty wind has started to blow and now the twinkling heaven was increasingly cloudy. The casual remark or two from Dad that the water seemed a bit rougher, did not prepare me for what was to happen as we all lay down on the makeshift beds in the tent. I can only count a few times in my life I ever saw my dad scared. It turns out this was to be one of them. Out of a heavy sleep, Dad whispered for me to get up, the urgency in his voice obvious, a storm had come through and it was blowing badly. The tent floor was shaking and rain was pouring down, but the worse part was there was a strange sound, almost like a train might make. We weren’t any where close to a train, we were on an island. I knew what this meant. Mother was awake by now and terrified and Dad gave me instructions. I am going to tie your brother to you. If the tent comes down around us, you have to cut your way out. Take this knife. If it comes to that, Janet, get low to the ground and wrap yourself around a tree. I went over in my mind, hold Neil to me, cut the tent, find a tree, over it once again… just like I used to when mother would send me to store. List the items, don’t forget anything. But what if the rope gets around Neil’s neck? No, Dad didn’t say anything about that. But it could happen. Add this to the list. Cut the rope if Neil gets tangled in it. Tense, I held Neil, scared and wondered, the knife ready, gripping in my hand, dread in my heart. listing, what do I do if something happens to my Dad?

I don’t know how long the tornado lasted. In an out of the tent, Dad settled on the tent floor and reassured Mother all was fine now. Dad took the knife from me. He was back to who I always knew him to be, dauntless in the face of anything. . “You can untie your brother now Janet”. I remember laying there in the dark as Dad took his switch lantern outside and pulled the tent back into order. The moment of total quiet and stillness was better than the awful wind, but something still felt uncomfortable. When the crickets began their own wandering star song, my hunched shoulders settled down into my sleeping bag and Dad said, “I wonder if we lost the boat. Don’t worry Janet. In the morning we can figure everything out.”

Today, this last day of July 2007 has the promise of a new day tomorrow. Don’t any of you worry, there’s always a morning, that begins a new day. A fresh start to take a look at where you are and where you can go and if this day doesn’t go so well, then take a rest, let the night pass, and just as God planned, in the morning, figure it out. Howdy, good morning and Happy Monday… er Tueday .

I was born under a wanderin’ star
I was born under a wanderin’ star

Wheels are made for rollin’
Mules are made to pack
I never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back.

I was born under a wanderin’ star

Mud can make you prisoner
And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes
But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin’ from
For dreams of goin’ to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wanderin’ star
I was born under a wanderin’ star

Do I know where hell is?
Hell is in Hello
Heaven is good-bye forever
It’s time for me to go

I was born under a wanderin’ star
A wanderin’ wanderin’ star

Mud can make you prisoner
And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes
But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin’ from
For dreams of goin’ to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wanderin’ star
I was born under a wanderin’ star

When I get to heaven
Tie me to a tree
Or I’ll begin to roam
And soon you know where I will be

I was born under a wanderin’ star
A wanderin’ wanderin’ star

July 23, 2007

You ever had a week where you spend more time thinking that you just have too much bad luck coming your way? Seems like no matter what you do, you can’t get ahead and for every step forward, you are two steps farther behind. And then if that wasn’t enough, life doesn’t seem very fair, because too many times, the good guys don’t make as much head way as the bad ones. There are three ways to look at this situation, best I can tell. The first one, well you could spend some time figuring out what sins you committed and if there are a lot of them, you might realize that maybe the bad guy isn’t doing so well after all. Reckoning our sins is not a particularly popular activity anymore, mainly because when you do it right, it’s painful. There are way more things we do in a week, that we would just as soon not admit to, especially if you have to count things like yelling at the driver next to you, enmity, strife, selfishness, grudge holding, little white lies, and cussing. I bring up cussing because I love to do that and most of the time I pretend its okay that I do it – unfortunately there might be similar reasons for some other items in the list. The second way to deal with a very bad week is to feel sorry for yourself. Like the character in Lil’ Abner who always had the cloud over his head, you could carry the burden of the world’s biggest jinx on your shoulders. This one makes me tired to even think about it, so I have to wonder why I have been doing it some. The third one, you know of course, is going to be the best choice, right? I can hear my mother telling me as a little bitty girl, carrying on about the injustices of my world, and with little sympathy as far as I could tell, “Janet, count your blessings’. (I liked hearing that about as much as when she told me to stop bringing my bad attitude with me, which unforuantely, she still has reason to remind me). The curiosity about all three solutions is that they have one thing in common, they are about attitude.

As my Jake would say, this little song may seem silly, its an old one, but it says something very important, when you think about it
It’s especially valuable when you do it.

Happy Monday yall.

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will keep singing as the days go by.

Refrain

When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings. Wealth can never buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.

Refrain

So, amid the conflict whether great or small,
Do not be disheartened, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Johnson Oatman, Jr. (1856-1922)
in Songs for Young People 1897).

July 16, 2007
Howdy and Happy Monday, July 16, 2007
Well this week has seen the start of two families into marraiage contracts blessed by God and one dear friend’s mother homegoing to Heaven. It’s also seen one of the sweetest women on my tennis team stand in battle with lung cancer brought on by smoking that ended over a decade ago and another dear tennis friend’s, whose daughter is an Aggie hoping that the donated bone marrow she received will reverse her leukemia. My youngest son came home from simulated Iraqui desert warfare and my middle son will start seminary in the fall. Two friends have aging parents whose brittle bones have broken and they will make decisions on how to care for them and my spiritual music minister will spend take care of a wife whose time on this earth is growing short. But also soon new babies will grace the lives of young couples and the love that never ends will start again.

The poem and verse today is from Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?
I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

July 9, 2007

My dad got sober when I was about 13. That was a big change in our life, one that turned on his ability to “rely on a higher power” to give him the strength not to drink. Part of this change involved buying a brand new black F-100 pickup. (This is the one Jake drove in high school and intended to drive after Iraq and I drive now) Dad had wrecked the F100’s predecessor. For the longest I didn’t understand why he kept a half pint of Old Crow in the zipper pocket of that brand new truck. When I finally had the courage to ask, he told me he wanted to know that he ‘chose’ not to drink, not because it wasn’t available to do so. There is a very subtle psychology there.

That new truck wrought other changes in our family life. We ushered in summers with more than a few camping trips to the Ozarks, our family of 4 piled into the cab of that un air conditioned vehicle. One of my favorite things during those trips was to time the trip just right to hit the harvest of the Clarksville peaches. My mouth waters thinking of them right now 40 years later. They were nothing like the peaches in the store today. These were big and slightly soft to the touch, and an occasional patch of darker brown signifing a really ripe junice one; not bruising or taken-from-the-tree-green rot. We would stop at the orchard, buy a paper sack full, and hop back in the truck. Taking the first bite of that peach, the juice couldn’t do anything but run down your chin. I ate them till my mother warned me that my digestive system might respond unfavorably the next morning. I can remember biting down through to the pit and the flesh of the peach coming away from the pit. There was never a hard flesh that you had to throw away. I could easily down three of them. Before long, riding the bumpy state roads of Arkansas, I couldn’t resist and I would pull yet another out of the brown paper bag. I have looked for those peaches since I left Arkansas.

