theme for august

stardate 08062014
Siren wails weave their way through town.
The cringe of anticipation as they approach.
Someone's having a much worse day than me.
Hoot-hoot of the train behind the ladies sharing their struggles and victories at the metal table next to me. With aviators and precise pedicures. One looks like Owen Wilson.
Clanks of mugs on saucers from the collared shirt man chatting with the bearded one with a rainbowed sleeve.
Will there be tattoos in heaven?
Engines noises behind me sliding by and orchestrated intervals.

this ivy is confused. i blame the drought.

I realize. I have not given this day to God. A sobering, even harrowing thing.
It's been a few days since I started with Your will be done in my head.
Blech. What a terrible waste.
Redeemer of souls. 
And Redeemer of time.

dyhyst? part 2

This minimalist thing has taken a turn for the serious.
Like a slow ventricular bleed.
My sister started posting things and the phone calls started and the comments rolled in and the cash started flowing and my load lightened. Ever so slightly.
We made pretty good money at the yard sale. It was kinda fun.
Stifling heat with a small white oscillating fan mocking us. Bitter people demonstrating rather poor citizenship to their children. Aggressive enough to verbally attack at a price disagreement. Angry enough to drop or throw things in disgust. Depraved enough to take bags of items without paying.
Yes we did rather well. Our morality still intact. No one was hurt. We laughed a lot. And in retrospect, I know now why my dad never left us out there alone.
It was quite a success.
And for me, deeply therapeutic.

It's something I think about on a daily basis. Getting rid of stuff. 
For several years I mean. Like, it haunts me.
My sister, however, is the one with the gumption to execute. It had to be en una pareja.

Three years of things filling up one car space in a two-car garage. Reduced by one half.

But it's not enough. Like making ice cream low-fat. Tastes gross. And if you eat too much, it still makes you fat.
So yeah, we sold tons of stuff. Yet somehow... it's still not enough. Not enough gone. Not enough space made. Not enough emptiness.
And I crave the emptiness. To somehow make the material a fair representation of the intangible.
I don't need this stuff. No one does. But we never have enough. Of at least something.
Nowhere in America will anyone ever have enough.
"Dad, what would your friends in Indonesia think of all this crap?"

And as the men loaded an 8-foot bed back up with things to try at one last sale when it's cooler, I thought to myself. I thought through a heat and exhaustion that left me depressed. I thought, "How much would it really matter if he backed that up to the city dump's bay and heaved it into the backhoe's playground?"
My goal is to fit all our possessions in that size truck bed. And it just got filled with leftovers. Gleaned but not purged.
Why can't I do it?
Because we are married to our mammon, friends. We think this world is our own. And we are of little faith.

"When Jesus said, 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' 

he was making a direct correlation between the things we value 

and the things we put our faith in." -David Tackle

So as I slowly bleed out I pray it will be a dying to self. A dying to the order of this world. A blow to deception. And a gasp of air from the One who gives breath.

I don't have the sort of camera that can do our summer sky justice. Even with one I couldn't capture it. It's not just the hue of the sky and the artificial clouds. It's the glaze cast over sidewalks and lightly-tinted stucco walls.
It's coral. And it glows.
The very thing causing the eery illumination is reflected in the color. We are nearly hemmed in now by wildfire.

Yep. Doesn't translate.
And heavens declare the glory of God. In a different way.

Goodbye Norma Jeep

There were tears when it was upon its deathbed. Hoisted in such irreverent fashion. The auto-wrecker driver sensitively nodding as we asked to watch. 
"You have no idea. This car..." and I shook my head. Not to be dramatic. But because I didn't have words to sum up God's faithfulness via the Jeep. 
The trips we've taken. The city streets we've mobbed through. The mountains we've driven over. The snow we've plowed. The forest roads we've gotten lost on. The logging trails we've beaten down. 

Sure I've been sad about leaving a place. Like Vancouver. That was rough. 
But leaving the thing... nay, rejecting and sending away that which got us places... that's different somehow. It almost feels cruel. Off to be junked. So unfitting and end. I wish I could leave it on Mt Adams in commemoration. 
Alas. I need the cash.

I wonder what it was like for Caleb and Joshua to pack away their tents. Did they brush off the dust and fold it tenderly? Did their wives repurpose them? Curtains? Floor cushions?

If I had just a smidgen of their courage I think I'd be good to go. 
Albeit, on a bike.

soliloquy on a broken tranny

There is a countenance of loss. 
I saw today. 
And feeling in the throat. 
I felt today.
We sort of stood there with the mechanic in the shade. An impromptu meeting of the souls in quiet mourning. The inevitable. Kept at bay by prayers and a faithful mechanic.
Whispers of tree leaves. Dust kicked and flying in the arid heat and patters of dog feet as the dog played fetch with our daughter. Blissfully unaware of the pronounced sentence. Its implications written on adult faces. The sweet young "good girl!" and giggles foiling our grief.
The husband's voice soft and brows heavy.
It lasted longer than we thought. 210,000 miles. 
And the loss is yet a real pang. 
We have effectively totalled our car twice in one season. But the second blow is nastier than the first.
The implications, of which we had been wrestling with at the hand of other vices, were beginning to settle.
We are without. Not just means by which to go from point A to point B, but the means by which to acquire anew.