"the future feels so hard, and I want to go back..."

"...The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy
To discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
I am caught between the Promise
And the things I know

I've been painting pictures of Egypt,
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard,
And I wanna go back!
But the places that used to fit me,
Cannot hold the things I've learned
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned..."
- Sara Groves

A friend asked me to repost this piece. Whether we are "looking back," in regret or relief, it's still looking back. God's name is I AM -- this is where we find Him. And it is His Voice I listen for in the music of this moment. offered with love:

Okay, so I have become a bit obsessed with Sara Groves' lyrics and music.  But, as my husband says, "she is so good at knowing you."  When I discovered her "Painting Pictures of Egypt," it was like walking past a mirror, smiling at a stranger, and then suddenly realizing you are smiling at yourself.

I listened with rapt wonder.  She was able to put words to the feeling of knowing when you had to leave one place -- the place where you'd lived in hunched sadness -- for a horizon that seemed to hold no oasis or refuge.  It is a journey in which you cross the desert of pain -- traversing the lonely unchartered territories of your own heart, learning to eat locust and drink dew from the crevices in stones -- only to find that you are still just standing at the edge of something even more vastly new and incomprehensible. So uncertain that you begin to dream of returning to the soft comforts of the outgrown, but familiar.

I think this is what the children of Israel may have faced at the edge of the Red Sea.  Having left behind a tortured existence of brutality and slavery, they find themselves in a place where they are free -- but free to do what, when all that stands in front of them is a roiling ocean of resistance and self-doubt.  Pharoah is pursuing them from behind and they wonder why they ever left Egypt in the first place. At least in Egypt they had the fleshpots. 

I have known this kind of questioning.  I have known the terror of "not knowing" what comes next, and the pull of what once was. "At least there were those fleshpots," it hisses. "Hey, you know how to navigate the familiar, endless rhythm of pyramid building. You know how to anticipate and brace yourself for the touch -- however hurtful -- of the slavemaster's whip."

That's when I would begin "painting pictures of Egypt" in the soft golden glow of memory.  The straw and mud pits of backbreaking labor in the fields took on a soft light -- a "Little House on the Prairie" romanticism. Why I could almost hear the swell of a James Newton Howard soundtrack if I listened hard enough.

But in those moments when my Children of Israel-self complains to my Moses-self at the edge of the Red Sea, "why did you bring us here, at least in Egypt I had fleshpots!" I remember Moses' reply, "Stand ye still and see the salvation of our God," which God rebukes with, "Why are you telling them that, tell them to move forward!"

And what those in exile could never have even imagined - a sea splitting in two so that they could cross on dryland - happens right before their eyes.

They had outgrown the lessons of Egypt, and each step forward through the sand brought them to the place where a miracle was waiting.

Like the children of Israel at the edge of the Red Sea, I too have spent far too many days sitting in the hot shifting sands of self-doubt painting romantic pictures of Egypt in the soft glow of memory. When right there, right before me -- within just a few steps of its shores -- a Red Sea was waiting to part and lead me to the promised land. 

Today I have my heart focused on the sea.  I am painting seascapes full of milk and honey, bees and blueberries, lemons and lavender. I am leaving the outgrown in Egypt where it belongs -- in the past.  I am moving forward, one step at a time -- looking for miracles in the sand and the sea.

"...I don't want to leave here
I don't want to stay
It feels like pinching to me
Either way
And the places I long for the most
Are the places where I've been
They are calling out to me
Like a long lost friend

It's not about losing faith
It's not about trust
It's all about comfortable
When you move so much
And the place I was wasn't perfect
But I had found a way to live
And it wasn't milk or honey
But then neither is this

I've been painting pictures of Egypt,
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard,
And I wanna go back!
But the places that used to fit me,
Cannot hold the things I've learned
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned..."

If it comes too quick
I may not appreciate it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?
And if it comes too quick
I may not recognize it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?"

with Love,


Kate

"i never made promises lightly…"

"I never made promises lightly,
there have been some that I've broken,
but I swear in the days still left,
we'll walk in fields of gold…"

If you want to see me weep at the first strains of a vocal performance, just play Eva Cassidy's recording of "Fields of Gold." It gets me every time.

It's full of heartbreak, pathos, and promise. There are times when I've felt these emotions so viscerally, that my knees buckle.

It happened a year ago last autumn. I was driving through the lush evening light of our mountain valley. I had Eva's recording playing while the sun dipped below the ragged crest of Mt. Princeton. The meadow to the south of the Link School road was cast in gold, and I felt a sob explode from somewhere deep in my heart.

