Snakes and Playdough

This evening after teaching I was upstairs munching on some sandwiches, when Alli came into the room and started in on her little “being friendly” time. We were talking about her booboos from last night. I am very happy to be calling them “booboos” because last night she broke through the two x four foot piece of glass of her bedroom door in her haste to find her brother. She got cut in a few places but was not really seriously injured considering the size of the accident. It was really traumatizing for her, and she had a hard time settling back down again for the night. Anyway, to carry on with the story. We were talking about protein and the benefits of eating plenty of protein; along with the whole subject of ketchup being tomato based. In a lag time, she went into the other room and got her playdough set. She started rolling out the playdough into “snakes” as she called them and telling me about all the things that she can make; cups, plates, bowls, flowers, real snakes too (with eyes). Then we started talking about snakes. In her opinion, snakes are quite gross and “OOOHHHHhhh”; especially at eye level. Then she asked the great question about snakes; “How do they move?” And she added this great phrase, “They don’t have ONE bit of legs, and they can still walk. I wonder how?!” That is right:)) I tried to demonstrate how they move through the contraction of part of their body and the extension of the rest of it. But as I think of it now: why does it work that way/why do they do it that way? I think that G. K. Chesterton answered it better than most men have when he talked about why water flows downhill. Why doesn’t it flow uphill?  Well, we could say, it is because of gravity, but that only explains so much. “It is because it is bewitched”, Chesterton said.

A Living Prayer

A Living Prayer, My God

 

In this world I walk alone
With no place to call my home
But there is one who holds my hand
The rugged road through barren lands
The way is dark the road is steep
But He’s become my eyes to see
The strength to climb my griefs to bear
The Savior lives inside me there.

 

In You’re love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer my God to Thee.

 

(Take my life and let me be
a living prayer my God to Thee)

 

In these trials of life I find
Another voice inside my mind
He comforts me and bids me live
Inside the love the Father gives.

 

-A. Krauss

 

This is a heart prayer of mine. I want to be a living prayer to my God. So much of the time I become distracted. But God is calling, inside my mind, and he comforts me with his love. My prayer is also that whoever reads this may find comfort and rest this day.

 

-Robin

At the Friary

I said so

I said that I would write more later about our Ireland experience and here it is over a week later, and I have not even posted one more line.

Well, I want to highlight a few things that I really enjoyed personally.

The first is related to a picture that I plan to upload with this post.  We are buzzing along in our baby blue Kia, headed for the city of Galway on Ireland’s western coast.  Now driving cross country in Ireland is not as simple as the words look on this page.  It is really quite a scenic experience because stone fences and hedges line the road.  Sheep graze on brilliant green grass behind these confines, and an occasional farmer and dog can be seen walking across the land.  Really, I could get quite stuck here elaborating on the idyllic surrounds in Ireland, but the winding roads through this part of the country are treacherous.  They resemble some of the hike and bike trails that I have been on where there is just enough room to pass another biker, and you just share some handlebar with them in the process.  Because of the hedges/ stone fences, the roads have basically no shoulder and passing as large truck feels a bit like you are headed for “glory” each time.  Sometimes, it is so close that your mirror even brushes a hedge!

We come into a little town.  The street is lined by little stone houses and shops, all painted in quite tasteful shades of yellows, blues, reds, and with many of their little tubed chimneys puffing out smoke from home-fires.  But, across a green meadow with horses grazing all around it, we spy the ruins of what looks like an old monastery.  We all get out of the car and hike through a couple of backyards until we find ourselves engulfed by the walls of a fourteenth century, Franciscan friary.  The architecture is amazing with a partially roofed courtyard, framed by high Gothic windows beaming in the rays of a late afternoon sun.  Les and I climb up on the walls and feel so enchanted by the stark, graceful lines of the ruin in every direction we look.  Maria and Cor climb below us on the pillared colonnade wall surrounding the courtyard.  It is so amazing.

We saw many of these ruins.  Let’s say maybe at least a dozen that we never stopped at because of lack of time.  Some of them were a lot more remote and ancient than this one.

I am climbing a mountain on the northern side of the Dingle Peninsula.  Seepage from the heavy peat soil squishes around my shoes as I toil upward.  The sun is low in the sky here too with only a few more hours of daylight left.  Below me and to my right I can see the sea as it catches the blazing sunlight and reflects it back like a giant undulating mirror.  My goal is always the top of this rounded Irish mountain, but every-time I rise over what I decide MUST be the summit another stretch of uncharted slope rises before me.  Finally, after nearly an hour of climbing, I see a rock outcropping an wall to my left.  As I get closer, I can tell that it is probably the remains of an old stone sheepfold.  I sit down and survey my surroundings, but being quite tired, I lean against the wall and fall asleep.  I awake a while later and the sun is really low on the western horizon, and so I make tracks to discover what is on the mountain slope opposite the one that I just hiked up.  To my surprise, fourty feet beyond where the sheepfold is, the mountainside drops away in a near vertical drop for at least two thousand feet.  I draw back a bit startled by what I did not know, and then draw close again to look down on the blue seepage fed lakes in the valley below.  Sheep graze on the cliff-like slopes, hopping from rock to rock, they seem unperturbed by the danger that a slip could mean for them.  I can hear their plaintive cries as they call to each other from across the rocks.  I built a rock monument.

These are my friends!

I want to write a little tribute to Keith since he is a best friend of mine.  He and I shared a lot of things together at Faith Builders including our part of our lives, our goals, and our deepest dreams.