When I first moved to Texas, I purchased ones that “looked” like Clarksville ones. Disasater. Pulled so early from the tree, they were destined never to ripen. Somewhere I got the idea that if a fruit smelled like what it was supposed to, you could count on it being at least a reasonable facsimile of the Clarksvilles ones. Walking through Walmart or HEB, seeing those tempting perfect peaches, none, I mean none of the peaches smelled peachy. Then I heard about Texas hill country peaches. It’s my opinion they rarely come down Houston way or surely I would have found these jewels, whose reputation proceeded them to the bayou city. I found them once, when we took the boys to Bastrop camping, in a local grocery store. I ate them all. They were smaller than Clarksville ones, but pretty tasty nevertheless. I have looked for them since. This week a neighbor went to the hill country, to their daughter’s orchard and brought me a gallon of small, spotted peaches. First thing I noticed was that I could smell them. They smelled right, but they certainly looked nothing like the Arkansas ones and maybe not even the ones from the day when I had three little camping boys. Today, every time I went by the bowl I took one. The juice drips down my chin and I have to get a papertowel as I bite into it. John came in and said.. “What are all these little black spots all over this peach? It doesn’t look very good.” “Try it,” I said. He was back for a second one, with a paper towel under his chin.

I thought about how much we consider appearance when we judge what is good. I bet that the Clarkville peaches aren’t as perfect as I remember them. But perfect is not what life is really about. In Jake fashion, here is a poem that I think says something very good and important. I loved this poem as a young woman because I hated my freckles. Happy Monday.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

 

July 2, 2007
Howdy and Happy Monday!!

Mother’s day of 2005 Jake gave me a book about Abraham Lincoln, A Commitment to Honor, A Unique Portrait in His Own Words. Jake had an eclectic taste in many things but I must tell you, I have spent many thoughtful moments in that book. The quote for this week is from there.

“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing our own limbs to where them.”

This week’s well wishes are likely to find a lot of you traveling since July 4th falls right in the middle of the week. I hope you all have a safe and wonderful week, remembering and valuing the freedoms that are our birthright.

Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels.
Ah me, when the sun is bright on the upland slopes,
when the wind blows soft through the springing grass
and the river floats like a sheet of glass,
when the first bird sings and the first bud ops,
and the faint perfume from its chalice steals.
I know what the caged bird feels.
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
till its blood is red on the cruel bars,
for he must fly back to his perch and cling
when he fain would be on the bow aswing.
And the blood still throbs in the old, old scars
and they pulse again with a keener sting.
I know why he beats his wing.
I know why the caged bird sings.
Ah, me, when its wings are bruised and its bosom sore.
It beats its bars and would be free.
It's not a carol of joy or glee,
but a prayer that it sends from its heart's deep core,
a plea that upward to heaven it flings.
I know why the caged bird sings.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
(Black American poet)

June 20, 2007

Howdy and Happy Monday (well, Wednesay now!) I will be in the beautiful city of Morelia in Mexico all next week, so maybe it’s a good thing that I am not getting this out until the middle of the week since it's going to need to last for two.

Wow, has it been hot here. It’s made me think about how I learned to swim. Back in Arkansas, we didn’t have air conditioning and there wasn’t even a community swimming pool until I was a young teen. We tolerated the heat as best we could but one of the luxuries was to pile into the back of a pickup and head for the swimming hole. I remember those dusty rides. I would be scared to death, hoping and dreading, that dad would throw me into the water as he threatened, thinking that must be the only way I would figure out how to dog paddle. I don’t know if I was more afraid of going under water and not coming back up or of my toes touching the slimy bottom of the creek. The memory is as clear as the chill of that first splash of water. I would like to share a poem by James Whitcomb Riley for this Wednesday.

The Old Swimmin’ Hole

OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,
And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore,
When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,
Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide
That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,
It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress
My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness.
But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll
From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days
When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways,
How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane,
Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane
You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole
They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole.
But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll
Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.

Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,
And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;
And it mottled the worter with amber and gold
Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;
And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by
Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,
Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle
As it cut acrost some orchard to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place,
The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face;
The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot
Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot.
And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be--
But never again will theyr shade shelter me!
And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,
And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.

The Bible verse for today is: John 3:5
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.

June 11, 2007

Howdy and Happy Monday!

Today it’s just about our chance to celebrate Father’s Day this coming Sunday! This Happy Monday is dedicated to all you dads, gonna be dads and father of children. Smarter people have said it best, so here are some quotes to make you laugh, make you think, advice, or throughts just to make you thankful.

"Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then, fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again." Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby

"To be a successful father, there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years." Ernest Hemingway

"If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right." Bill Cosby

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.: Sigmund Freud

"Fathers do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong." Charles Wadsworth

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it." Harry S Truman

"It is much easier to become a father than to be one." Kent Nerburn

" Noble fathers have noble children." Euripides

"A father is going to make mistakes, but if he shows his child love and shows him God then he's done the best he can". Jack Huddle

" But I am prouder – infinitely prouder – to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle field but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, 'Our Father who art in Heaven.'" Douglas Macarthur

June 4, 2006
Twice in a Blue Moon

The first time I rode a motorcycle it was on the back of my brother’s dirt bike. Neil was barely 13, full of sullen anger, the tinny sound of the engine a high whine, he would put the bike through its gears, skirting trees as he traversed woody paths. Who knows why, but when I asked, he shared the biking experience with his 6 year older sister. On the back, scared and yet enthralled, I learned to lean into the curves and trusted the strength of his young body and mind to safely navigate our trips. This kind of bike riding was addictive and over the next several years, as Neil's taste in bikes changed and his sullen nature matured, he shared them with me. Riding on a motorcycle is a strange kind of freedom. It’s moving through space, fast, with nothing between you and the world around you. That’s why it’s so dangerous and that is why it’s addictive. Over the years I have shared a ride or two with Neil and more occasionally with my brother-in-law, almost always riding in the passenger seat. I have had my share of muffler burns and the few times I attempted to drive it was more scary than freeing.

At the beginning of May, for reasons that are probably complex and about temporary freedom of his own, Neil borrowed a bike and drove from Ft Worth to Houston to visit. After dinner, right at dusk, I asked. “Yeah, get on. We won’t wear helmets tonight. I will be careful. Watch out for the muffler.” I sat behind him, my hands placed gently at his waist and noticed his shoulders and back were still strong but older and thought about the past. The moon was just leaving full and I talked loud directly into ear over his shoulder as the engine whined. ‘That’s a blue moon, Neil.” “Yeah, he says, “the first of two full moons in a single month.” I relaxed into the seat, trusted his ability and his care, and for a moment was free. Free not to worry or doubt or be sad or think anything other than hear the loud wind rush past my face and feel as my body reacted to the acceleration on whatever straight-aways the road provided. When we got back from our ride I wanted to tell Neil what it meant to me. All I said was thanks. Over the years I have come to appreciate men for their use of economy of words. Mind you, sometimes it’s annoying, but many times, its all that is appropriate.

At about this time, a friend of mine fulfilled his lifelong dream with the purchase of a street bike. Nothing fancy, but a good first starter and I suspect the indulgence of freedoms of his own that he needed. It had been a while since I had seen David, a lot can happen in people’s lives in a month and so at the end of May we planned to hit some tennis balls. Finally the evening came, after postponements and delays for Houston summer rains. Coaching me through some bad habits and laughing and talking a bit we got ready to call it a night. “You want a ride?” he said, “I finished my safety course.” We packed up the tennis balls, he had me strap on his lone helmet, and right at dusk, with the second full moon in May, we set out. We rode on quiet roads east of Houston, where the flat lay of the land allows you to feel the sunset long after the light is gone. “It’s a pretty night,” I yell across his shoulder, hearing the familiar scream of wind and beginning to lean into the acceleration of the bike. There is a special kind of thinking you do when you are that close to the world around you. “Yeah, he says, a blue moon”. I let myself, for the second time in a single month, feel the freedom of a motorcycle ride. I know that Jake’s last moments on this earth were about this freedom on a full-moon lit night a year and half ago. A small tear rides the wind and a heartfelt prayer is sent skyward. The ride winding down, back in David’s neighborhood, David says “watch the muffler” as we pull into his garage. David’s been one of those friends who continue to find ways to shoulder the burden of loss with me. He says, “I got you something. I had some decals made of Jake’s crede. I thought you might want to put one on your car.” I look at him. “Let’s put one on my bike.” In companionable silence, we do just that, and it looks right, like it was painted on the tank. “Thanks, for the ride and the decals, David," I say as I wave and get in my car. Only for a moment do I hope he knows how much I tried to tell him in those few words. He does. “Anytime Janet,” he says. On the way home I think how good, how much I cherish the freedoms I have, the temporary ones and the ones that are more permanent. Like the freedom that God grants me to question and mull things over in my mind and the steadfastness that He shows me of His love while I do so, through friends and bikes and blue moon months.