The golden light, the song, the setting -- a perfect emotional storm. Joy, sorrow, memories, regret. I couldn't sort one out from another.

I was headed up the mountain to sit in on one of our daughters' classes, Explorations in Spiritual Literature, at the expeditionary school they attend here in the valley. I knew I had to put my emotional breakdown on hold, and pull it together, or the girls would notice.

I arrived just in time for the start of the class. I was still wrestling with my emotions when the teacher opened a discussion on  the spiritual message in Jesus' parable of the tares and the wheat (Matthew 13: 24 - 30):

"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this.

The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."  

I love this parable, so he had my full attention. I've spent many hours over the years exploring its spiritual relevance to my own life experience.

I have to admit that I was tempted to just jump right in, and share my insights -- but I was a guest. Thank goodness! It made me listen more attentively.  But, I have to admit, that I sat there wondering if someone would share what had become so inspiring to me:  that the kingdom of heaven is likened unto the man -- not the field, or the seed? Was anyone going to have seen that the man doesn't accuse his servants -- or anyone in his household -- but immediately knows that "an enemy" must have done this?

Wasn't someone going to share that the roots of the tares would have helped to stabilize the roots of the wheat -- so that there was less crop loss from erosion during a heavy rainfall?

But because I couldn't share -- I listened. And I was blessed. The teacher, Bobby Lewis, shared an insight that took my breath away. He said that perhaps the householder knew that when fully grown, the tares would be more easily discernible from the wheat. And that once separated and gathered into bundles, the dry, brittle tares would be very useful as kindling for starting fires.

Wow!

They weren't being burned, just to destroy them because they were of no value.  They were being gathered into bundles so that they could be used to start fires. Fires that would keep them warm on cool desert nights. Fires for cooking meals. Fires for light, and protection from predators that might come too close to their sleeping circles at night during the harvest.

Everything had usefulness. And wasn't this the exact message I needed at that moment. I'd been so confused on my drive up the mountain. All my wonderful, holy, beautiful memories -- of a relationship set in that golden valley -- seemed intertwined with the sorrow of it not having been realized as the forever relationship in my life. Regret was mixed with joy, inspiration twisted up with the surrender of a long-cherished dream.

But this insight about the tares and the wheat gave me a sense of wholeness about my life's path -- one that I'd deeply longed for.

Nothing had been lost. It had all been purposeful. I'd learned lessons -- ones that I may not have sought out any other way. I'd discovered things about my relationship with God that will endure far beyond any particular chapter in my life. Those years were vital to strengthening the roots of my spiritual trust in the unseen power of Love - a love that defies personal sense.

And those promises that were never lightly made -- and yet, had been broken -- brought me to my knees.  I'd humbly discovered that personal self-certainty is not the same thing as spiritual self-surrender.  My self-certainty had had very little to do with "Thy will be done," and more to do with "well, I can tell you that I will never…"

Out of those experiences came a sweeter heart, less judgment of others, and a deeper trust in God's ability to override a prideful sense of right, for growth in humility. In truth, I didn't really need a sense of myself as someone who always got it right. What I really needed was to harvest in myself, a greater compassion for others, less self-righteousness, and more grace.

I left that class a different person.  I'd been ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven -- by this deeper sense of my life's path.  I was walking in fields of gold, where even my tares were useful, valued, and served a holy purpose. Those golden days had never included something useless and thoroughly regrettable.  But they had given me something warm, nourishing, and enlightening to share -- a kinder heart.

A new light was shed on a much loved paragraph from page 521 of Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"All that is made is the work of God, and all is good.

We leave this brief, glorious history of spiritual creation (as stated in the first chapter of Genesis) in the hands of God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit, not matter, joyfully acknowledging now and forever God’s supremacy, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

"The harmony and immortality of man are intact.

We should look away from the opposite supposition that man is created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual record of creation, to that which should be engraved on the understanding and heart “with the point of a diamond”
and the pen of an angel."  

It wasn't about sorting my life into good and bad choices or decisions -- but redeeming every moment, by seeing God's presence, power, and purpose in it.

I am so grateful I was led to truly listen that night. I was given the gift of redemption. My trip back down the Link School road was beneath a bowl of stars set in midnight velvet. And yet, in my heart I was still seeing fields of gold (here is "Sting's version.)

thanks Bobby --


shared with Love,

Kate

"I really don't know clouds, at all..."

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down and still somehow,
It's clouds illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all..."

