It’s all got that late summer look, that time when it seems appropriate to start savoring.  An end is formulating.  Time for the harvest of things, animal and vegetable.  The sunset is noticeably earlier.  A different set of bugs play their role.  Young ravens do their weird vocals in the air overhead.  The deck around the tapas table is becoming littered with brown leaves from the cherry overhead.   The grandson’s toys are strewn hither and yon.

Soon it will be fall or autumn.  Autumn sounds more dignified to me at the moment.  The Seahawks won our football game last night, Seattle is happy.  September means My Rebecca’s birthday and our anniversary.  If I am doing my math right that is going to be 39 years that we have been married.   Always tell her that we must be having fun.

For an early Thanksgiving I am thankful that I got through my four chemo treatments here lately.  They were of a heavier formulation and have been a challenge.  A scan is scheduled for two weeks from now to see if we made a difference with all that work.  I keep telling people that God has my attention with this ongoing cancer of mine.

I read something from the Richard Rohr blog this morning which digs to a deeper level on this same topic:  Merton quotes Meister Eckhart as saying, “For God to be is to give being, and for man to be is to receive being.” Our true self is a received self. At each moment, we exist to the extent we receive existence from God who is existence.

It always gets deeper in an instant, doesn’t it?  Well it is never boring.  Take care and keep in touch.  Take heart another cougar is coming.  Love, Felipe.

Nice to be outside at the tapas table in the morning writing to you.  We are savoring this late summer and harvest time.  Nothing better really.  If I could I would move Thanksgiving to now.  Picking corn for the day in a minute and then off to the hospital.  I slept in, which I rarely do, so my time is short.

I got some nice and thoughtful comments on yesterday’s post, the archery lesson.  So, great that you responded like that.  Maybe I will do more.  Just maybe one story for now.  Over the years I’ve had a lot of children and teens to teach and one time I had this pair of teen girls.  One was of average height and one was extremely tall for her age.  And the tall girl in her normal mode would walk around sort of hunched over all the time, like I’m really not this tall.  But I taught them to push and pull to draw the bow where you employ your back muscles and it transformed her momentarily to some sort of archery goddess.  To have her open up like that and be her  best self was a beautiful thing to see.

OK, off we go, love you immensely, Felipe.

Well, with the cougar gone life has a little less spice but my prediction is that there will be another in a year.  Things are just too easy out here.  People and critters come here to this place and get enchanted and wind up never leaving.  Happens to the best of us.

OK, somehow I want to write about something that I have been teaching in archery.  Don’t know where my inspiration came from nor where this post is going; never try and explains the movements of the right brain.  But that never stopped us before.  I have half an hour before my morning walk so here we go.

Archery is so much like my “tries” at living life.  Since a kid I would shoot an arrow as an individual arrow.  And it either hit or missed the target.  Right, it is a way of keeping things simple.  I/You either hit or miss.  But it is a nervous way to shoot where everything has a maximum of stress, there has to be more to life.

Since then I am shooting groups of arrows, four, five, six.  And they don’t have to be on the bullseye, they just hopefully have to be a group.  And what does that prove Felipe?  If I can shoot a group it means that I am being consistent.  Each arrow is shot individually without regard for the arrows before it, so they hit as individuals.  And if those individual hits wind up in a nice tight group than I am being consistent in my technique.  (It helps to have adequate eguipment here too, that being a given.)

So, once I can do that I am well down the road to being where I want to be.  Then I must let my computer in my head keep going and eventually move those upcoming groups over to the bullseye.  And what is my computer doing but gathering information.  And that’s what I tell my students, that is is not a hit or miss but you are gathering information.  They need to work on their technique and when that becomes more organized and consistent than that will be what the target area will look like.

We don’t have to luck arrows in one at a time.  We don’t have to go though the stress of one at a time hit or misses.  All we have to do is relax, organize our technique, trust and gather information.  OK, for example if we have one out of six arrows in the bullseye and five scattered out that is one thing.  We lucked that one arrow in but you can’t count on that happening.  It is far better in my book to have six arrows in a group to one side or above or below the bullseye.  Then you have something to work with.

Then the computer can really do it’s work with moving that group over to where you want it.  And the best way to do that is to be calm and play attention.  Don’t get stressed by, oh no another miss.  It is not about hitting or missing at this learning level it is about getting organized and developing our own technique and the arrows will show it.

OK, hope that made some sense.  I have four minutes to be outside.  See you tomorrow, love as always, Felipe.

We felt like we were kind of cool with our very own island mountain lion.  But it all came to an end when Washington Fish and Wildlife captured it and killed it a couple of days ago.  Things probably would have gone better for Billie, we named him that, if he would have stuck with munching on deer.  But he took to eating people’s sheep, lamas and donkeys so he had to go.

And this is the second day of the corn stand being open.  It is just starting out with a trickle but it will be a cascade soon.  How fun.

I’m here at the hospital with treatment and have an extra two hours here today.  Man, going crazy.  And I’ll be out on the streets just in time for rush hour.  Geez.

OK, I’ll see you all tomorrow, love, Felipe.