Happy Monday. I wish you a few temporary freedoms, but most of all I wish you real freedom.

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32 May 28, 2007

Well, Happy Monday Yal’ll, just barely. Today is a day to remember all those soldiers who have given their all. For me, its personal as it is to many of you. Given that our nation's armed forces are active and deployed, I pray God’s watch over each man and woman who have volunteered to serve and I pray for each family who have over the generations sacrificed.

Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping

Words by G.W.R. Music by Mrs. L. Nella Sweet published 1867

Kneel where our loves are sleeping, Dear ones days gone by,
Here we bow in holy reverence, Our bosoms heave the heartfelt sigh.
They fell like brave men, true as steel, And pour’d their blood like rain,
We feel we owe them all we have, And can but weep and kneel again.

Here we find our noble dead, Their spirits soar’d to him above,
Rest they now about his throne, For God is mercy, God is love.
Then let us pray that we may live, As pure and good as they have been,
That dying we may ask of him, To open the gate and let us in.

Kneel where our loves are sleeping, They lost but still were good and true,
Our fathers, brothers fell still fighting, We weep, ‘tis all that we can do."

T oday's Bible verse
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:12-13

May 21, 2007

I didn’t write a Happy Monday last week although I wished you one in my heart. Sometimes you just have to let time pass when Churchill’s black dog is nipping at your heels. The problem is I missed the opportunity to wish a Happy Mother’s Monday. I think you all may have noticed how much I talk of my dad. While that is a bit strange for a girl, it’s not so much so when you realize that I am the oldest, I was the only for a while, and my dad at many times in my young life was the daytime caregiver, mainly because he worked nights and mother kept a parttime job. But today, as a heartfelt tribute to all you new mothers, wannabe Mothers, never to be Mothers, and old mothers, to all of you who have the mother’s heart and have shared it, I want to honor you by telling you how much my own Mother means to me.

She is a daughter’s best friend. She devoted her life to her family and counted it joy with an unselfishness that I aspire to. She is tiny and yet fearless, tireless and uncomplaining. She jealousy guards my time with her and I am grateful she has taught me how important that is. She is hard of hearing yet treasures every word we share. She taught me how to cook, how to mother, how to be a wife, and how to love God. I wonder at the miracle that brought her into our home and the haven she provided three young grandsons as they negotiated the move from childhood into the bewildering world of teens. She has cooked our favorite foods and ironed our clothes with loving hands. She still does. She lost a child and wailed in concert and comfort when I lost one of mine. She prays for me and mine, my brother and his, every day of her life. She is ever faithful to me and loves me without reservation. She is my mother but she is like other mothers, the example of a miracle that is a mother’s love.

Happy Monday, mothers.

Psalms 28-31
Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband, and he praiseth her
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: a woman who feareth the LORD, she shall be praised
Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

May 7, 2007
The Peckerwood Garden
I woke up Saturday morning with no particular plans. Spent a bit of quiet time, Bob brought me some coffee, and the phone started to ring. A few anxious moments later, I knew two things: too many friends remembered I was born on Cinco de Mayo and a friend who had battled breast cancer for 16 years had died. The first caller made a suggestion, “You should take a little trip to Peckerwood Gardens today.” Huh? I had a lot of things to do, none of them having anything to do with taking a drive. Bob didn’t want to go and I really didn’t want to spend the time it would take to get to Hempstead. But for some reason, I closed my computer, packed a couple of bottles of water, asked Mother to go with me, and gave Bob release from wife’s-birthday duty. The blustery day buffeted the car, heated winds buffeted the hawks, and we headed out west.

Strange thing I knew when I finally found Peckerwood Gardens although I had never been there before. I had noticed this place on other drives. Just a bit past a small creek, a small elegant sign states “Peckerwood Foundation” almost hidden in a wall of greenery. Teasing glimpses of pleasing architecture and towering, swaying trees are all that evidences the place from the road. A small tent was set up at the entrance of the garden and we walked up and into the beginning of a tour. I noticed a tall, lean, and lanky gentleman. He had the stance of a man of the earth, an air of patience and stillness and quiet expectation, a waiting posture. The gentleman wore a straw hat that fit nicely on his head, the brim dancing to the gusts of wind but never lifting off his head. I liked his face. It was smooth for his age and when he smiled, which was often, he looked directly into your eyes. “Are you ready”, he said, and off the small group of garden enthusiasts tromped, trailing behind him. "My name is John," he said and he began to talk about the trees. His voice was soft, and earnest and passionate even when the words were lost in the wind. A garden with evergreen oaks, many lovingly discovered in Mexico, graced rolling hills. Magnolias were planted next to giant cypress, their knees popping up along the creek path. Pebbled, dry gardens flowed into grassy-cool spots and the juxtaposition of desert plants with water trees seemed peaceful and harmonious.

I realized that this garden was the handiwork of John’s heart. It was crafted with gifted hands. Without even knowing him, I knew John was an artist, because the garden was his pallet and canvas. Using texture and shades of greens, and plant blues, silvers and purple leaf, John had spent the last 30 years creating this garden of rare native plants and Mexican transplants. Stopping by his metal home and a beautiful fine needled yucca John said, “In the heat of the summer, when this place is hotter than you can imagine, this yucca’s fine leaves will move with the slightest breeze, a movement that makes the garden seem cooler.” I thought about that. This garden was not just about color and texture, but it was about movement. It was about time and season. Often I have appreciated the sway of an oak as its leaves and limb twisted in a wind; never had I considered the movement of a desert plant in the stillness of summer heat.

I couldn’t always hear John, his voice so quiet, but the desire to soak up what he might be saying was being reconciled with the growing realization that this garden was special. With that ever present smile that alwasy reached his eyes, John walked us over to the last stop on our tour. John had already told us about certain plants and trees in the garden that have chemicals used to combat breast and lung cancers. He quietly gathered the group in a low spot at the end of a meadow and asked us to look up the hill towards an old live oak. With the familiar heavy limbs close enough that they make you want to climb, the oak was majestic, as perfect a rendering of a perfect tree that you could ever want. In concentric circles with an open path to the oak, row after row of trees that naturally harbor the cancer-fighting chemical framed the tree. I don’t know if John expected or hoped we would each feel what his artists hands had wrought, but I know what I felt. On the walk back, John, always asking if we had questions, was asked the obvious one, “How much time do you spend here?!” “Not as much as I used to”, John says, “I still teach two days a week at A&M.”. “Really”, the woman said, you teach botany?” “No, I am an architect, I teach environmental design.”

In 98, a young freshman Aggie, a corp guy, having spent a semester finding out that engineering wasn’t meant to be, considered architecture and took a class from a soft-spoken professor and sent out a happy monday that started with…….Well here is today’s quote, my environmental design teacher said this...." when you look at a tree don't just look at the branches, look at the sky between them". I know some of ya’ll will think that is just plain weird but I think it makes a lot sense if you think about it.

There are a handful of decisions I could have made that day that would not have taken me down those garden paths. Only God can orchestrate time and will for a moment, to let a heart heal in a Texas Garden, especially if you are willing to look beyond the branches and consider that Heaven may be more generous than you could ever imagine.

Happy Monday.