I have so many stories associated with Joni Mitchell's song, "Clouds."  But today, when I saw this photo on Facebook, and the following description, I realized how true it is.  I really don't know clouds...at all.  The description read:   

"A Dutch artist named Berndnaut Smilde has figured out how to create a white cloud in the middle of a room. This requires careful regulation of humidity, temperature and light. Once conditions are perfect, he uses a fog machine to create the cloud."

It made me laugh out loud.  It was the perfect depiction of what I seemed to be experiencing.

I was sitting in my office all morning, feeling as if I was on the verge of an emotional downpour.  I couldn't pinpoint which direction the storm was blowing in from, but it was looming on the horizon.

Then, one little trigger and the tears started falling.  When pressed for a "reason," it all came rushing in.  A recent incident, the fragile emotional season,  memories associated with a similar experience...they were all there.  The ego (or mortal mind) had been perfecting the atmosphere, just waiting for just the right conditions to introduce a trigger...and voila, what looked like a real cloud ready to dump a downpour of tears into the middle of the room.

Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, states:

"Disease arises,
like other mental conditions,
from association."

I like thinking of disease...as any dis-ease -- mental, emotional, financial, relational, physical, etc. -- that would suggest God, Love, is not the only Cause and Creator...of anything.

In an attempt to forward it's story of our isolation from God's allies -- either as victim or perpetrator -- the ego dips into the muckery of regret, guilt, "what if," and "why, oh why..."  

From there, it gathers the right atmospheric elements -- mistakes, choices, fears, doubts, anger, hurt -- and sets up the perfect environment for blowing in the fogginess of self and separation.  A perfect storm. 

 The past contributes regret, the future its imaginings, and blow in a little meaningless incident or chatter, and it's a swirling nor'easter.

Yup, that's how it works...a cloud in the middle of your office ready to break into torrents of anger, a downpour of tears...bearing down in sideways sheets of misunderstanding.

But, we are not victims.  We can know what is going on.  

When the humidity in the room begins to skyrocket with a heavy sense of emotional vulnerability, or the barometric pressure of spiritual charity dips into the single digits of "me, my, mine" -- open the windows.  Turn on the fan which Eddy defines, in Science and Health, as: 

"the separator of fact from fable;
that which gives action to thought." 

...and change the atmosphere.   When we open our hearts to the freshness of divine inspiration, the ego can't create a cloud of self and sin.   Those false elements can't find ways to associate themselves into reasons for sadness, regret, guilt, or sorrow, when we stir the environment with Truth.

Just a thought...

 shared with Love,

Kate

And if you love the original Joni version of "Both Sides Now" here is a link that includes a bonus...the original "Circle Game" at the end. Enjoy.

"If I could save time..."

"If I could save time in a bottle,
the first thing that I'd like to do,
is to save every day till eternity passes away,
just to spend them with you..."

Listening to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," always made me feel pensive and sad. Would I ever be able to say I'd finally found enough time? For my loved ones, my responsibilities, fulfilling the desires of my heart?

Time was something I needed more of...all the time. I needed more time for study when I was a student. More time for getting projects done at work. More time for being with my children. More time between monthly bill paying...to marshall our resources for the next round of monthly bill paying. More time for saying hello, getting my point across, covering my bases, focusing on "the important things," saying goodbye. There was never, ever, enough time.

But, a couple of years ago I came across a Christian Science Sentinel interview conducted by Jeffrey Hildner, with physicists, Laurance Doyle and David Carico, titled "How Can We Master Time? Instead of Letting Time Master Us?"

The interview is time-shattering and brilliant. I felt almost deconstructed and re-assembled while reading it. In it are so many extraordinary insights for one to glean from these remarkable thinkers.  But immediately, it was these truths that were absolutely shape-shifting for me:

"Doyle: Mary Baker Eddy recognized that time is a falsity. It's a delusion. You don't want more of it -- you want to get rid of it. Getting rid of time is on eof the things that relates direction to Christian Science healing...

"Hildner: Einstein...came to believe late in life that time isn't merely relative, or in the eye of the beholder -- time is unreal. I have the full quote here. It's from Einstein's letter to the widow of a friend who had reacently died:

"To those if us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future, is only an illusion, if a stuboorn one." (Jim Holt, "Time Bandits," The New Yorker, February 28, 2005, pg. 85).

"Carico: Something that keeps coming to my thought is not to fall into the mistake of accepting a mortal sense of the present as being somehow more real than a mortal sense of the future or past." Reality is timeless, and Mrs. Eddy said

"Eternity, not time,
expresses the thought of life,
and time is no part of eternity."

