It's the pretty things...

This stunning spike ball is a wonder! I had an encounter with this strange sea creature-ish looking thing a little more than a year ago. Though it looks somewhat dreamy, wonderful and amazing, this little thing will make you sick. Sick, Sick. In fact i thought i may never recover any appetite or the ability to drink water again after our brief encounter.

That glowing tentacled mass is the swine flu virus.
Oh looks and their deceptive little ways!

This little ball of wonder is not in fact a toy at Disneyland despite the Mickey Mouse shaped heads protruding from it's peachy face. This bad guy is gone getcha, getcha and make you wish you had never met.

Yes, dear reader, the amazing influenza virus. I have spent two days at home getting better acquainted with this meanie recently.
Pretty, no?

Perhaps my favorite of the lot, this apparent child's toy, complete with suction cups on it so it can walk down walls with the force of gravity is indeed not so innocent. This adorable little thing caused major panic globally when it was encountered.

Introducing - the avian flu! Also known as the bird flu, this little beastie will try to kill you. In earnest.
And it just looks so cute!

The point? you ask.
Ah yea.
The things that seem pretty can be vicious.
The things that seem vicious can be pretty good for you.

Books. Covers.
Judge wisely.

It's every day

I find myself very busy at this point in my life. Up early, to bed late. Run, run, run.

And frankly, I love it!

I love that I get to work with awesome people, day in and day out. I have love spilled onto me every day from hugging children, joyful adults and gift bearing friends.

I also love that never, ever can i predict what my day will be like. I know it will be long and sometimes confusing. But I never know who will need help, who will pull someones heart up out of the depths of lonely, or what story I will hear. I have no idea of how much I will laugh, or cry.

I live every day with a sense of wonder. I wonder what will happen next.

I think this must be what the people who followed Jesus as He walked here on earth felt like. They never had an idea what He would do, where they would head, what mind blowing revelation they would hear. And every day they saw miracles.

I see miracles every day too. Don't you?

Why I believe in castration

The recent news of the horrific rapes of almost 200 women and even some small boys in the Eastern Congo makes me mad.

To use sex as a weapon is vile. To remove any sense of trust and safety, to destroy the health of a person, to allow the culture to shun a person for something that IS NOT their fault... It makes me angry. Spitting angry. Or chopping angry.

I think that any man who ever, EVER, rapes or violates a woman or child or another man should have his weapon of choice, removed, by force, forever.

We take away guns, knives, grenade launchers, whatever... from terrorists and crazy people. We lock people up who have made threats of violence. We punish people for their bad choices.

Rape is a bad choice!

Take away their weapons! By force!

Peeking

I came out of work the other day and saw this peeking back at me.

I sure do love my car.
I love seeing her sitting in the midst of all the swollen, over-sized mongrels with her cheeky headlamps peering out, looking eager for a ride.

The sight of her makes me smile.

It warms my heart to know that when God sees me peeking back at Him, with my cheeky grin, eager to spend some time riding with Him, He smiles too...

Sometimes it's whatcha need

Floating in the crystal clear waters off the coast of a small island is amazing.

Nothing cures what ails me like a soak in the salty brine under the warming beams of the sun.

Thanks to A & A for getting married in the beautiful U.S. Virgin Islands.

Thanks for picking me as a friend, for falling in love, and for choosing the most awesome place to watch two beloved friends get married!

Big Changes

Change happens. A lot. And sometimes all at once.

Never having been one to shy away from change, it doesn't really scare me. Unless of course that change is my favorite book gone missing, my favorite dish no longer on the menu at my favorite restaurant, or my eyebrows going missing in the night. Then I may panic.

But for the most part change is fun. Exciting.
The world throbs with new possibility and opportunity and a sense of expectant vibrancy.
The clouds are bluer, the flowers more pink, the people I encounter more chipper.

Today my life is changing. Forever.
It will never be the same again.

And I could not be more happy!
I am so blessed, abundantly dripping in good things, in love, and in possibility!

What, you may ask, brings on this euphoric sense of joy?

Well, I say, I have been given the chance of a life time to change the world!

I am going to be working with the young and sometimes restless residents of Green Bay. I accepted a posting today as the Associate Pastor to the Green Bay Church!

Yea for change!

Tirade

From my favorite online etymology site - www.etymonline.com

tirade

1801, "a 'volley of words,' " from Fr. tirade "speech, volley, shot, continuation, drawing out" (16c.), from tirer "draw out, endure, suffer," or the Fr. word is perhaps from cognate It. tirata "a volley," from pp. of tirare "to draw." The whole Romanic word group is of uncertain origin; some think it is a shortening of the source of O.Fr. martirer "endure martyrdom" (see martyr).

I have a job. I get up in the morning, usually throw on some gym clothes, hit the gym fora bit, head home to change and then drive furiously for the entire 3 miles it takes me to arrive at work.

I do not have a hard job. I do not have a glamorous job. I do not have a well-paid, sit-at-a-desk, thoughtless or predictable job.

I work at a nursery, with wee baby plants, massive flowers, monster sized trees and wonderful glorious hours spent outside sweating in the dirt. Life hardly gets better, right?

Sadly, no.

