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Obviously I didn’t take this but I thought it was a cute one, acknowledgements below the photo. My hubby likes giraffes so this is for him. My stepson Luke used to like raccoons, I prefer the regalness of lions. I guess we all have our favorite animals. What is yours? Now I’ve been told by my husband that what I saw yesterday morning might not have been wolves but coyotes. I’ll have to look into that and ask our neighbors around here if they have seen sightings of wolves. I’m told that the wolves are moving into our area more and that’s fine if they can bring the deer population down. Also, a year ago about five miles north of us were sightings of black bear cubs. So, we still live in the wilderness. However, no chance of seeing any giraffes in these parts.
As I peered out to the early morning light at 7:30 a.m. from our upstairs bathroom window, I looked out to the southwest corner of our property. What to my wondering eyes did I see but two very short deer!!! Yet upon closer inspection they looked like two very big foxes. Having never seen wolves before on our property, I did a double take and realized that two wolves were enjoying the warmth of the rising sun. One was bigger than the other and eventually after about five minutes they slunk away. I didn’t have presence of mind that early in the a.m. to race for my camera and get a photo of them. I have SEEN their paw prints in the gravel roads and realize we don’t have the pesky rabbits around nor was our sweet corn bothered by raccoons this summer. Hmm…having no dog to stake out our territory, I guess the wolves feel right at home on our 13 acres of woods. Next question, are we safe with wolves at such close range? I was reminded of the words of comfort from Psalms 130: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, And in His word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. I say, more than those who watch for the morning.”
Imagine having your front yard defaced because of 70 mph winds? My sister and her family are mourning over the loss of their HUGE weeping willow tree. This tragedy happened just yesterday morning. I’m glad they were safe in their home and nothing happened to them or their house. Not true Sunday evening when a tornado hit a town where one man died and 18 were injured, just one hour west of my house. Meanwhile from about 10:30 p.m. to after midnight I sat down in my basement just to be on the safe side. One can never underestimate the power that is packed in the wind. We can’t see wind but we see what it does. In this case, the willow tree will be dissected and removed allowing my green thumb sister to have a sunny garden now instead of a shady one. The following is from my friend who lost her lake cabin during a tornado earlier this summer, she was blessed to read the following poem:
In that wonderful old devotional, “Streams in the Desert,” It said, “The flash that struck thy tree-no more to shelter thee, let heaven’s blue floor shine where it never shone before.”
My two dear nephews were so cute in the parade over a week ago. They will soon be back in school after Labor Day weekend. Yesterday morning, their family suffered the loss of a huge weeping willow tree due to a storm that blew through with 70 mph winds. I’ll show a photo of the tree in tomorrow’s post. For now, enjoy the two photos my brother took. Bro’ Toe (our nickname for him) is one incredible photographer but I know Tony would give credit to his awesome camera. With Z.J. dropping apples from his top perch on a ladder, I’m reminded of what St. Augustine said over a thousand years ago: “God wants to give us something, but cannot; because our hands are full–there’s nowhere for Him to put it.”
How many gold finches do you see in the smaller photo of our backyard? At first I thought 8, then maybe 9, but I think we have at least TEN finches who regularly get their grub of thistle seed from our feeder. Yesterday I scooped up all the seed they had wasted on the ground and put it in a little sack. Maybe they gorge themselves out of habit, the finches keep pecking away at the feeder and don’t even eat the food we provide for them. The finches are fun to watch as their flight is a swift bob up and down. When they first arrive in the spring, I like to call them “flying dandelions.” They seem alert to any close movement that might endanger them but their general twitter reminds me of the Peanuts bird character (Woodstock) that would sit atop Snoppy’s doghouse. Cartoonist Charles Schulz would just use simple hatch marks !!!!! and that seems about appropriate for how I interpret their conversations. The finches do have a clear signal for approaching predators so when I took this shot, I had taken the screen off our upstairs landing to capture the moment when maybe ten finches were enjoying our great outdoors.
I thought we gave away grocery bags full of Haralson apples to my siblings last week when they were up for a visit!!! But there were still many more raining down. Apples now “reign” in my kitchen, on the floor, close to the stove, waiting to be made into apple jelly and apple sauce (byproduct of extracting the juice). If I hadn’t gotten them off the ground right away, the birds peck holes into them. Now after last night’s thunderstorm accessorized with tornado watches and hail the size of quarters, almost all apples are OFF the tree. We also had magnificent lightening displays throughout the evening, God’s fireworks! The following is a recipe I like to use for apple jelly and save on not buying boxes of SureJell. The apples have enough pectin in them to make GREAT jelly.