"The mortal measurement of time includes future, present, past. And it's possible, I think, for the mortal mind to lock on to the present as being somehow better than the future or past; where as, in reality, it's timelessness that we're going after.

"As far as Jesus' expression of that, I'm remembering his statement, "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58) Jesus wasn't saying, "I am a mortal living at this moment in time, who also lived in past times." He was saying, "I'm timeless. Because I'm immortal, I'm timeless." So, when we use the word now, we're kind of limited by language. Now, in the highest sense, means eternity, which includes past, present, and future, all at once."

Okay, I don't know about you, but those insights completely took my sense of time apart, and re-calibrated my understanding of life, consciousness, and eternity.

And it also affirmed an experience I'd had about a decade earlier.  One that brought with it a complete healing of "the past."

I was sitting in church, during our weekly Wednesday testimony meeting. I'd been listening for what I could share gratitude for, when I remembered a healing I'd had as a child.

As the details of that healing began to come into clearer focus, so did attending bad memories of a time filled with terror and sadness. Before long I was shaken, haunted by flashbacks so unsettling I could barely breathe.

When the thought came, "Why do I have to be so haunted by a past I can't do anything about?  And since it's already happened, there's nothing I can do to change it," I wanted to cry.

Then, something pierced the sadness, and I suddenly saw something new. 

I was thinking, and I wasn't thinking in the past.   I was thinking about what I called "the past" but my thinking was very much in present. And if my thinking was in the present-tense, I could decide how I wanted to think about it...right then.

As I sat there, I began to reconsider that very lonely, frightening time of my life. And instead of focusing on the terror I had let characterize my memory of those years, I decided to reclaim individual moments of clarity and strength.  

I recognized that there were flashes of peace scattered through those memories. There were moments of an unexplainable calm...moments that had kept me hopeful -- alive to a future free of torment.  

I decided to embrace these thoughts.  Thought that I was thinking in the present tense.  Thoughts, not memories, as the prevailing truths about that time.

Then I stood up and shared my testimony of gratitude for the sweet healing that had originally urged me to revisit that time in my childhood.

After that night in church, I was never haunted by those "memories" again.

My thinking is never about a past, present, or future segment on a timeline.  When I am thinking...about anything...I am thinking in the present.  And how I think, is defined by my relationship to God, as Mind.  My surrender to Him as the only Creator of my conscious experience is all that defines the eternity of my now...including past, present, and future. 

Whether I seem to be haunted by a terrifying past, melancholic about a lost moment, feeling nostalgic about an experience with a loved one, or taunted by an imagined, or even longed-for future, I am thinking about it in the present.  It is a present thought, and I can choose "who" is the source of my consciousness, and align my thoughts accordingly.

So, back to my original concern about needing more time...I'd like to revisit the sentence I quoted from Doyle, earlier in this post.  As well as a follow-up statement from later in the same article:

"Doyle: Mary Baker Eddy recognized that time is a falsity. It's a delusion. You don't want more of it -- you want to get rid of it. Getting rid of time is on eof the things that relates direction to Christian Science healing...

"Time is the basis of all limitation in matter. It's the basis of the concept of mortality. Mrs. Eddy defines time as:

"Mortal measurements; limits;...
matter, error..."

"And so we have to watch ourselves not to say: 'I need more time. I need more error.  I need more limits...'" 

Like I said...life-altering. The last thing I need, is more time...

shared with Love,

Kate

"It's cloud's illusions I recall..."

"Bows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air;
and feather canyons everywhere,
I've looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun,
they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done
but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow,
it's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all."

Bows and flows of angel hair...does anyone say it better than Joni?  Looking at clouds, love, and life from "Both Sides Now" is a concept that I have waited over 40 years to understand.  But, I think I caught a glimpse of something recently. An insight that holds so much promise, so much hope, for me, that I almost dare not speak it...

Memories...we love them, we don't...we love them, we don't.  They define us, they haunt us.  They seem to hang on to us, like the fangs of a snake one minute, and we hang on to them like a loved talisman the next.  Our relationship to memories, are as complicated and convoluted as sibling rivalry, or passive-aggressive behavior...we wonder if we are actually going crazy when we experience their subjectivity.

But there is a way of thinking about memories that frees us from the twisted insanity of their haunting.  There is a way of experiencing our remembered moments that is as full of joy and sweetness as a breath of spring.