Yesterday we had an interesting group that showed up to walk, see the film and have tapas.  One was a local women who knew of us and the other two were a couple from out of f town.  The couple of which Ron had walked the Camino Frances.  They were fun and I want to try and keep in touch with them.  They have retired and plan to move to Spain to live, to Astorga, they think.  How fun.

Fun to fantasize about moving to Spain.  Where would I live?  Of all the places that I saw I think that Portomarin was the most gorgeous.  Have a place with a view of the water would be something.  But there are other places too, maybe the foothills in Hemingway country.  Yup.

This morning I am off to Mass for it is the Assumption of Mary.  Going to the 0830 because I’m up.  Then I am going to hopefully pick some of the Sugar Buns corn to get the stand open.  It IS going to be ripe.

OK, time to get the day moving.  Miss you, love you, Felipe.

We all know how much fun it is to have a new person to talk Camino to, fresh meat My Rebecca would say.  We are so enthusiastic about the topic we could probably talk to a stump if we had to.  We can’t help ourselves as Annie would say.

Our daughter and her family have been here for almost a week and that has been fun.  Rebecca getting to spend lots of time with her grandson.  And you know, general celebration.  So old friends of Tesia’s show up to hang out.  And yesterday one of her old friend’s Sasja walked with me for the Sunday afternoon walk after we watched the film.  She had never seen that.  And we cried, have to add that.

Anyway I had her ear for a mile and a half.  Well, it is not like I talked for the entire time but I tried to get in all the important points.  But it occurred to me this morning as I thought about our conversation that the Camino as I describe it sounds like a pretty amazing place.  I was trying to imagine our roles changed and me hearing about it for the first time.  I would be saying, Really?  Really?  Really?

It is pretty amazing when you think about it like that as in imagining hearing about it for the first time.  How did we get so lucky to stumble on it?  Personally I will have to thank Martin Sheehan and the “Way” which is still probably the best easiest introduction to the whole phenomenon.  Anyway, I consider myself one lucky guy.  And if it had been for that we wouldn’t know each other and we be carrying on the way we do, pilgrimage junkies and tapa animals.

Just sayin, love, Felipe.

The blackberries are thick and juicy.  It’s hard to walk without picking.  Everything good.

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700

Thurday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700

We usually have tapas and wine  after the afternoon walks.  Felipe.x

One more thing about corn. I know, I know, you are up to your ears. Oh, good pun Felipe. OK but the correction is that the variety of corn that I am so impatiently waiting to ripen is called Sugar Buns and not Honey Buns. Yea, not a big difference but somewhat, just in case you were trying to look it up.

Now that we have that straight let’s get on to what’s next. Yesterday was St Clare day and maybe we are not done talking about her. There are some great paintings of her that artists have done over the ages:

Well, maybe a picture is worth a thousand words.  I have to go, the ranch calls.  The best to you, love, Felipe.

The 15th of August, that is my new prediction of when the corn will be ripe enough to stock the roadside stand.  I know you are probably tired of hearing about Felipe’s corn but it is a big topic around here.  And my new canopy came yesterday and we got it erected and tied down out by the road.  Got the signboard, cooler and cash box out there too.  Looks like a roadside stand to me.  All we are lacking is the produce.

So today is St Clare day, the 11th of August.  I vividly remember this day on the trail in Spain.  I was walking with a teacher from Assisi, Italy whose name was Clare and she celebrated all day long.  She was celebrating her name day which was a new one on me.  She could have been St Clare in modern clothing there just for me.  The old magic moment on the Camino.

A bio of St Clare:

https://youtu.be/OE6wg17lVOs?list=PL58g24NgWPIzvBk2IQVES_xC4WTm6-CDI

Ok, have to go.  Enjoy it, love, Felipe.

I am so craving a BLT and a cob of corn.  Of course they would have to be tomatoes and corn from here at Raven Ranch.  I picked a few ears last night but it’s just not ready.  But there is a lot of it coming.   And the tomatoes, they are all green but again there is a lot of them.   Yea, I will have to put in a revised ETA of August 15th for all that, the bacon we have.

Have one more itty bitty chapter in my Medjugorje book.   I don’t know if I have ever read a book quite like that before.  That part of the world is very foreign to me for one.  The apparitions themselves seem so unusual which they are.  Marjana’s good nature and durability seem amazing under all the circumstances.  And it’s statis with the Vatican is still not settled I think.  It is all sort of surreal in it’s unusualness.  The book definitely broadens my view of things.  Thank you Loretta for putting it in my hands.  That title is My Heart Will Triumph.

I forgot that a few weeks ago I was including in the daily post a quote from Thomas Clark on Walking.  Let see if I can find that to get it going again.  Well, it seems to be avoiding me for the moment.  Perhaps a couple of quotes from the Medjugorje book:

“Even after all these years, time seems to stand still when I am with Our Lady.”  Marjana Soldo.

“My Son could have won with strength, but He chose meekness, humility and love.  Follow my Son and give me your hands so that, together, we may climb the mountain and win.”  From Our Lady’s Message of July 2, 2007.

OK, it will all come together, promise.  Love, Felipe.