Water, water everywhere...on the Camino and home

I loved the water in Spain. All along the Camino de Santiago, small town and large cities had fountains, most with drinkable water. It gushed from dragons and pipes, ran through the cities in rivers and drainage ditches and dribbled along mountain paths. I took a picture of water every single day!

Stone sink at a hostel.

Just pipes this time, no dragon heads.

It's water so it counts.

I even created my own water site!

I'm home and it has rained and rained here in the Black Hills. We are lush and green and the wildflowers continue to amaze me. I'm perched at my kitchen counter and looking out at a verdant prairie- this never happens in August. 

So this morning, I took some water pictures.

Life is full of water and green is beautiful. I'm so grateful to live in this lovely place and be able to soak it all in.

And between starting this blog post and  sending it, I helped my brother-in-law and his wife clean out his sister's storage unit. Years of stuff and more stuff-moldy boxes of linens from their family- books and old checks, correspondence and kitchen stuff.  JoAnne is differently abled as we say- she is also tenacious, stubborn, independent and yet now she needs to be in a nursing care facitily. As I sorted her papers and numerous afghans, I found reminders of a rich and productive life.  Her candy business, metals for special Olympics and letters from organizations, a governor and even a president commenting on her contribution to the disabled community.  The stream of her life ran broad but invisible to many people.

As I finished up that week, my daughter-in-law called and spoke in a broken voice, "The baby died."  In an instant, our world turned unside down and our dreams for this unborn child flowed away.  She never took a breath, we never heard her cry but her time with us was a flood- of love and pain, sweetness and bitterness, sorrow and joy for her eternal life.

Water is life, life is water- flowing and carving its mark on the world.  JoAnne's life is rich and I am grateful  Teresa Irene's life is in heaven, my tears water the earth beneath my feet. 

Bridge over troubled water

I drove the six hours to Bismarck, North Dakota this week.  The landscape was lush and unseasonably green, the summer that we never thought would come is stretching into fall. But an occasional yellow leaf reminds me- the seasons turn,  winter always comes, life goes on.

We want life to look like this.

Wide, well marked with easy curves. Yes, there is a horizon but it stretches comfortably in the distance.

Instead the journey of life dips and disappears and our stomach lurches with the rough ride.  We hit potholes that threaten our comfort and suspension. The curves come fast and we can find outselves smashed at the side of the road. Alone.

This week, the spirit of my much prayed for and eagerly anticipated sixth grandchild, Teresa Irene, returned to the full presence of her Heavenly Father.  I love the image of her holding hands with her grandfather who loved babies but has yet to meet any of his grandchildren.  For us left on earth, we still deal with the reality of her lifeless body delivered by a grieving mother into the hands of a distraught father.  The hospital has been wonderful, the community outpour of prayers and help has be comforting...

but this grandmother just wants to breathe life into that tiny, perfect body and into this sad and broken family.

Her life on this earth was short and distant and not in our hands.



This tiny bridge is not easily accessible. It's not on a wide path. I'm not even sure of its purpose.  But it caught my eye, it spoke to my soul's longing for beauty, it is there.  A tiny bridge to nowhere must have a function I don't know. Someone carefully constructed posts and railing and added sturdy metal roofing. They placed it in this quiet spot and they know why.

Ducks paddle on this calm water and find food for their ducklings.  Life  happens here in the quiet, off the busy road.

Teresa is our bridge- inaccesible to our hands but forever perfect and complete in our hearts. Her brief life reminds us of the brevity of our days and heaven awaiting us- she is our bridge to eternity.  But I don't want to leave this little, fragile structure out here in the elements; winter is coming. The ducks will fly and she'll be alone.  But this  earth is all merely a shell, a structure with a function I don't fully realize.  Teresa has shed her fragile  body and is rejoicing in timeless heaven where we are already together. I am left to remember her rosebud lips, to hug the sad children and parents, to pray for comfort and... to anticipate life on earth as it continues on, waiting for the renewal of an inevitable spring.

Water.... and people in their places

I went from water-inundated northern Colorado to “always-rainy” Seattle.  It’s amazing the difference when water falls from the sky at a slow, steady rate.  In Colorado, I bypassed my flooded destination of Fort Collins to insure my eventual arrival in Denver an hours south and, more importantly, my flight out of Denver.   In Seattle, I enjoyed sunshine; it’s always lovely when I go there. If it weren’t for all the obvious green, including moss on rocks and roofs, I’d think someone was making up all the it-always-rains-in-Seattle stories.

So I enjoyed water in its proper place and my son, also in his proper place.  He expertly directed me through city streets, introduced me to favorite restaurants and knew just when to turn the street corner to arrive at a favorite thrift shop.  He’s in his place, his element and creating a life there.  Perhaps not the life I’d like to see him creating- he’s supposed to be in college, making long term goals and perhaps, racking up loan debt.  Instead he works nights, sleep days and lives well on less money than I’d thought possible.  And he’s happy. 