Alan Lightman, in his small, but profoundly thought-provoking book, Einstein's Dreams, allegorically explains how Einstein may have explored various models of time, as he penned his "theory of time."  He walks us through time that meanders, time as a locality, time as a sensory experience, and time as memory.  In a chapter titled, "27 June 1905,"   Lightman sets up the memory-based model of time with this story:

"Every Tuesday, a middle-aged man brings stones from the quarry east of Berne to the masonry of Hodlerstrasse.  As he passes people on the street, his eyes are on the ground.  Some people know him, try to catch his eye or say hello.  He mumbles and walks on.  Even when he delivers his stones, he cannot look the mason in the eye.  Instead he looks aside, he talks to the wall in answer to the mason's friendly chatter, he stands in a corner while his stones are weighed.

"Forty years ago in school, one afternoon in March, he urinated in class.  He could not hold it in. Afterwards he tried to stay in his chair, but the other boys saw the puddle and made him walk around the room, round and round.  They pointed at the wet spot on his pants and howled.  That day the sunlight looked like streams of milk as it poured whitely through the windows and spilled onto the floorboards of the room.  Two dozen jackets hung from the hooks beside the door.  Chalk marks stretched across the blackboard, the names of Europe's capitals.  The desks had swivel tops and drawers.  His had "Johann" carved in the upper right. The air was moist from the steam pipes.  A clock with big red hands read 2:15.  And the boys hooted at him, hooted at him as they chased him around the room, with the wet spot on his pants.  They hooted and called him, "bladder baby, bladder baby, bladder baby."

"That memory has become his life.  When he wakes up in the morning, he is the boy who urinated in his pants.  When he passes people on the streets, he knows they see the wet spot on his pants. He glances at his pants and looks away....

"But what is the past?  Could it be, the firmness of the past is just an illusion?  Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images, that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought?

"In a world of shifting past, one morning the quarry man awakes and is no more the boy who could not hold it in."

Oh my goodness.  Do you know how it felt to read this for the first time?  It was like glimpsing the very moment when a golden ray of sunlight breaks through heavy black storm clouds, and arcs the sky with a rainbow of colors so new, so surprising, that they have yet to be named. 

Lightman then reflects:

"In a world of shifting past, memories are like wheat in the wind, fleeting dreams, shapes in clouds.  Events, once they have happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night.  In time, the past never happened.  But who could know?  Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant..."

This was a deeply forgiving paradigm shift for me. 

As most of you are well-aware, I have a photographic memory.  How else could I recall the minutiae of detail from my own life's stories with so much specificity in this blog.  But, and this is a big but, this same level of recall has also felt like a curse at time.  Besides having a photographic memory, I also have a very visceral emotional memory.  When I remember life events...big and small...I not only recall the details of color, smell, and taste, but the deep emotions experienced as well. It is sometimes as if a wave of memories is crashing over my present, and pulling me out to a roiling sea of sorrow in its undertow.

At other times,  these memories seem to "set up" my present and future experiences in a way that undermine any opportunity to "be new" in Christ.  Much like the stonecutter in Lightman's story I have lived my life as a prisoner of past events.  When I would see my present through the lens of a mistake, accident,  life-transforming, or compelling event, I couldn't look up into the eyes of my future with even a modicum hope that genuine innocence, or forgiveness, could ever be mine.

But, when I look at my life through this new lens of "shifting cloud" images, experience that take shape for a moment...dark and lowering in one instant, fluffy and childlike the next...I am able to benefit from the filtered sunlight, cooling shade, bright rays that ripen tomatoes, and gentle rains upon the tender herb...each in their moment of appearing.   By allowing these "clouds" to shift into the next blessing, without letting them define my past, present, or future...or anyone else's, for that matter...I can live with wonder, and stand in awe of God's ever-evolving creation of individual and collective good.

In this space of "shifting clouds," the shapes that are a delightful bunny one moment, or a fire-breathing dragon the next, inform rather than define, what I experience.  I am able to see that those shifting moments are as subjective as the "eye of the beholder" and that my "eye" can always be in synch with the heart of Christ which is always focused on God's face.

In their biography of Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Healer, Yvonne von Fettweiss and Robert Warnack  write that Eddy once offered her "household worker," Adelaide Still, a glimpse through this lens of Spirit.  Still shares:

"On several occasions I saw Mrs. Eddy dispel a storm; the first time was on August 3, 1907, in the late afternoon. 

