New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is a good time for playing old games. We are going to play Careers - all of us who are ready to dream about what it would be like to start all over again.

Taken over by a Dog

I came back from the technology and ministry event in Cable last September fired up to do more blogging to hone my writing skills, but the puppy that was waiting as a surprise at home has consumed all my spare time. I know he will grow into a regular dog and other priorities will emerge. Now, however, he is at that adorably cute puppy stage.
Whenever I am at my computer he is only a few feet away and needs to be monitored constantly. Last week the temptation for him was the tab-top drapes in the living room. He kept trying to open and close them with his teeth. This week it is paper -- crackly white sheets of it snatched off my desk or any table top. So far nothing important has been destroyed, but no paper out in his sight is safe. He chews on sticks out in the yard and that is fine, but this week he has decided that the rungs on the wooden kitchen chairs are just as good for chewing. He'd rather chew on a rubber door stop than his toys.
This will pass. For now, the puppy is all I am writing about.

Gryff

Life's path takes a sharp turn when a 10-week old puppy is thrown into the mix. Simple things that you take for granted are no longer an option. You can't get up during the night, because you might wake the puppy who will cry like a banshee for the next hour. You have to guard your furniture with the vigilance the big dog uses for guarding her bone because the puppy wants to chew on the corners of the coffee table and the sofa. He wants the remote, the mouse, and the power cord, so you hide them.

But, then you lay down for a nap-- and by some miracle the puppy is also tired and sleeps stretched out on your shoulder, breathing softly into your neck-- the trouble is all worth it.

He lookes at us with wonder in his eyes as he comes to live with us, unfamiliar new people and a big red dog. We look back at him and wonder - what will this new little being bring into our lives in the months and years ahead?

Suddenly Life Changes

Now we have a new puppy who is 10 weeks old. The changes that a new little addition to the family demands are like those for a new baby, only speeded up. He doesn't sleep through the night so we walk around half awake. At 15 pounds, he cuddles like a baby, but he also runs and jumps, a thing no human baby would do for almost another year. He sometimes lets us know when he has to go outside, but watch out! -- the cues are often subtle. And unlike any 10 week old baby, he has teeth. So far nothing has gotten chewed up, but then, he is still on his 1st set of teeth. At about the time a baby would be cutting teeth, he will be getting his adult teeth, long and sharp like wolf fangs, but in a head that will seem brainless.

Meanwhile, he is cute, sweet, cuddly, charming, and a marvel to be with.

Up North

Here at Telemark in the ski-lodge setting we are not skiing. We are not even outside. Instead, we are viewing the virtual world at a conference on using technology in the congregation. We talked with someone in Africa without leaving our chairs. We entered a virtual church, but we only looked around - we didn't stay and virtually worship.
Soon, however, we will leave for home and drive through winding forest roads where the leaves are turning their brilliant colors, where the smells of damp fallen leaves are carried on the breeze. Deer will peer at us from ditches. Bears will hear the sound of our motors and stay deep in the forest, in their own virtual world that we seldom share with them.

The Future

Since my midteens I have wrestled with the concept of the future and determinism. If the future is fixed, how can there be accountability? If God has already determined what will happen and laid out the course of my life, am I just going through the motions? I believe that in order for life to be worth living, there has to be some element of surprize, even for God. God may know the probabilites of what we creatures will do and when the odds are high, God will even know the outcome. If we pay attention, so will we. We pretty much know what will happen if we drop a fragile glass bowl onto the pavement from a 200 story building. But I think that things become fuzzier as the odds go closer to 50-50. Then an element of chance comes to play.

In the book The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho, a camel driver consults a seer and the seer raises the question of why he would even want to know the future:

Then, one day, the oldest seer he had ever sought out (and the one most to be feared) had asked why the camel driver was so interested in the future.
“Well . . . so I can do things,” he had responded. “And so I can change those things that I don’t want to happen.”
“But then they wouldn’t be a part of your future.” the seer had said.
“Well, maybe I just want to know the future so I can prepare myself for what is coming.”
“If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise,” said the seer. “If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.”
“I want to know about the future because I’m a man, the camel driver had said to the seer. “And men always live their lives based on the future.

Hummingbird

The hummingbird is back outside my office window. Wave petunias are beginning to blossom in the window box and the tiny being, attracted by red, comes to drink sweet nectar. The days are still cool and the nights downright chilly, but the little hummingbird seems to find enough to stoke its inner furnace.
Last summer one came and hovered close to the window nearly every morning until frost took away the flowers, but I was never able to capture it with the camera. Hummingbirds always seem to know when the camera is focused on them. They will buzz right up to you and land on your red shirt, mistaking you for a flower. But --sit quietly with a camera focused on the flowers where they have been drinking nectar just a moment ago and they will hide from you and your red shirt. It was rare for me to be able to snap this photo of one in Evergreen, Colorado last August.

Lilac time

Lilacs are ready to explode like popcorn. The yard is fragrant and filled with the song of the phoebe. This is our second spring here in the rolling hills of Wisconsin and we have learned where not to put the garden! Last year the vegetables were a bust, so this year we tilled up a new garden in a sunny spot and planted it with peas, beans, radishes, and lettuce. Today we set out tomatoes, peppers, and kohlrabe. We put in 5 lb. of seed potatoes. I'm already dreaming about new potatoes - the way you dig into the soil and find them like surprises. You never know how big the potatoes will be until you dig and then you find tiny ones like marbles in the same dirt as potatoes the size of your fist. No matter what the size, they always taste creamy sweet.