Wasteland

...
Railroads are by their nature surrounded by wasteland.

Their roadbeds are not usually considered pretty, their switching areas, rusting signals and overhead electric lines are eyesores, and the trains that travel them are loud, discoraging the close encroachment of the neat lawns and dwellings of residential suburbia.

And the odd angles that the rail-beds make with roads, property lines, and each other create wedges of land that are virtually impossible to put to any use, even if someone wanted to do so.

And so they are left fallow, ...and life finds them and springs up.

The odd-shaped wedge behind the train station where I wait in the morning teams with life and is laden with ripening wild fruit;

raspberries and blackberries and grapes and choke-cherries, rose-hips and milkweed, and wild herbs and seeds - eaten by silly baltimore orioles (singing 'oh-boyeee!') and robins and sparrows and mocking-birds and chipmunks. ...and these are likely just the bold ones, who dare show themselves while I am there.

The amount of life per square foot is amazing. And to create this beauty, we just had to give it space. We abandoned it. We ignored it. We left it alone.

This was a waste-land, useless.

Sometimes we feel that way about ourselves, about parts of our lives, about people and places. But perhaps they need just a little space, some light, and a bit of water. Just a wee opportunity for growth and creation; time and space for God to enter in, and fill the wasteland with life.

May God enter all the abandoned places in our lives, all our waste-lands, and make them bloom and be fruitful.

And may we be wise enough to allow space for life, to leave spaces for the wild magic of God to take place.

Love,
Locust Eater

Related:
Wasteland Pictures
Seeing Truth in the Wasteland
God’s Sheep are Confused

Today's Quest

...
Today I was questing,
For what I know not.
I traveled miles that few travel,
Through deserted glades and along abondoned rivers.

Few see fit to wander where I go, though many pass close by, without ever knowing what lies there.

Their litter finds it's way there, though: hubcaps, and tires, and mattresses and shoes.

Golf balls and dumpsters and laptops and bottles.

But beauty and innocence lies in these abandoned places. I know where the hart rests, and where the doe hides her newborn fawn.

I see where the orphaned duckling is cared for, and where the crayfish spawn.

I know the great feasts of the muskrats, and where their dining-hall lies.

I visit hunting grounds of Herons, and of dragonflies.

And I see the bowers of the Faries, far from man's sight.

I say I do not know what I seek on this quest, and that is both true and not, for my son shares my quest with me.

It is the serendipity of the quest I seek, the unknown, and to share it with one who will appreciate it in his own turn;

And someday seek with his progeny the secret bower of the hart, and the nest of the fawn, the magic of fairies, and the joy of the dawn.

God's blessings be evident to you and yours...

LE

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Have a Happy and Safe 4th!


And... here I am with a few minutes and nothing urgent to do for once, so....

....It has been a while since I have poked at the blog to improve it, and so here are Today's:

Changes to this blog: (I may update this post later in the day if I get more things done.)

1) Refreshing of the links:

a. I have gone through links, and those which I don’t feel a huge attachment to, or which I look at less often, or which haven’t been updated in ever-so-long I have removed. I also looked at who was getting ‘outclicks’ and kept those who were getting those. On this list are:

i. TitusOneTen – Silly blog about Episcopal Church Life, but not updated since… May! Is it possible? Maybe it will come back to life in the fall, and I will re-add it.
ii. Richard Pettinger Photos – Beautiful pictures and interesting bits of faith, but I rarely look at it, and no one clicks there.
iii. Fresh Spam – Not updated since May. (UPDATE: A Reprieve - there has been an update - so I have re-added FS to the blogroll.)
iv. Releasing The Word: I never, ever go there, and no-one clicks on it. I probably should, but I don’t. Updated regularly too.

b. Links I probably should have deleted but didn’t:

i. TWIVNTY – The author promises to do SOMETHING with it soon, and it gets outclicks.
ii. Turns in the Road – nice site, nice pictures, but I don’t look at it much. It DOES get outclicks. The host needs to turn off the automatic music video that runs when you hit the site. Which video I loved the first 15 times I visited.

c. New Links – things that I found inspiring and interesting over the last several months:

i. Slyphnascency – Poetry, struggle and light from a ‘Pixie’. Oh, and she linked my site.
ii. What Not to Crochet – Updated a few times a month, will bend your mind with scary crocheted objects.
iii. Amazing Filtered Things – Amazing pictures.
iv. I have more to add here, some nifty stuff that is hiding from me, but I only get so many minutes with my own computer, and that time is up, I can tell by the way a small, impatient person is pacing behind me.
v. Muck-n-Mire - wonderful pictures of flowers and plants.
vi. SketchyBeast - interesting and odd drawings.

d. Rearranging Links – The links I visit most or get the most outclicks should be first, and I have tried to honor that.