"The sky was overcast and it was very dark.   Mrs. Eddy sat in her chair in the tower corner of her study, watching the clouds with a smile and a rapt expression on her face.   She seemed to be seeing something beyond her present surroundings, and I do not think that she was conscious of my presence.

"In a few moments the clouds broke and flecked, and the storm was dissolved into its native nothingness.   About have an hour later I took her supper tray to her, and she said to me, "Ada, did you see the sky?" I replied, "Yes, Mrs. Eddy."   The she said, "It (meaning the cloud) never was;  God's face was never clouded."

"This agrees with what another student has recorded as having been said by Mrs. Eddy, namely, "When I wanted to dispel a storm.  I did not say, 'there is no thunder, and no lightning.' But I said, 'God's face is here, and I do see it.'"

Through the lens of shifting memory-clouds, we can let the flash of anger pale, the thunder of pride die away, and the clouds--that would hide the face of God in one another--fleck and dissolve.  And in this light, we find ourselves, and others, innocent, beautiful, pure, and free.

"Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
and feathered canyons everywhere..."
- Joni Mitchell

Ahhh, Joni you were not just the poet laureate of our time, but a gentle shepherd, a friend who took my hand on a very special journey through the poetry of your song.

with Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Forrest Wilder 2009]

"...poems and prayers and promises..."

"...talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care
How long its been since yesterday
And what about tomorrow
And what about our dreams
And all the memories we share…"
-John Denver

The girls and I will drive out of the Arkansas Valley on Friday night.  Only part of the reason we will leave under the cloak of darkness is logistical, there is also my historic reluctance to be here for the early morning goodbyes as the airport bus pulls out of the parking lot to the tune of teenagers reduced to tears and counselors singing "Happy Trails" (do we still do that…it used to tear my heart out)  I admit it, I am weak. 

Instead I will snuggle the girls into their seats after banquet, surround them with pillows and old quilts, put a CD of hymns on for them to fall asleep to, and by the time we head up the first pass, I will be alone with my thoughts. 

Those thoughts will be a celebration of one pretty amazing summer of love.  Pure and simple that's what it's all about here.  Love, love, love…and more love.

Love for horses, love for friends…old and new, love for God, love for adventure, love for this place of beauty and majesty, love for ourselves...honoring the best we can be through service to others…love for a vision held by Adventure Unlimited founders Cap and Marianne Andrews and cherished by parents, campers, counselors, staff, supporters and trustees for the last 53 years.

This summer I will take home memories of horses nobly shaking off injuries to serve campers at polocrosse matches, on 3-day mountain treks, and in rodeos where the dance between rider and mount is choreographed by a God who loves beauty and grace.

I will take home countless reminders of God's instant and irreversible healing care of His beloved children…of all ages.  I will celebrate the once-lame dancing and the once-sorrowing leaping with joy.  I will hold close the memory of dinners where every bite is a work of vegetarian art and conga lines weave between tables in a crowded dining room.

But most of all, it will be the conversations on the porch of Crowsnest that will feed my heart all year long.  Teens clutching camp-worn and notation weary copies of their Bible lessons sharing inspiration found on in the middle of a scree field at 13,000 feet or hungering for a spiritual understanding of their moral freedom, physical wellness, unerring direction, or just a sense of peace in the midst of personal storms.

I will smile when I see a county worker digging ditches or construction workers in hardhats remembering the ranch hands dressed as The Village People and dancing to "YMCA" as their camp introduction on arrival night.

I will mentally sing "The Bristlecone Pine" in a squeaky voice (with "wrists together" and "booty out") until I drive myself crazy.  I will wipe a tear or two whenever I think of Lach's tenderness with horses (and riders) or Alison's early morning visits to Round Up for staff inspirational.

I will clutch these images closely all year long and pray for the love that is the substance behind them, to live and breathe and echo in the hearts of these children we all love so much. 

Camp will live in me all year until I can live in her again…
Kate

"Home to stay..."

"…When every town looks just the same
When every choice gets hard to make
When every map is put away
Then I'll be bringing you back
Home to stay…"
-     Josh Groban

Coming across South Park…on my way to camp three weeks ago…I was reminded of a similar day in 1997 when I brought our daughter "home" to camp.  We had moved the year before, traveling by Jeep and Ryder moving truck 2,000 miles East.  This was not an easy move…is there such a thing?  And the promise of flying back to Colorado for camp was what gave our hearts hope.

We landed at Denver International Airport late that June morning and within an hour we were in our rental car…just the two of us…heading southwest down Hwy 285 towards the Arkansas Valley.  It was a perfect Colorado day.  Bright blue skies overhead…dark black clouds to the west promising crisp evenings and cool nights for sleeping.