Peckerwood Garden
John's mentor and friend, Lynn Lowery, Rice Tribute

 

April 30, 2007
I missed last week, mosly because I was out of the country and there was no internet. My head cold today is preventing me from being able to think in a straight line, let alone write, so I will let Jake do the talking today, an original Happy Monday from 1999....
**********
Howdy,
Well, sorry it has been so long since I have written, I won't try to give y'all any excuses. I hope everyone has been doing ok, I am excited it is only 3 weeks till bonfire and thanksgiving. I got my first A in almost 2 years (not counting Tomball) !! I know you are all happy for me. I hope most all of y'all are planning to come up for bonfire.... Let me know. Well it is late and I am sure you all have better things to do than read group e-mails. So here is just a little something I thought you all would like, since i didnt get a monday thing this week. Take care and be safe.
In His Name,

Jake

The Happiest Heart

Who drives the horses of the sun
Shall lord it but a day;
Better the lowly deed done,
And kept the humble way.

The rust will find the sword of fame,
The dust will hide the crown;
Ay, none shall nail so high his name
Time will not tear it down.

The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast
That found the common daylight sweet,
And left to Heaven the rest.

-John Vance Cheney
SEE : Lamentations 3:21-27

 

April 16, 2007
Jake’s been on my mind a lot this past week. That means I have been missing him, at night more than I think I can bear, but it also means I have been remembering a lot about him. One of Jake’s corp buddies confessed to me that they considered Jake the “king of random” and then went on to tell the story of how Jake showed up one day after class telling everyone he had signed up for the A&M rugby team. I remember that day. I was flabbergasted. He called me and said the same thing. Jake had never played a single inning or whatever they are, of rugby in his life. As far as I knew, he didn’t even know the rules. My memory says that Jake reveled in the experience, intrigued by a collective reaction of disbelief, and in some weird way the numerous injuries, his battle scars, he sported the times he played. Truth be told I doubt he was any good. But I am completely certain he went at it with extreme enthusiasm and his physical all, which could be considerable. I remember another time he called and told me he was going to apply for a summer job as a wrangler on a Colorado dude ranch. A wrangler on a dude ranch? I stated the obvious. Jake, you don’t know how to ride a horse. “Yes, I do, you might say I started riding at 7 years old. Remember when we went to Big Ben on that family vacation?” We all have our levels of honesty and rationalization and although I know Jake’s conscience suffered a bit with that over-statement of the truth, he got the job as a wrangler and that summer in Colorado was one of Jake’s best. All this remembering got me to thinking. I remembered a time when my brother, a highschool volunteer fireman, (like my Jake) was called to a house. It turned out to be a friend of his, a drug overdose. My brother knew of the kid’s drug use and Neil told me something I will never forget. “His parents have known the trouble he was in, they didn’t know what to do, so they did nothing. Doing anything is better than nothing.”

You never know what’s around the next corner of life. No one has the ability to tell the future or guarantee it. One thing you can guarantee though, you have control over whether or not you do nothing. Do something today. Try something new or venture somewhere you aren’t comfortable. Step out and help someone who will be completely surprised. Take a chance, not on luck but on life. I never learned much from the things that I knew I would be successful doing; I have always learned the most about myself, the people around me and my place in the world when I tried something I wasn’t sure I could do, in some cases, never had a chance of working.. Chances are that doing 'something'.. well, you just might make a difference. You are guaranteed to make a connection with someone that you wouldn’t otherwise. It's possible you'll make a memory that will lift a heavy heart. At the very least, you'll have the chance to create a smile or a laugh for someone watching. ;). Happy Monday.

April 9, 2007
Howdy & Happy Monday after Easter!

When I was little I was afraid to be away from home. I didn’t get much better as I got older. My dad started a game with me that I carry with me in one version or another to this day. He would say, ”when you get homesick tonight, at 9pm, remember that I will be thinking about you.” As I got older, I said, sometimes to him, and sometimes to myself, “and I will think about you too Dad”. In my mind, there was an element of communication beyond the ordinary. Don’t get me wrong, can’t say I ever felt anything particularly supernatural, but the knowledge that Dad’s mental power, the voice of his soul, was being directed to me was very reassuring and comforting. This being Easter, an especially important celebration for me and mine, I wanted a special Happy Monday.

If you are reading this its likely because I sent you an email. You need to know this: I thought about you. I thought about why I know you and what you mean to me, or what you meant to Jake and now me. I thought about the reasons I have gotten to know you and the things I wish I knew about you. I thought about what you mean to my family, what my family has meant to you, and what you mean to your family. I thought about what I know about your life and what you are to those around you. I thought about what hardships or joys you might be going through. I hoped that time would prove that I get to know you better. What I am telling you is that the voice of my soul, for a moment, whether you knew it or not, today, thought especially just about you. It took a while, for every single one of you, because God's seen fit to bless so richly. I am thankful for many things, this Easter one of the things I thanked God for was you.

April 2, 2007
Howdy and Happy Monday!
The Flat Tire Ballet.
I had to get a flat fixed on Friday. On my way to my favorite place for that sort of thing, a small business not far from my house that sells wheels, there is a field of mustard greens. While waiting to get out on the main highway, I watched the guys who were harvesting the field. Standing, three of them, each with a small cloth sack under one arm and a machete in the other hand, they bent from the waist, pulled a plant and separated the leaves from the stalk with the machete. Quickly, with a free hand they removed a tie from the cloth pouch, secured the bunch, and tossed it to the every growing pile of greens – in about 20 seconds. I thought to myself, they make it look easy. And I realized, to describe them I would have to say they were graceful. There prowess would be nothing compared to the mechanics dance I was fixin’ to witness. I must confess, I like mechanics’ shops. There is an appealing mystery about them, because they strike me as being a window into what it means to be male, something women don’t usually ‘get’. The moment you enter, the greasy, heavy air hits you, the smell hovers above an always concrete floor, where bins and racks hold tools and parts - or in this case wheels. The shops are at once dirty and clean.. I have never been in a good mechanic shop that wasn’t swept clean and organized. Dirt and clutter is different than grease and stained. One is about laziness and the other is about getting the job done. I parked at the shop, jumped out, lowered the tailgate and was just about to man-handle the tire out, when I heard the shop worker. “You need the flat fixed?” His English wasn’t the best. He didn’t have many teeth. Some were clearly rotten and some looked like they might have suffered a fist or two and I decided that was at least part of the reason he was so difficult to understand. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he picked up the tire like it was nothing. All the while he was rolling and bouncing the tire into the open door, he was chattering and I noticed he was light on his feet and had kind of .. well, he kind of had a bounce in his step. Like a boxer warming up, or a dancer.. I followed him in. Shops don’t have much natural light unless it coming through a garage door and this one was closed. Men will hang up any kind of poster, especially if it’s one with a pretty girl on it, so the windows weren’t giving much light either because that was where a lot of the pinups resided. But what light there was… it shimmered off the wheels, shelves of them, gleaming shiny chrome. That kind of display must be for men a little bit like women looking at jewelry. They were beautiful and even as much as I couldn’t tell you what kind of rims the car I drive has on it, I could have picked out some nice ones, they were so glittery and shiny. In the meantime, the shop guy has accepted my invasion into his shop, in the way that is unique to men. He just simply accepted me and went to work. All I saw was the back of his do-rag as he adjusted the radio to just above hammering volume. We both nodded our heads in rhythm to the rock and roll and for the next 5 minutes he partnered with the rubber and the rim, as he repaired the tire. It was quite something. Arms slender, no fat on his body and a broad back for his size, he performed the steps, a mechanics choreography, never missing a beat, never mishitting a lick, never faltering in moving the tire from one piece of machinery to another, fluid and graceful and masterful. He made the motions of work seem like a dance. In between the hissing of air and drilling of rubber for patches, he would talk to me. I only got bits and pieces. “Where do you live”? Down the street I said. “Yeah, me too”.. a grin and he adds, “the jail, I have been there too much”. I am a bit surprised but I am in his territory so I just accept his confession. I smile. He turns the tire, using strength and timing to bounce the weight and settle it on the tire changer. Amid the music and air compressor, he looks at me, brings two fingers in a pinch to his lips and pretends to inhale and then shakes his head, “Trying to be a good man now though.” He looks up to Heaven, I clearly hear “Dios mio” and for a very small, moment, genuflecting, he seems serious. I wonder what hardships he has and I know someone who I will add to my own heavenly petitions. Moment past, twinkling eyes, he finishes the job, and just as if the performance is over, walks over and turns the music down. “Sorry, senora, must be 12 dollars, big patch”. He puts the tire on my truck, returns the spare to the back, I wave a good bye and consider my 12 dollar fee. My pleasure, I decide, a bargain as far as I am concerned. Male physical grace is male physical grace, whether you are watching a son swim less than a minute in a hot summer pool, an Astros outfielder catch a line drive and throw a rocket into home, the grace of a Tiger or a Federer, or field hands make a mustard green harvest, .... and, if your lucky, a Brownville native treats you to the front row seat of the flat tire ballet.