I work with a woman who knows exactly how to press every button I have. When I greet her, there is hardly a reply. When I let her know that we actually have a product she told someone we don't have so he should just go check at WalMart (seriously??!!), I get scolded. When she sees anyone standing around talking she runs and tattles to the boss. When I let someone know about a plant, she will come behind me and contradict what I said and has even made customers put plants back. Argh!

Every interaction with her is strained and tense. I find myself dreading work because I know this button pushing, tattling, rude person is going to be hovering on the horizon of my day. I feel a bit like I am being pulled through a whole bag full of suffering. I feel like a tirade is here.

And I am at the point where I don't know how to be nice to someone. How do I react in a nice way to someone who makes me want to scream and run away whilst frantically banging pots on my head to drown out her voice?

As a Christian, I know there is a standard of love I choose to live by, that should and I believe can, influence even the toughest of interactions.

So how do I love someone who is, for me, the epitome of unlovable?
How do I choose to respect her, to be kind and gracious and appropriate?
How do I turn the other cheek when I fear the state it will be left in?

So far as I can see, there is only one place for me to go, to look to,
to fall on
and that is the
Throne of Grace.

I know that there are people who cannot stand me. I am their button pusher, their dreaded work companion and for them to react to me in love? It would take a miracle!

And so I am trying, learning, leaning and reaching out for Grace- a much needed miracle cure for button pushers and pot bangers alike.

Yep. She's still the cutest.

My niece.

Almost 3 now.
Cutest kid in the world.

This valley ain't dead

Down down we go!

Sand dunes in the distance. Small sand storm whipping up.

The valley floor.
It was in the 70's on the floor and there was snow on the distant mountains.

Biosphere 2

Poking around in a desert canyon in Arizona you will find a stunning facility dedicated to human ingenuity and human insanity.

The entrance to Biosphere 2

Before entering Biosphere 2

Originally designed to be a self-sustaining community and inhabited by a team of scientists for 2 years and 20 minutes to determine the feasibility of humans living in such a space (we must remember the plans in inhabit Mars were in full swing back then) and being able to survive the hassles and rigors of such a life.

Not only was "serious scientific experimentation" (best read with a nerdy deep voice over) carried out on plants and animals, checking and rechecking the reality of human impact on the original biosphere, Biosphere 2 also seemed to be a hotbed of chaotic experimentation with the human team of seriously Type A personalities all packed into a 3.14 acre area.

Since the space race has cooled a bit for now and the experiments all gleaned amazing data, the wonders of Biosphere 2 are open to visitors with a whopping 2.3 million guests a year meandering through what is essentially the biggest, most expensive greenhouse in the world.

The Biosphere is still a giant working lab and is still spitting out data enough to flood the world with a paper trail waist high to be sure. It is also an amazing nod to human creativity, to the order of the original creation and to the beauty of masterpieces yet to be discovered.

In the Savannah over looking the ocean
It was pretty humid in this spot, but gorgeous over looking the water, and out the glass into the desert beyond.

In the desert
My favorite climate in Biosphere 2.Flowers in the desert.

The Ocean.
Tiny but effective.

In the belly of Biosphere 2

Outside one of the lungs
These devices allow for the expansion and compression of the air inside the domes. Very cool.

Oh the things to be found in the desert

On a westward bound road trip recently undertaken, my mom and I happened upon a few signs strategically strewn along the highway advertising ghost towns. Intrigued, we decided to pull over at a small stop in New Mexico.

Once a happening place where the locals would jump and jive to the beat of the train whistle, this wreck of a town sits quietly by the truck laden highway waiting for time and sand to wear it down into oblivion.

Welcome to Stein New Mexico
The old town store.
It had an American flag sticker in the window that I think may have been original.
When did stickers come to be anyhow?

A really old stagecoach.
Makes me very, very glad for shocks and struts and all that jazz.


An old barn/storage shed. I love the old rusted roof. Makes me wanna grab a Dr. Pepper and a rocking chair and sit around telling yarns and watching to moon rise. The old outhouse. It seems to have been one in Stein.
Perhaps this is why Stein is now a ghost town.

Never In a Fog

This month I had the joy of flying to visit friends. As the plane headed for Indianapolis we were enveloped in a snow storm. From 17A all of the wonders of being in the clouds of a snow storm were clear. There was nothing above, below or beside us that was not white. No blue sky, no crisscross patterns of farmed land below. Not even the soothing blink of the wing lights was visible.

Happily wrapped inside a massive aluminum can hurtling through this blank void, I was completely disoriented. It would be so easy to become lost. Horizontal, tipped, veering all would have been something relative. And in the swirl of solid white, the lady in 17A was thrilled to have a pilot in charge of the flight path.

As we landed, quietly and bumpless, onto the runway the gray pavement and the fence lines of the airport were just peeking through the white.

Each of us is essentially flying blind. We cannot see beyond the snow white, blank canvas of right now. We can plan and strategize and prepare and hope things go according to plan. But really, we don't control the plane or the weather. We can tip and tilt and get off center so easily because of our blindness.

It is also very comforting to note that we do not have to fly the plane. We can have a pilot who leads the way through the swirling mist of the storms securely onto pavement, inside the fences of safety.

So...

Are you your own pilot? Or are you ready for Someone else to take the controls?