Camp has always been my heart's home.  I think of it as the place where even though I "work" 24/7 while I am there, it is also the geographical location that best articulates where, as Hymn 297 from the Christian Science Hymnal says, 

"…the dove may close her faltering wings…"

and not just my wings, but for every heart that seems to beat its wings madly searching for a place to rest…it is a place to call home….to just be.

And we were on our way there.  As we drove through the glade-like forest just west of Shawnee and past the toe-dipping waters of the rushing north fork of the South Platte River, I realized that I was already there…and had been all year long.

Camp was a place that existed in my heart.  I could recall every nook and cranny of Valerie Lodge, mentally run my fingers across the rough bark of the large evergreen just off my porch, sense the shifting sky as a storm approaches from the South…from right from behind the wheel of our rental car.

It was a remarkable realization.  To know that although I was in the process of driving to camp, there was a big part of my camp experience that I was taking to camp with me, packed in my heart…like the luggage in the trunk…to share with those I would be serving while I was there. 

My daughter and I each had gifts that we would be bringing with us, like care packages, to share with our friends…old and new.

We had memories of challenges overcome, healings experienced, friendships formed, resumed, and resurrected, of laughter shared and tears shed.  We were bringing our appreciation of this place to it, not waiting to be there to feel our appreciation for it.

I had this overwhelming sense that even if we were to turn the car around right there and then, never again crossing the cattle-guard onto camp property, nothing could take camp away from us as our hearts' home.  Camp lived in us.  Camp was never further away from us than our own hopes, our own desires, our own dreams.  

And these "memories" weren't just about a long-gone past…these were abiding, living, breathing present thoughts.  And more importantly, these very alive thoughts were constantly making a difference in my life.  They were, moment-by-moment, demanding new approaches to problem solving, requiring new ways of thinking about myself and others, providing new views of my relationship to the environment, my work, our world.  Camp and my thoughts, "memories", and experiences centered around camp and those glorious weeks in the mountains each summer are alive with purpose and potential every day throughout the year.

I have been thinking alot about that drive and my realization about the living presence of camp in my life…whether I am here in the Rockies or in my office near the Mississippi River…especially now that my daughter, and her friends,  have graduated from the days when camp was a "given" in their summer planning.   It gives me great comfort to know that if camp lives in her heart as a present place of joy…that I am there too.  We share this space within each of us called "camp"….it is a place we can return to whenever we want to mentally sit on the porch, look out over the lower 280, breathe in the vastness of God's beauty, hear the song of angels and hummingbirds…and open our hearts to the touch of His hand in our lives. Whether we are actually "on property" or somewhere else this summer by choice, circumstance, or "just because", camp lives in us. There is no "camp" without our love and appreciation for what it means to us, what it has done in our lives (and the lives of our children, friends and loved ones), and how it lives in our hearts.

From camp,
Kate

"Sunrise, sunset..."

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze…"
     - Bock/Harnick

June is the month of weddings and graduations…in our family alone we will have graduated a daughter from college and a son from high school within the week.  We will have written songs for two weddings and sent out dozens of congratulations cards filled with encouragement and hope.

If there is a traveling song through the month of June, I think…for me…it might be Tevya and Golda's wedding song for Tzeital and Motel from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof."  It begins to gather force in my heart as hand-lettered envelopes appear like magic in our mailbox each spring.  I find myself humming it unconsciously while the names of high school auditoriums, college greens, chapels, temples, and reception halls beckon from creamy engraved cardstock.  I get teary as the names of children I have held as babies…or cheered on from the sidelines…reach out from sheets of embossed and watermarked Crane's stationary to tug at my heartstrings.  By Memorial Day I am in full voice… 

"…Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?…"

This morning I started thinking about a Friday in late April, 2001.  The sixth grade had been dismissed early for a teacher in-service.  Since it was so close to our daughter's birthday, we chose to host her party that afternoon.  All of the sixth grade girls piled into our minivans and we headed off to a great pottery painting studio where we all sat around…mothers and daughters…delicately applying glaze to mugs, plates, jewelry boxes-the-size-of-a-pincushion and smiling kitties with no other purpose than to sit on a bedroom shelf, reminding you that you had a great afternoon with your friends.