March 26, 2007
Howdy! I want to tell you about a good day. Every once in a while, a day comes along, that if you had been God, you couldn’t have made it better. Well last Sunday was one of those days. The first thing good was church. If you are reading this and you aren’t one of those faithful kind, don’t be offended when I say I wish you could have shared it with me that day. I guess sometimes that kind of comment might be about being self righteousness, but mostly, well, it’s because people who love, want to share something good. It’s like me wanting you to see a movie or read a book I loved, I just want to share it with you. Yep, church was like that that day. The second thing was it was the day that northwest Houston celebrated St. Pat’s Day. Now that day has never been one of my special holidays, probably because I don’t like beer much and that’s what the day seems to be about. But my Jake, who definitely LIKED beer, started me thinking about St. Pat’s day, several years back while he was in Iraq. You ever seen any of those pictures on MSNBC of the soldiers sitting around in the desert, leaning on their backpack, reading? They do that a lot, I think. They read anything they can get their hands on and according to Jake, all kinds of books get passed around. So in Jake’s hands while on mission, fell a biography of St. Patrick and he AIM’ed me that “it was a really good story”. St. Patrick, I thought to myself? Who reads that kind of thing and thinks it’s good? As things go, I eventually found out why the story meant so much to him. St Patrick lived about 400 years after Christ, at a time when lots of people’s lives were dark and confused. A few people had it better. A rich, privileged, and rebellious kid, at 16 Patrick was one of these, until he had a drastic life change. The spoiled, willful teenager, was kidnapped by a band of marauders who removed him from his homeland and took him back to what is now Ireland. Think about that!! Without family, in a strange land, slave to his marauders, Patrick shepherded sheep on dark lonely nights and days, many of them. Away from his family, with nothing to do but think, under the stars, Patrick read, kept a journal and harbored his confessions in his heart and on paper. Tragedy changed Patrick. After reading the end of the story, I know why Jake liked it. In the year 2007, to celebrate St. Patrick, two of Jake’s best friends drove Grace in the fourth largest St. Pat’s parade in North America, a couple of them rode in the back. My friend Laurie and I stood on the road and watched Grace as she passed by, her forty foot trailer loaded with revelers, dressed in green and we caught beads and candy and smiles. The thing about that Sunday, I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t plan the parade or Grace or Jake’s friends involvement in it. It was all God’s orchestration, from 400 AD years to a Sunday in 2007, it was all God’s design. Some days are just about Grace, not the truck but the kind that Jake thought a lot about, the unmerited favor that can happen. Last Sunday was good, not because I planned it, not because I deserved it, but because that is the wonder of how God works. Happy Monday.

March 19, 2007

Happy Monday ?
When I was little I had chores. One of the most memorably disgusting ones was cleaning the dog pens. We kept hunting dogs, mainly short haired pointers, and Dad had made them an enclosure consisting of two separate pens that the dogs could move through freely. I really hated cleaning up dog crap. Good thing was though, the dogs crapped only in one place in that little maze Dad made them. Not through any credit to us humans you understand. The dog houses and feeding bowls were in one pen and the dog latrine was in the other pen. The dogs we had used that one pen, usually relegating their business even to one corner. This made my job easier for two reasons, the area of clean up was kept to a minimum and the chances of inadvertently stepping in dogcrap was less likely. No matter how many generations passed through those pens, or the number of dogs we had at the time, they all crapped in the latrine side. Ach, well that’s not exactly true, occasionally we had the odd dog who didn’t seem to “get it”. Given that dogs’ lives are all about smells, while shoveling the stuff, I figured that’s how generations of dogs knew what to do. After contemplating that Lucky, the new dog, must have a bad nose hence wasn’t going to be worth much as a hunter, I came in the house one afternnon, fuming. Thoroughly disgusted, both with the dirty job, a nose full of dog crap smell, and dog crap between my toes, I complained to Dad. The way he explained it to me was like this, “It’s a really stupid damn dog who shits where he lives.”
So Saturday I was coming home from a very pleasant sweaty hour of tennis, thinking I might be a bit stinky and while waiting at a stop light I noticed a young woman, reasonable looking in all aspects, stroll over to the bus stop bench and start a smoke. She casually unwrapped the little small cigar and without even a pause, peeled the plastic and paper, and threw it at her feet. Next she crumpled up a coke can and threw it on the ground. Fuming, if I could have jumped out of my car and grabbed the trash I would have. Now I can understand it if you do something out of ignorance, say for instance like throw away those curly fluorescent light bulbs that save 75 per cent more energy but which contain mercury (that's what 'lights' up and which means you should dispose of them more carefully).. But who doesn’t know that throwing trash at your feet, littering, is well, honestly, isn’t it a bit like, well you know…shitting where you live?

The quote of the day
Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.
Mark Twain

Happy Monday, ya’ll.

March 12, 2007

I am thinking about fishing. Maybe it’s because Dad took me fishing on my birthday for many years or maybe it’s because it’s the inherent peacefulness of water, but I long to be in a john boat or on the dock, watching a cork. Mind you, I suck at fishing about as much as I do at golf. I have no natural abilities at understanding and capitalizing on fish behavior to ensure I bring home a catch and most of the time the mechanics of fishing escape me (you know.. hooking the fish, corkless tightlines, the whole casting to the perfect spot problem).I will admit, ultimately I plan to eat the little critters. But mostly right now, my mind if full of a million memories and a million moments of fishing trips that shaped and molded my heart.

There was the time Dad and I went to the barpit off the Arkansas River. I was a young girl of 13 and life had become complicated. My mind was reeling with the realization that people didn’t believe in God, and with sweaty palms and the aching worry of doubt, I wondered how I could know there was one. We finished fishing and Dad suggested that we make a fire. All I could think of was I wanted to go somewhere that my mind didn’t doubt and I could be sure about life. Sitting on the verge of womanhood, adulthood, a faithless world and a barpit with my Dad wasn’t where I wanted to be but it was where I was. It seemed a bit of a mystery to me how Dad might have recognized I was troubled, I know now it was obvious. Spilling my guts as I looked into the fire, Dad was neither surprised nor distressed at my confession.

.Just after Jake died, a friend I didn’t know I had, invited Bob and I to fish. I stood on the boat dock, this time wiser about doubt and its role in faith and fathers, but with an aching heart much harder to bear than a 13 years old’s coming of age one. A sense of panic, I wandered the boat dock, dangling the hook around old tires and engine oily surface waters, praying for a bite. It took a while for me to sit, realizing that catching a fish wasn’t what I was there for. With friends who know how to leave you be, I watched the sun go down and talked to Dad, my heavenly one, and asked for peace and grace. The things I told my Father that day, well He wasn’t surprised at my confessions.