He has a community that he trusts and enjoys.  Like sunlight bouncing on the water in Union Bay, he's reflecting the security he’s experiencing in this place. 

The end of the floating bridge in the background.

We walked nature trails on bridges over the water, feeling the concrete segments moved subtlety under our feet.  Walking on water, enjoying peace in the quiet place under the overpass and the rush hour madness above us.

Another day we took a ferry to the Olympic Peninsula to explore small towns and their lavender fields, long past the purple prime of July.  We saw salmon running in the Dungeness River- not quite the thick squirm of pinks and reds I remember from my Alaskan childhood but still amazed that those big fish thrash upstream so far from the sea.

Arriving in Kinsgon harbor.  

We could hang out here a long time! 

Still on the peninsula, we headed west to the rainforest. The Marymere waterfall was an easy hike and the way rich in green abundance.  


The hush quieted our souls and we spoke of the creation and the Creator.

The sheer size of the trees was overwhelming and we wondered, do the trees know we are there, in their place?  Studies show other plants respond to gardeners.  What if the trees are somehow aware, even responsive?




                                                                     These sacred natural places can invoke thoughtful hikes.

At the end of the trail,  water dropped a hundred feet, falling from above us into its stream bed

far

Marymere Falls

below.

Again, water in its place.  Not controlled by man but certainly within its natural boundaries.  Comforting, calming.  Not the destruction of chaos, instead  the beauty of creation.

God, my God, how great you are!

    beautifully, gloriously robed,
Dressed up in sunshine,
    and all heaven stretched out for your tent.
You built your palace on the ocean deeps,
    made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings.
You commandeered winds as messengers,
    appointed fire and flame as ambassadors.
You set earth on a firm foundation
    so that nothing can shake it, ever.
You blanketed earth with ocean,
    covered the mountains with deep waters;
Then you roared and the water ran away—
    your thunder crash put it to flight.

Mountains pushed up, valleys spread out
    in the places you assigned them.
You set boundaries between earth and sea;
never again will earth be flooded.

You started the springs and rivers,
sent them flowing among the hills.         Psalm 104

My time in Seattle is over.  I’m off to visit another son, a beloved daughter-in-law and, of course, the most adorable granddaughter in Texas.   For all four of my children, the rivulets of their childhoods are broadening into the wider streams of adulthood.  I’m just grateful to be able to float along with each of them from time to time - at their pace, in their places.  Like water flowing in its ordered place.

Reflections on a life

I drove home last night in a pensive mood, taking time to photograph the water that caught my eye.


Reflections in a small eddy of a stream, 


the stream itself as it sparkled in the setting sun. 


The ripples of water on the lake and the sun streaming through the pines. 



This morning I woke to rain pattering, then pouring on my steel roof. Lighting cracked the mist and there was my brother's dog, leaning against my patio glass door. Jade hates thunder.  She wanders down the hill occasionally to check on me but she never comes into the house. Today she came in and after circling restlessly, finally flopped at my feet.  Glad for unexpected company on a rainy day, I read poetry to both of us and waited for the rain to stop and the electricity to return.

After the brief storm, I had electricity. Jade returned up the hill to her doghouse. I made my tea and toast and checked my emails.

"It's over. Leslie passed...."


I didn't know Leslie well but she is, I guess she was, a friend of a friend.  She fought a valiant fight against all odds and after the cancer was driven from her body, she succumbed to a lurking parasite deep in her brain. In the end, her weakened immune system could not defend her against the toxoplasmosis she was exposed years ago.  She leaves behind a loving husband and son, and a host of friends and friends of friends who have prayed with her, for her in this final season.

ripples in the lake formed by a passing boat.

 Leslie's friends connected to support her
 and continue to ripple into each other's lives.

  Leslie's suffering affected us all.

Can there be beauty in that? 

I was able to go to Virginia and stay near National Institute of Health when Leslie needed a companion after her bone marrow transplant. That's how we met- in her hospital room.  She was funny but very firm about what food she could eat. She was grateful for my company but spent hours on an internet live feed watching eaglets hatch in Indiana.  She was a real person and still a saint.  I was blessed to know her and I wear the hat and scarf she knit for me with gratitude.
Our time together closed my own grief circle and released me from my fear and dread of hospitals. My husband spent his last months at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, directly across the street from Leslie's room.  Our time together was healing- for both of us.



But her body, like Bill's, did not endure the brokenness of earth.  And none of ours will survive it either.  We come from dust,  we return to dust.  No one gets out of here alive.





Except we do.  Just like the mist obscures my vision today and the hills are hidden behind a veil of white, our vision of what is after this life is obscured.  The veil between what we know and what is coming is a fog.  But I know the hills are there- in the light they stand strong.  And we know by faith that behind the veil of death, life awaits.   So, rejoice in Life, Leslie!  Gaze on Jesus.  Say hello to Bill and my dad.  I trust you've already hugged yours.  

 We'll all be there soon enough.

What will the ripples of our life look like?