I can see each of those girls today…as they were that day in April…many in braces, some just beginning to notice boys…others already well aware of who they wanted to stand next to at sixth grade graduation.  I remember that we moms were sitting on the edge of our proverbial seats that afternoon. I think that most of us knew that a chapter in our lives was coming to a close and a new one--one of middle school, boys, driving, and their eventual graduation from high school--was looming.  Before we knew it, we would be aching for the opportunity to drive our daughters to a dance class or volleyball game rather than have them ask for the keys.

"I don't remember growing older
When did they?"

I saw a photo of one of those sweet girls on Facebook last night.  For the past six years I have thought of her as the sparkly little girl who passed me the periwinkle glaze as we painted our mugs at The Painted Zebra that afternoon.  She is now a talented young woman, heading off to university and ready to take on New York, Hollywood, Wall Street…and she can do it.   Another girl, even in the throes of middle school angst, never failed to greet me with genuine joy and a warm embrace ...I will miss her smile, but can't wait to hear how her kindness "reaches across continents and oceans to the globes remotest bounds" blessing others with that amazing heart of hers...so full of benovolence.

"...When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he get to be so tall?"

Our son goes out to breakfast with friends these days.  He will soon move to the West Coast where he will begin his life of college, work, apartments, new friends, and new landscapes.  He is tall and capable…we are proud of his willingness to engage with the world around him in an environmentally ethical way.  He is strong and will learn his lessons with grace…he has already proven he has the maturity and compassion necessary to become a global citizen.

"Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?"

In the display windows outside of his high school's bookstore there are posters with photographs of each senior as a baby or toddler.  Parents, teachers, and friends puzzle over which baby photo goes with which of the senior portraits also displayed.  For some it is easy…this is a very small school community.  Many of the families have been in classrooms for Back-to-School nights together since an infant co-op program.  These parents aren't guessing which baby photo goes with which senior portrait…they are remembering what these young men and women looked like as babies and toddlers…they were there!  For this group it really did take a village…and a very closeknit one at that…to raise each child.

"...Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze..."

These seniors have blossomed into young men and women of substance and impact.  Their dreams and hopes will seed the world with promise.  I feel honored to have been a witness to their self-discovery.

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears..."

The seasons have flown all too swiftly.  Year after year, fall and spring became one…the love these children had for one another has over and again dissolved the bitter chill of coldness, apathy, gossip, darkness or discouragement.  Friendships forged since preschool have expanded to include new students and have morphed into new "families" of interest. The girl whose passion for horses in lower school may have left her feeling isolated from the "soccer crowd" found new friends while running track in high school.  The object of one boy's affection in middle school became his lab partner in physics five years later…a much better fit.  As their parents we watched, listened and cried with them.  And if hindsight was ever 20/20, it's in looking back at your child's high school journey.

"...What words of wisdom can I give them?
How can I help to ease their way?"

This one is easy for me, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God…within your own heart…and all things shall be added unto you."  Always put God, Love before fear in making good decisions.  Put God, Mind--the expression of intelligence, intuition, discernment--before giving in to discouragement or apathy…or giving up on yourself.  Put God, Soul--your love for beauty, harmony, form--before consenting to the ordinary, the discordant, or the chaotic.  Claim peace as the presence of God in your life rather than the temporary absence of war.  Demand that purity is a self-assertive divine power in your life rather than seeing it as a fragile human condition subject to good or bad personal choices.  Trust that desire really is prayer and that prayer is God's gracious means (not our own) for communicating His will in our lives…to our hearts.  As I said, "See ye first the kingdom of God…within you." 

  "Now they must learn from one another
Day by day..."

And they will…they will learn the way we have learned…from one another.  For me, the most important lessons in life are all learned in relationships.  Mary Baker Eddy says, "What we most need is the fervent desire for growth in grace – expressed in patience, meekness, love and good deeds."  I can't imagine learning any one of those things in isolation.  I need "you" to discover the best in myself…the me that is patient, loving, meek, and lives to do "good deeds."  I truly believe this is why the Lord's Prayer is all in the language of relationships…"Our Father, Give us this day, Lead us not into temptation. "

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze..."

Saturday will be laden with happiness and tears.  We will be happy for their successes, accomplishments and because they have arrived at this milestone so full of joy, grace, and hope.  We will shed tears…we will miss them.  They have blossomed even as we gazed.  There is a wide world waiting for the seeds of hope, compassion, courage and grace they are ready to broadcast far and wide.

And we will be watching…on tiptoes…for those seeds to bear fruit and feed a waiting world. 

Congratulations Class of 2007…watching you grow has been a privilege and a joy...you are loved...
Kate