Keith, you are a man.

-I see that you have a deep, quiet tenacity about your pursuit of life.  You don’t state the reality about what you are doing always, but I think that you push toward what you want, when you know it, with powerful resolve.

-I remember our counseling/ psych class when our job was to listen to each other and to learn how we can speak words of truth/ love into others lives.  We got to know that we are both imperfect men but searching for meaning and fulfillment; joy.  You did well.

-Keith, I think you could make a great fireman/ EMT sometime.  Maybe you are already, but I will always remember the time that we spent together with the Meadville Fire/ Rescue Dept during our last year of school.  I saw you wanting to be part of other people’s lives and really showing love when there was pain.  Early morning fire alarm: hit the floor, grab a pair of jeans, slide into your boots, slip into a jacket and run.  Fighting fires, saving lives!

-Keith, I have always thought that you have a good bit of intuition.  That is great and I think that you are gifted to use that in helping others when it “is really pulling hard”.  I think that you can feel when they aren’t doing well and you want to reach out.  That is part of God’s call.

-I admire you for making your love for Lisa known to her and for getting to know her.  For seeking to win her trust.  It seems possible to me that having a relationship with a woman could be one of the most vulnerable things that a man does.  To expose your real self and to learn about someone else.  It is the man who pushes on in-spite of that!

-You are a great organizer.  I think that our trips all over the place as MAPers were a success due to your financial and trip leadership skills.

-I ask God to be with you, Keith.  May you learn more about what it is to trust Him.  Congratulations on this step, and I adjure you; walk forward with confidence!

Lisa:

-It is a pleasure to know you.   I think of you with this half-puzzled/ thoughtful expression on your face.  Trying to take it all in.  I remember that clearly when you were walking through Times Square in NYC.

-I enjoyed the collaborative effort creating the mock court case for worldviews class.  Mr. Sleezebaugh, uhu!  I think that you have a lot of creativity that you need to sink into something that you feel is worthwhile.  Drama, art, literature, children, whatever!

-I am happy for you and Keith, may you be blessed with joy.  I hope that it spills over from your life into the lives of those you meet; unconditionally.

Robin

Seventy shades of Green, none of them Jaded.

I have returned from Ireland. Wow, what a trip! It really felt like a whirlwind of an experience because we covered so much territory; however, I feel very enriched by the whole gamut of people and places that we came to know. God has blessed me.

HIGHLIGHTS:

-we visited some of Cor’s relatives in Tandragee (two hours north of Dublin). They were great people, who were very hospitable. We enjoyed an evening with them talking, learning about Derek’s hobby/ work of upholstering antique furniture. Caroline, Derek’s wife, made us a wonderful supper of salmon, champ and steamed vegetables. They put us up in a wonderful Pub-Inn called the Montague Arms. The pub was decorated like a medievil castle with coats-of-arms and battle axes hanging on the walls. It had a wee peat-burning fireplace in a lounge area. Connected to the inn was a wee pub where local farmers and businessmen were hanging out for a word and a stout.

-we went to a remote fishing/ farming village in the northwest called Cashel. Cashel was really great because of how barren and rugged the landscape is. It had a strange harsh energy about it and I really took a shine to the area. On the rocky slopes just outside of town there were the stone ruins of an ancient Celtic town. They were amazing with short four foot doorways and stone lintels above the doors and windows. Some kind of hardy mountain sheep were grazing in and around the ruins. They were semi-tame and really agile. I later saw some of these same sheep grazing on cliffs some 2,000 feet above a seepage fed lake. Since Cor and I both had sheep, I think that it was especially meaningful for us to see sheep going about their business in Ireland. I commented to her about how that my sheep would have just gone tumbling down the cliffs, into the valleys though. Not nearly so agile! We also got to see vast peat flats/bogs where the Irish folk cut and dry peat for their winter fires. The banks from which they cut the bricks varied from about three to six feet high. We discovered that if you jump up and down on the peat that the whole ground shudders, just as if you were standing on the surface of extra stiff hair gel.

-We stayed at hostels every night and they were a neat experience. Two of them in particular, I really enjoyed. One was in downtown of Galway city. There were a bunch of college kids there and we had a great time together. A number of them were from Spain, France, Scotland, Germany. We talked and played some card games and a game called Jagger. (You stack blocks and then try to take the supporting blocks from underneath until the tower falls over.) They were a really respectable group of young people; I could have hung out with them for a month of Sundays. The other hostel was in the countryside, Doorus Hostel. It was in a little town called Kinvarra south of Galway. They were having a power outage when we got there so the whole place was lit up with candles and they had a wonderful turf/ peat fire in the family room. We ate supper together and then sat around the fire with the cats and dog, listening to some Irish chunes. We also met two interesting fellows with whom we had a long discussion about origins, creation, the fall of man, purpose. This was all around the fire late into the night.

-Dingle was an amazing town. It is out on a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic, a fishing village that is not very touristy. We ate at a really nice pub there with a charming atmosphere, peat fire and a lot of local folks sitting around. We also got to hear some traditional Irish folk chunes and balla’s later on in the evening. It all was wonderful until a number of young guys came in and were trying to jig to the music. Unfortunately, they were inebriated and so their attempted jigging was not graceful even though they were in good humor. The band played “Ring of Fire” and “Long Black Veil” by Johnny Cash.

I will write more later. With Polski Rolski, this is Robin signing out.