I long to go fishing, to watch my fishing line go slack, to see my cork bobble when a little bream mouths and tastes my bait, and watch the sun go down and the stars come out. I long to go fishing and...
.
“Be still, and know that I am God” Psalms 46:10

Happy Monday.

March 5, 2007
Happy Monday!!
Those of us here in the South can feel spring in the air. Its right around the corner and the dead, brown winter that has lasted longer than I can ever remember here in Houston, is starting to green up. Spring makes us think about hope and that good things are going to happen in our lives. We get out and dig around in the yard, or do some spring cleaning, or plan for summer vacations. When I would get depressed, my dad used to say “Just think what would happen if God’s organization of the world didn’t work one day? What would you do if you got up one morning and the sun had failed to rise.” Frankly, I thought Dad was kind of crazy and I didn’t hold too much to what he was trying to say to me. But you know what, just think how much we count on the order of the universe and honestly, what would we do if one day the sun failed to rise or spring never came? So here is what I wish you this week, you have seven new mornings and in those I hope that you : 1) plant a seed of hope, either in the ground, or on your patio, or in your heart; 2) that you consider what life would be like if the things you know are true around you weren’t, whether that’s the love of your mother, the steadfastness of a friend, the sun coming up every morning, or God’s grace, and 3) do something for someone that gives them hope, whether in deed, in thought, or in prayer. Jake-like for one more week, here is another poem. This one says something very beautiful, that the things precious to us, remain in our heart and can be taken out and revisited when we need them. We can count on them just like we count on the order of nature. Young and old have seen this poem, but really, could anything be anymore beautiful… or more hopeful? Good only Henry W, 200 years ago wrote this and it is STILL true today. (For those of you who might not know what a daffodil is, substitute the beautiful fields of bluebonnets that are just about to grace Texas hills.. for those of you not from Texas, the only word of hope I can offer, from Lyle’s lips to you..
That's right you're not from Texas
That's right you're not from Texas
That's right you're not from Texas
But Texas wants you anyway”)

"Daffodils" (1804)
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
By William Wordsworth

February 26, 2007
Happy Monday and Howdy. I really missed sending you a good wish for the last week. But here we are back to it, the end of February 2007 and it’s time to make the very best of it! So to wish just that for you, I have yet another dog story to tell. We lost Moses for the week I was gone, everyone was desparate and sad and fearful that the old boy was truly lost this time. As it turns out, he was honeymooning with that white little hussy five blocks over that he has already had one set of puppies by! In what must be some sort of weird biological mystery, they go off into the woods to honeymoon. (I thought canines ..were. well.. sort of you know.. just do it on the spot type animals..) Apparently Jennifer (the white hussy’s name) is smart of enough to head home for a bit of rest and sleep during the tryst, but Moses keeps the marital lare warm or something because he doesn’t even come out of the woods until Jennifer is no longer willing. I wasn’t home when Moses finally showed up, but I heard that he walked through the gate, growled at Ellie, and promptly laid by the back door and slept for 5 hours.

So what does this have to do with a Happy Monday greeting? In true Jake fashion, here is a poem for you to muse over that connect fear of losing a dog and losing hope that he might come back…

Have a good one!!

Keep On Keepin’ On

If the day looks kinder gloomy
And your chances kinder slim,
If the situation’s puzzling, and the prospect’s awful grim,
If perplexities keep pressin’
Till hope is nearly gone,
Just bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin’ on.

Frettin’ never wins a fight
And fumin’ never pays,
There ain’t no use in broodin’
In these pessimistic ways;
Smile just kinder cheerfully
Though hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keeping on.

There ain’t no use in growlin’
And grumblin’ all the time,
When music’s ringin’ everywhere
And everthing’s a rhyme.
Just keep on smilin’ cheerfully
If hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin’ on.
-Anonymous

February 12, 2007
Happy Monday!!
It has been such a pleasure hearing from all of you and I have had a wonderful time using this Happy Mondays venue. I had a great story for this week, concerning unrequieted third grade love and being someone's Valentine.. . but the more I thought about it, the more I thought this was a good time to recycle one of Jake's Happy Monday's. . I hope this week, you are someone's Valentine but better than that I hope you ask someone to be your Valentine who may be surprised you ask, or maybe just in your heart, you do as Jake's Happy Monday below suggests....

BTW - My next Happy Monday will come from my field site in Mexico.. if I get the uplink!

(from Jake, 1998-...) well I didn't send the poem yesterday so I am going to make up for it with a pretty long one. This one teaches us a good lesson. I would be willing to bet that lately some of us have had things go on in our lives that need to be forgotten and we all need to move on and forgive those people, and forget those things of our past. To watch our step and realize that it does us no good to hurt others. So here it is.

Forget It
If you see a tall fellow ahead of the crowd,
A leader of music, marching fearless and proud,
And you know of a tale whose mere telling aloud
Would cause his proud head to in aguish be bowed,
It's a pretty good plan to forget it.

If you know of a skeleton hidden away
In a closet, and guarded and kept from the day
In the dark; whose showing, whose sudden display
Would cause grief and sorrow and lifelong dismay,
It's a pretty good plan to forget it.

If you know of a spot in the life of a friend
(We all have spots concealed, world without end)
Whose touching his heartstrings would sadden or rend,
Till the shame of its showing no grieving could mend,
It's a pretty good plan to forget it.

If you know of a thing that will darken the joy
Of a man or a woman, a girl or a boy,
That will wipe out a smile or the least way annoy
A fellow, or cause any gladness to cloy,
Its a pretty good plan to forget it.

Unknown

I think it is a pretty simple poem but a good lesson none the less.
As for the qoute of the day....

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay done his life for his friends" John 15:13 Jacob

February 5, 2007
I have a vague, dusty memory of my Dad and I as we rambled down a dirt road in his old Ford truck. I remember that we were headed for Camp Robinson, an old WWII POW camp in Arkansas that had housed German prisoners. For a 5 year old, the explanation of POWS and wars was perplexing, but one thing I did know, Camp Robinson was a special place. You could go there and get things for free. In the early summer we went there for blackberries. A slice of blackberry ice box pie required suffering four things, mosquitos, ticks, chiggers, and snakes. In what I considered a very scary talent, Dad assured me he could “smell” nearby rattlesnakes and he would warn me not to follow him into the worst brambles. I would stand outside the thicket, small and trembling. Since I had no idea what rattlesnakes smelt like nor did I have any idea what direction a spooked rattlesnake might run, I just stood there perplexed as Dad beat the bushes for berries. I sniffed the air occasionally, double checking for any newly acquired ability to sniff out snake smell only to be greeted by the odor of squished blackberries underfoot as I spilled them batting another mosquito. But this day wasn’t about berries, it was about rock. Dad was taking me to quarry bedrock. Dad explained that there were places in Camp Robinson where big, flat sheets of rock lay just below the surface of dirt. Bedrock, he continued, was good building material. I sat on the passenger side of his truck, just big enough to see out the front window as the heat and dust billowed in through the open windows. We pulled up to the homemade quarry site and for the next several hours, Dad labored over his private mining. The reason I have that dusty old memory is the very clear recollection that I caused a problem: I lost the truck key that day in the quarry dirt. I don’t know how that problem was resolved. What I do know is that it was only later that I came to appreciate the value of the rock Dad toiled over that day. You can go back to our old house in Arkansas and still see the large, hand hewn pieces he fashioned as he used the rock around our home, pulling a ‘little Egypt’ to get stones in place that weighed more than he could handle. What I have come to know, is that at the same time that Dad and I were mining bedrock, a soft spoken, deeply religious African American named Silas Owens, Sr. was mining his own rock. A little bit north of us, Mr. Owens was producing a legacy of ‘mixed masonry’ .The son of slaves, born into a segregated society at the turn of the century’s in Little Rock, Mr. Owens had ‘rocksense”. In his hands, the creativity and artistry that was his trademark produced houses sought after by all. He mixed beautiful iron-stained Arkansas sandstone with cream brick and brought beauty and permanence to farm homes in rural Arkansas. I saw Mr. Owens legacy for the first time this Christmas. House after house, sprinkled around neighboring counties, the signature stone work was a testament to a soft-spoken man’s life and work. Age hasn’t had much effect on the beauty and integrity of those old houses but much has changed in culture and society. I am sure Mr. Owens didn’t consider that his houses would be the National Treasures that they are today or that his architectural legacy would be preserved on a world wide information source. I do think he must have felt a certain blessing indulging his talent and quiet passion for rock art and sharing it with his crews and the young men he taught, gracefully combating the racism he encountered. Legacy is about remembering. It’s about someone giving you a reason to remember and reflect, to find worth and meaning. From all I can tell, Mr. Owens was a fair and kind man, who made a difference on the landscape and in the lives of his community. In one of my late nights, I realized something very comforting, a legacy to count on in a world that changes… Mr Owens and Jake and my dad are sharing the legacy of Heaven. If Heaven is paved in bricks of gold, I clearly picture those three appreciating the art.