2) Tracking my Visitors: I have been with Site Meter for ever-so-long, but they have changed a number of things which made me reconsider that, and now I am with StatCounter. We will see how StatCounter works out. Items leading to my decision were:

a. They supposedly started adding cookies from ‘Specific Click’ that get loaded on my visitor’s computers and track their activity beyond just my blog. (Spyware! Evil! Evil!)
b. They started requiring ‘cookies’ (little bits of data or code that get stored on your computer to store information about your visits).
c. Their stats stopped working at all on my laptop, and on my mobile device.
d. Often the counter wouldn’t load even on computers that were normally compatible – and I am pretty sure that those visits were not counted.
e. I am pretty sure that the stats counter slowed down the loading of my blog.

More as it happens!

LE

God in The Waiting Places

...

Why does the darlky-tanned hispanic man wait at the shelter of the rural spur line? The trains there are rare, yet I watch as he lets one go by. Is he the same man I glimpsed sleeping in the hot shelter a month ago? It makes no sense to sleep there, in sight of green, shady bowers.

If he has an appointment with someone, or something, why not come closer to the right time? Or perhaps his appointment is with something or someone more mercurial - and he cannot know when, or if it will arrive. Something mercurial, but still worth waiting for.

And who is the older woman in yellow waiting for? She stands in the shade of some green trees, on a sidewalk away from the commuter's shelter and the platform. A freight train rumbles through, I turn for a moment and she is gone. Did someone arrive and I missed seeing them? Did she give up? Is this just a happy pause on her morning walk... ...watching a train or two pass, or does she daydream that someone will arrive, someone she misses?

Who rides all the dozens of bikes that are chained up by the station? They are here when I arrive and there are less when I return, indicating an early schedule, but I never see their riders. Do they ride for pleasure, out of a sense of economy and environmentalism? Are these students off to school? I doubt it. I suspect they are fry-cooks and baker's assistants and day-laborers, and bicycles are what they can afford.

Some religeous pamphleteers arrive, young men in starched yellow shirts and striped ties, soft-covered black bibles and literature clutched in their right hands, bending gently in their grips. They make a vague attempt to reach the commuters at the station, but they are on the wrong side of the tracks, and a train arrives to foil their efforts, whooshing their prospective converts off in the direction of the big city, and leaving no one save me. They glance briefly at me, but the cost/benefit of saving my soul must not seem promising, and they climb back into their beat-up suburban, and motor off, its hole-y muffler resonating loudly.

I resolve to try to meet all these people in the future. This is a waiting place, it is true, and people don't think of their lives as happening here, in the waiting places, but they are wrong. God also waits for us at the way-points of our lives, and while we wait, our lives are going by, and God is showing us people and situations and wondering: "Who will go for us?" And "Whom shall we send?"

May we often meet and recognize God along the myriad paths of our lives, and moreover, enter into God's labors.

Peace,
LE

The Impossible Dream

Saw this the other day, and had to share it:





Some things speak to us inside. I think this little video does.

Peace,
LE

After Psalm 33

...
Praise and thank God for our many blessings, because we are truly blessed.
Thank God with music, with dance, and with art
Proclaim your love and praise God loudly, so all can hear and see - because God is good and God's every deed is done in faithfulness.

God loves Mercy and Justice; the world is full of the steadfast love of the Lord;
God spoke and the universe was created, and God's breath lives within all life. God knows the fish of the sea, and the stars of the sky, every one by its own name.

God is awesome; God stands before time and also after; God was concerned with the events of your life before your eldest ancestor crept from the sea, and lovingly contemplates the echo of your features in the descendants of generations to come.

There is nothing that is hidden from God, and each of us is in God's sight. God knows us from the inside out, in our most shameful secrets and our hidden joys.

Nations, leaders and movements plot and plan, and seek to own the world, but the world is in God's hands, and God frustrates their plans. God's direction is clear and unchanged. Judgment and time belong to God, and from God no wealth, no power, and no physical strength can save you.

Happy are the people who follow in God's footsteps, who enter into God's labors. God watches over the faithful, who find eternal life in his steadfast love, and manna in the midst of want.

We wait upon the love of God, who is our help and protector. In God we find our joy and in God's name renewal. O Lord, be with us and bless us, even as we hope in you.

Peace,
Locust Eater

A Different Feast

As the sun gazes warmly down
I look down the railbed;
A haze of moisture rises from the earth;
It's hot, and humid.
Making things a few thousand feet away faint and misty.
A freight-car on a siding is a misty, pinkish box.
The cattails sway beside me,
And I hear the train approaching in the distance,
It's horn sounds mournful.

And now the train is here and people are boarding.
I board last, and find a seat in an air-conditioned car,
And watch the ferns, rocks, forests and streams slide past my window,
The train gently rumbling along.

I'd much rather be out there,
With some silly kids,
Poking under rocks and spying on birds and bunnies,
Splashing in streams.
And getting bit by mosquitos.
Getting wet, sweaty, and muddy.

For me, that would be a feast.