I Usually Don't Do This, But...

If you know me at all, you probably know I don't usually talk about how dreamy guys are. I just don't, except if you get me talking about Sean Connery...However, while we had our layover in Denver this past weekend I was smitten with this outdoorsy wonder of a man. I couldn't help it. I even went to great lengths of sitting behind him and listening to his story as he was telling the lady sitting next to him. You might think this is creepy, but Aster was a true wonder who loved adventure and had great love for his family (especially his mother)! What a catch.

(you can't deny it, we would look great together)

I was talking to a dear friend the other day of my reservations with the church and of religion. At times, I have felt very strongly the absence of God because in turn, I have truly felt God. All to easily, I find myself falling into the habitual pattern of focusing on my separation from God rather than the reunion that I have here with fellow believers and the promise of being made whole. Christian Wiman, a brilliant poet, writes and speaks in a way that is raw and telling. He reminds me that it is a choice everyday to focus on moving forward in my faith where I am.

"So now I bow my head and try to pray in the mornings, not because I don’t doubt the reality of what I have experienced, but because I do, and with an intensity that, because to once feel the presence of God is to feel His absence all the more acutely, is actually more anguishing and difficult than any “existential anxiety” I have ever known. I go to church on Sundays, not to dispel this doubt but to expend its energy, because faith is not a state of mind but an action in the world, a movement toward the world. How charged this one hour of the week is for me, and how I cherish it, though not one whit more than the hours I have with my wife, with friends, or in solitude, trying to learn how to inhabit time so completely that there might be no distinction between life and belief, attention and devotion. And out of all these efforts at faith and love, out of my own inevitable failures at both, I have begun to write poems again. But the language I have now to call on God is not only language, and the wall on which I make my taps and scratches is no longer a cell but this whole prodigal and all too perishable world in which I find myself, very much alive, and not at all alone. As I approach the first anniversary of my diagnosis, as I approach whatever pain is ahead of me, I am trying to get as close to this wall as possible. And I am listening with all I am." -Christian Wiman

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made

sing his being simply by being

the thing it is:

stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,

means a storm of peace.

Think of the atoms inside the stone.

Think of the man who sits alone

trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made

there is given one shade

shaped exactly to the thing itself:

under the tree a darker tree;

under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made

the things that bring him near,

made the ming that makes him go.

A part of what man knows,

apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made.

I could read this a million times over and it would never get old.

My new stationary I made this week.

Cake Pops Mastered!

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to make cake balls. As you can see, (from the picture directly above) things really failed- failed big time. Yesterday, we attempted to make cake pops for a Master Gardener Luncheon of my mom's. Again, as you can see, they (all 200 of them) turned out to be beautiful!

The End Result!!!!

Adventure is a path. Real adventure- self-determined, self motivated, often risky- forces you to have first hand encounters with the world. The world, the it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of mankind- and perhaps realized that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be "black and white."

- Mark Jenkins