HAPPY MONDAY!!

Januray 29, 2007
Howdy!
When I was a young girl I used to watch a show called The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Mainly, because my young girl's fantasies centered around a character named Illya Kuriakan. A blonde, daring, dry-humored Russian with an endearing, foreign accent, he seemed smart but not too full of himself. It was his smile that did it for me (it struck me he had some kind of secret that I might enjoy knowing - sophisticated for an Arkansas girl.) I must admit, I do recall day-dreaming a bit about meeting him, which I have come to know is not an activity limited to a single gender. So, I am getting off the plane some months back, second row from the front of steerage landing in a smoggy LA and I have trouble getting my bag down and who is just two rows behind me having trouble getting his bag down.. Of course, Illya Kuriakan. Well a version at least. With his trademark bow tie as his character Duckie in the navy version of CSI, he didn't quite look his 70+ years but certainly he wasn't the young man I recall as was my youthful ideal of manliness. I don't think anyone knew who he was but me... (That means two things and they bothhave to do with dated.) But the big picture..Well, I would never have guessed as a teenage girl I would be where I am today and I certainly have never given one moment of adult thought to where he might be and I NEVER considered our paths would ever have the possibility of converging in the LA airport at the beginning of 2005. In contemplating this and trying to figure out why I could't find the rental car shuttles at LAX, I look up and coming towards me with an old man's gait but with a signature of his youthful screen image... Illya. As we passed each other, I smiled, looked at his face, thinking about 6 degrees of separation, girlhood adoration and an aging movie star. For a slow moment, he smiled back. Exactly the same smile I remembered. Yes, there it was, that secret promise. Clearly, he recognized me. Always as smart and clever as my daydreams, he CERTAINLY would know that movie stars help mold our image of mates and sense of sensuality and me being old too, he recognized my place in the generation he affected. That's what our mutual smiles meant.

Being old means that I know that none of those things may be true.. But being old, I also know that it doesn't matter. Its not about what others think, its about what you do with your own thoughts. .. And you should never underestimate where life may lead you.

January 21, 2007
Howdy! Happy 4th Monday! Critical reviews from some of you on the content of these happy Mondays is that if Jake was the ‘king of random’ its highly likely he got it from me.. so in that vein, let me continue.…We have a new puppy Ellie. She’s a classy black lab. I know this because she often stretches into that classic pose, back legs and tail straight and stretched away from a nose pushed forward and a front paw bent. This is in contrast to Moses who is a square, huge, blockheaded ‘which-way-did-they-go-George’ yellow lab. John found Ellie. He and I wanted her because Moses is getting to be an old man and I had it in mind that it would be a loss to the canine world if he didn’t pass on those genes of his. Despite all the Woody Allen/Soon-Yi jokes, we brought her home. Ellie was calm and peaceful, initially. It didn’t take long before the intrigue that Moses felt dissipated into complete irritation. In a constant battle of wills, Ellie intentionally harasses him emotionally and physically, launching full assaults with everything from body slams to food theft. Having never seen Moses snarl before, it’s scary to see those big ole jowls of his thin across huge canines. She clearly brings out things in him we have never seen. With all the rainy weather I pitied him this week so I took them down to Cypress Creek, to the old beaver pond that has acted as a drainage ditch for the area. I sloshed through palmetto low-ground heading for the pond with both dogs running ahead of me in a path big enough for a four-wheeler. We got to the southeast corner of the pond and Moses was busy peeing on everything with Ellie trying to figure out why and I see two of the biggest deer I have seen in a while. If you weren’t watching and only happen to lift your head for a moment all you would have seen were their tails, like white flags in the distance. My hunting dogs never noticed. We walked a bit further, circling around to the finger of land that bisects the pond. There is a narrow, ridge-top trail and I wish I could see this at dusk because I bet that’s when the raccoons and deer make the most use of this path to the water. All the prints tell me it’s a common area. A large red-tailed hawk lifts off from a nearby pine tree and I hear her screech and call. I am not ready to go back yet and neither are the dogs but we are done with the wide paths and well-used animal routes. I head off in a direction we have never been and Ellie comes back to me with her brown eyes mirroring her questioning whine. Even in the dead of winter the brambles and beggars lice are a problem and more than once my cap comes off my head as I have to bend down to pick a cocklebur out of wet dog hair. The woods are darker because the understory is thicker and Ellie is clearly worried now. Then something interesting happens. Moses takes the lead. In a calm half trot, the skin on his back lose and mobile over powerful haunches, he pushes through with his nose to the ground. We two girls following close behind him, he stops occasionally to look over his shoulder, momentarily satisfied that we are following. He sometimes backtracks a bit, but makes constant progress around the lake. I am struck by how… well fatherly… he is acting. Almost back, Moses and I make it across a steep crevice running with recent rain, but Ellie balks. Why this looks so forbidding to her I can’t imagine, but she isn’t moving. I try everything you would with a child, coaxing, scolding, temporary abandonment but nothing works. The next thing I know Moses calmly slips down the little ravine and steps into a small damned area, standing up to his chest in water. This is a cold day and he hadn’t reveled in full immersion as he would have other days. Moses never looked at Ellie, but stayed there long enough for her to notice and within seconds she nervously followed his example. It wasn’t a big step for Ellie from there to the other side. I would never have guessed Moses had it in him…... I have been thinking about men and how important being a dad is, probably because a lot of my sons’ friends are having babes. You never know the role in life you will be called to fill. There are some things that only dads can do. For you dads, dads-to-be, adopted dads, godfather dads, granddads, didn’t-know-you-would-be dads, uncle dads, brother dads, surrogate dads, step dads, and hope to be dads – have faith, you are bound to make a difference in a child’s life. I am thinking today…what a nice plan of God’s!