4-3-2-1 Apple jelly
4 cups apple juice
3 cups sugar
2 T. lemon juice
1 t. butter (optional, so it doesn’t foam)
Mix all together and bring to boil. Boil for a LONG time stirring all the while until the syrup rolls off the spoon in sheets. Pour into jelly jars.
According to C.S. Lewis “our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction [of creativeness], in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours.” Earlier Lewis wrote, “The duty and happiness of every other being is placed in being derivative, in reflecting like a mirror.” When we get away from God and focus on ourselves we become prideful and what St. Augustine wrote about in “The City of God.” C.S. Lewis paraphrased Augustine from the original Latin this way: “Pride does not only go before a fall but is a fall – a fall of the creature’s attention from what is better, God, to what is worse, itself.”
As a two-for-one concerning “reflection” I read from Oswald Chambers today: “Reflecting His peace is proof that you are right with God, because you are exhibiting the freedom to turn your mind to Him. If you are not right with God, you can never turn your mind anywhere but on yourself.”
I wanted to insert a CUTE photo of Noireswan’s baby brother reflecting himself in a mirror but I can’t find it on my laptop, must be on one of my many flash drives. It’s okay for children to reflect themselves playfully in the mirror but as grownup Christians we need to reflect Jesus Christ. I pray so for myself this Sabbath Day.
A creative treehouse is difficult to come by these days, we used to go to our neighbors treehouse that was up in a big cottonwood tree about a half mile from my friend’s place. The huge tree was felled many years ago, but who could argue about what a treehouse is supposed to look like? The point is, as a kid, when you are up high, off the ground, it is exclusive and has an element of risk and danger of falling. Who could criticize such an adventure, right? Well, C.S. Lewis has more to write about “modern criticism” that I agree with as a writing teacher. I want my students to be free and independent thinkers and to write their thoughts down and NOT follow the crowd. Those who follow and write about Jesus Christ, as C.S. Lewis did, are not “crowd followers.”
What are the key words of modern criticism?
Creative with its opposite derivative;
Spontaneity with its opposite convention
Freedom contrasted with rules.
Great authors are innovators, pioneers, explorers;
Bad authors bunch in schools and follow models.
Or again, great authors are always ‘breaking fetters’ and ‘bursting bonds’.
They have personality, they ‘are themselves.’ I do not know whether we often think out the implications of such language into a consistent philosophy; but we certainly have a general picture of bad work flowing from conformity and discipleship, and of good work bursting out from certain centres of explosive force – apparently self-originating force – which we call men of genius.
These kids from church are enjoying a hot summer day with a different kind of “baptism.” Oh, to be a kid again (and fit into a bucket). Today’s reading from C.S. Lewis is a continuation of yesterday, a letter he wrote to Stuart Robertson on May 6, 1962. Lewis wrote the following in reference to St. Bartholomew, Apostle:
Surely God saves different souls in different ways? To preach instantaneous conversion and eternal security as if they must be the experiences of all who are saved, seems to me very dangerous: The very way to drive some into presumption and others into despair. How very different were the callings of the disciples. I don’t agree that if anyone were completely a new creature, you and I would necessarily recognize him as such. It takes holiness to detect holiness.
Frisbees are such fun objects to run after, it ranks right up there with flying kites and walking on quiet, gravel roads. Better to have people to do the first two activities, the latter can be done on your own of which I’m doing a lot of lately now that the community of frisbee throwers have gone back to their respective homes. C.S. Lewis had much to say about collectivism and individualism in his “Letters to Malcolm.” An apt quote from Lewis says it all for me.
I have wanted to try to expel that quite un-Christian worship of the human individual simply as such which is so rampant in modern thought side by side with our collectivism; for one error begets the opposite error and, far from neutralizing, they aggravate each other…No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function is already beginning to bring true Personality to birth. And secondly, I have wanted to show that Christianity is not, in the long run, concerned either with individuals or communities. Neither the individual nor the community as popular thought understands them can inherit eternal life: neither the natural self, nor the collective mass, but a new creature.
True History Matters 