 

January 15, 2007
Howdy! Happy Monday ya’ll! Well…It’s only the third Happy Monday and it’s already turning out to be a bit more difficult than I imagined. Its not that I don’t have plenty to post, but more that I am a bit unsure as to what direction to take happy Monday this week. Jake knew how to do this better than I do. I think I will just tell you about swimming with the manatees on Saturday. It was a cool Florida morning, and I was on a boat watching the sun come up over Crystal River, a freshwater, spring fed river that empties into the Gulf. A great bald eagle perched in the top of riverside trees as we slid quietly into the water, gasping as the 72 degree water seeped into wetsuits. Telltale ripples broke the smooth water surface which meant the big behemoths were expecting the boatloads of curious visitors. To be honest they actually seem to enjoy the attention. I was ready for something metaphysical to happen, primed I guess, by having visited the Salvadore Dali museum the day before (boy was that guy crazy…). I looked into those small gray eyes, buried in faces that make it hard to understand how they may have been mistaken for mermaids by sailors, and well nope..my mind didn’t meld with theirs. I think they just wanted me to scratch their armpits. Back here in Houston, listening to the rain this late night and knowing that cold arctic air is pushing south to turn it into ice, my mind remembers the beauty of sons and friends of sons, who suffered goosepimpled flesh in cold spring pools as they matured into swimmers whose young arms muscled up to command the water around them. Tonight, I am thankful for moments that don’t have to be about passionate and emotional responses, but for soft, gentle, easy-riding memories old and newly made ones, that make us appreciate the world we live in and those we live with.. I hope and pray you will all be safe this week…and you will be surprised how many of you I will remember in my prayers.

Photo: compliments of Mya Breitbart

Happy Monday, 1-7-07

Howdy !
Welcome to the 2nd Happy Monday of 2007! Hope you all had a good week, ready to start the first full week of the New Year. Thanks for taking a look at the website and all of the feedback and emails. They were truly heartwarming and helpful. After reading the comments, I knew the right words to post this 2nd Happy Monday, they are excerpted from one of Jake's he sent 4-30-98:
***

…….Well here is today’s quote, my environmental design teacher said this...." when you look at a tree don't just look at the branches, look at the sky between them". I know some of ya’ll will think that is just plain weird but I think it makes a lot sense if you think about it. Anyway before I write a three page e-mail I am going to give you the poem so you have something else to think about.

To A Friend
I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas how few
There are who strike in a us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom we heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all the wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Amy Lowell

I really enjoyed this poem. Read it once as it is written then read it again following the punctuation. I will send what I think it means tomorrow. Study hard tonight and take care.
Jacob"

Happy Monday, 1-1-07-- How many of you remember Jake's Happy Monday emails from his Aggies Days? I liked them and was always a bit tickled I was included on the list, not to mention that he had the desire to write them. I think he was trying to blog before there was such a thing. The content and idea of Happy Monday's was to communicate hope and joy for the week, sometimes in the form of poems, sometimes he sent quotes, sometime in just his zany way he was staying in touch. Well, I am instituting Happy Monday right here on this webpage, today the first Monday of 2007! Count this one your first one and check back every Monday to get a Happy Monday..sometimes they will be recycled Jake ones, sometimes not, sometimes they will be from me, but always they will be about hope and probably a bit off the wall... like mother, like son.. By the way, any of you have copies of the old ones?! email them to siefert@rice.edu

"I meant to do that". Jake Siefert, on the occasion of falling out of his chair at the Siefert Bonfire on New Year's Eve, 03

Iraqi officials looking to A&M for help By HOLLY HUFFMAN
Eagle Staff Writer
Eagle photo/Stuart Villanueva

Working to rebuild Iraq, a delegation of high-ranking officials from the war-torn country stopped Tuesday in College Station, where they pleaded for agricultural help from Texas A&M University administrators.

The governor of the Al Anbar province, which is home to Fallujah, sat with a group of fellow elected officials from his region as he recalled how American soldiers had stood alongside their Iraqi counterparts, fighting the war on terror.

Gov. Mamoon Rashid Al-Alwani said Tuesday that he hoped the United States -- a country that serves as a global source for freedom and science, he said -- would continue to stand with the Iraqis as reconstruction work begins.

"The blood of our sons has mixed with the blood of your soldiers while fighting terrorism," Al-Alwani said. "Just as you've fought with us and sacrificed, we hope you also help us in technology and science and the great advancements of your university."

The Al Anbar province is the largest in Iraq, but has one of the lowest population densities. It shares borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Ramadi and Fallujah are the larger cities in the province and Fallujah was considered a stronghold of the resistance movement.

Delegates said they are visiting the United States to learn about politics, elections, finances and university management. Already, the panel has met with President George Bush and his father, U.S. secretaries of state and defense, representatives from the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and various lawmakers and business owners, members said.

On Tuesday, the group spent the day in Aggieland, touring the Texas A&M campus, as well as its Cotton Improvement Lab and Beef and Sheep & Goat centers. They also spent time brainstorming with university and agricultural administrators.

"We didn't come here seeking equipment. These are things we can obtain," said Al-Alwani, who has survived 31 assassination attempts since assuming office in May 2005. "What we are looking for is scientific approaches in dealing with issues in agriculture."

The war has affected all aspects of life in Iraq -- particularly agriculture, the governor said. Because of the fighting, the farmers can't do their work, nor can they take their crops to market. But simple farming is happening, he said, noting that many in the region have a passion for agriculture.

The problem, he said, is that the minister of agriculture has no policy in place. That must change, he said, explaining that the government should focus on identifying issues, creating awareness and harnessing the scientific contributions in the field.

"Agriculture is the basis of life itself," Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences Elsa Murano said as she talked with the delegates. "One of the most important abilities a country can have is the ability to feed its own people."

If a country can feed its people and sell its goods, it can become economically self-sufficient, Murano said. That allows citizens to become educated, which prevents them from succumbing to tyrannical rule.

Iraq is going into the challenge with certain advantages, the panel said. A major river crosses the country, there is underground water suitable for irrigation and labor is ready and available. But the country lacks the scientific and technological experience to move forward, they said.

Both Al-Alwani and Al Anbar Provincial Council Member Ashour Hamid Al-Karboly stressed that the province and country have great potential, but it has been underutilized. Graduate and doctoral students at the University of Al Anbar and other colleges conduct research for their degrees, Al-Alwani said. But after it is conducted, it is shelved, he said.

That was a mandate by the former ruler, Al-Alwani explained. Researchers were often told to stop their studies, and the Internet -- a tool many people take for granted --was prohibited.

"Just imagine, this is the level of dark era we lived in during the previous regime," he said.

Al-Karboly also noted problems with chemical contamination, which began in 1991. The area was bombarded by chemical weapons during both the first and second Gulf wars, he said. And many chemicals were disposed of in the western part of the province -- or central Iraq -- during the more recent search for chemical and nuclear weapons. Such chemicals polluted the air, soil and water in the province, Al-Karboly said.

"This has obvious environmental consequences that may extend for years to come," he said, suggesting that the issue be considered a top priority in the partnership between Texas A&M and the University of Al Anbar. "This may very well lead to polluted water underground and very well reflect on agriculture as well."

The panel suggested a faculty exchange, as well as joint education and science workshops and research projects. Murano agreed that a faculty exchange would be important for both schools. It also would be key for A&M researchers to go to Iraq and launch projects that could demonstrate the techniques Iraqi professors would learn while at A&M, she said.

Provincial Reconstruction Team Leader James Soriano, who is with the State Department but lives in Ramadi, suggested the country was stable enough to begin to implement agricultural infrastructure. While the battle is not over, the country is headed in the right direction, he said.

"The Al Anbar province had a windfall of good news on the security front," he said. "Al-Qaida is on the defensive, the enemy has been pushed out of the cities and towns and public opinion has turned against them."

Interim A&M President Ed Davis acknowledged to the panel that the country had fallen behind in its ability to lead in science, education and research. He likened Iraq to the state of Texas roughly 100 years ago. America then was emerging from a civil war. The state was considered the frontier, he said, and people were just beginning to develop "this wild and crazy place we call Texas."

The state has made great strides in the last century, he said, and that is not a terribly long time span. Iraq can make the same strides, he said.

"Fundamentally, what we believe fuels progress is two things: freedom and education," Davis told the panel. "You have the first. We need to help you get to the second."

• Holly Huffman's e-mail address is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.

 

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