Just got back from Bible Guys and we covered Acts of the Apostles chapter 16.  This is where Paul and Timothy cross over into Greece to spread the Word.  Out of Asia and on into Europe.    Never a dull moment for these guys.

Not only never a dull moment but almost continually getting roughed up in the process of completing their mission but they were joyful the whole time.  Whether conditions were good or bad they put things to use.  Like there is no bad or good at a certain level just opportunity.

Can we get to a place like that?  Where we see everything as opportunity.  Where we walk our Camino and take things as they come at us, the good, the bad and the ugly and do something with it.  Something good that is.

Have to go to work and get Stephen and Anna’s roof fixed.  Roofs are important around here.  Yup and other stuff, keep up with the weeds in the corn, get ready to the Women’s Archery Retreat that we are having starting this Friday.  Busy busy.

OK, blessed be your blistered feet.  Love you, miss you, Felipe.

As if an even inch wasn’t enough she had to throw in the .05.  The wettest June day ever in Seattle, a record.  But we survived, that’s really what we are best at around here.  Now it is going to gradually warm up and we can get back to growing corn.  No need for the ark I guess.

Roni, our friend from OK put up a really cool Camino video on FB.  Four minutes of nice pics set to music.  And if you aren’t friends with Roni you should be.

Roni’s video sparked my thinking about going back and do the Camino again or maybe another route.  Here at home we are just about done with our walk to the coast and back so we have to come up with what to do next.  I will have to do some research.  Wondering if it is possible to do something like Canterbury to Rome?

Well, I am going around in circles here today.  I really need to get out and do my auto maintance.  Got four oil changes done yesterday, five to go.  How did I ever wind up with a fleet?

See you tomorrow gang.  Alperfect as usual.  Love you and your blistered feet,  Felipe.

Yup, we are continuing with our Junuary weather here.  This month is not ready for prime time for sure.  So I made a good old winter breakfast for My Rebecca and me.  You can’t really face this kind of day armed with just rice chex.

At the ranch here we are redoing the landline phone system.  Bought  some new equipment yesterday and it is all charging now.  Will have it programmed later today and everything groovy soon.

There was a great FB video that I shared yesterday.  It was all about this black bear that had it’s head stuck in a bucket and this guy that tries to free him.   Fortunately this scene winds up on the highway and three other good ole boys join in.  Some one comes up with a hacksaw and a pair of pliers and two guys are holding the exhausted bear down and two guys are hacking away on the bucket.  This is all happening in the mud, of course.  A lifetime memory happening there as the totally freaked out bear freed from the torture heads off to shouts of joy from the guys.  Maybe you have to be a guy to really appreciate this kind of fun.

OK, I am off to walk in a moment here.  Have to find my boots to be comfortable out there.  We are supposed to get almost an inch of rain today.  This is good since I got the corn fertilized yesterday and the goodies will be traveling into the soil and to the plants today.  Eat up boys!

Yup, time to go.  Have a heck of a day where you are.  May Camino thoughts trickle down to you like the fertilizer to my little hungry corns.  We are hungry aren’t we?  Like the world’s most interesting man but with, “Stay hungry my friends!”  Hehe.   Love you some more, Felipe.

Thanks for being in our tangle.  What is that Felipe?  Well,  first just want to thank folks that sent in comments of support for me over the last few days and to folks who were thinking of me.  I’ve been a little shaky lately but on the mend with your help, thank you.  But you see we are in each other’s tangle. We respond to each other because we care about each other.  That’s what I mean.   You are willing to be open to my story, me, my tangle.  It’s not always pretty but you know that and are willing to put up with that.

And you are a tangle, not that I know everything about your personal story but if you are alive I am guessing that you are a tangle, an unfinished, incomplete, unpolished, slightly dented individual.  Me too, me too.  But we reach out to touch, that’s what is important.

A tangle I thought was a good analogy.  If you reach out to me you are likely to get some on you.  Hehe, that sounds funny.  And if I in turn reach out to you I am likely to do likewise.  But hey as long as we know the rules of the game what could go wrong?  Well, a lot of things can go wrong but we risk it none the less.

Does this ever remotely make sense?  I hope so.  That is all I have in my tank today.  I have to run off.  Bless you, love you, Felipe.

I am in a little slump with the blog.  My readership numbers were down last month after being super for six months.  And my energy is low.  I think I can attribute both of these things to the fact the Spring got here and we are outside away from their computers.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.  But still I complain.

This morning in my usual perusal of FB I came across this birthday announcement for Anne Frank.  She would be 85 today if she had lived.  The pic is very moving but the quote under the pic really got me.  I love her sense of purpose and really that is what I need to get me off my butt.

Sunday another instance of this kind of enthusiasm touched me.  A friend invited me along to go to a Mariner’s game in Seattle.  It was a nice outing for us even though the Mariner’s got shutout.  Anyway, directly in the seats in front of us were a couple from Canada.  There were a lot of Canadians in the stands since we were playing Toronto.  The man was majorly unstandard in his build.  He obviously had some big issues with birth defects that were impacting him.  But he was motivated and functioning in the normal world.  The wife was beautiful and she had the big diamond on her hand and they traveled with a sweet service dog.  But they didn’t choose to sit in the handicapped area, they made it up and down the concrete steps and sat in the stadium seats like us folks that take our capabilities for granted.  When I think of this it makes me want to never complain again ever.

So here I am whittling away at the blog and my body and mind are functioning mostly.  There are no snow storms  storms or hurricanes outside.  I have a lovely wife and family.  I have wonderful friends and Caminoheads that check in with me.  Not to mention living on an island in Puget Sound USA, no shooting war going on.  No Nazis are patrolling the road and woods.

It is time to dig down deep and find that inner go juice.  OK, off to work.  See you soon, Love, Felipe.

I hope it is just one of those Monday mornings when it just takes a little longer to get things organized but that will happen, right?  Maybe I just had too good a time over the weekend.  I hope that is it.

One of my Camino buddies Emily just had a good Yiddish quote on FB, “Men plan, God laughs.”  Maybe that is what is happening to my Monday morning?  I’m not even that far yet, still trying to find the plan.

Oh, I have a walk at 0900 too.  Maybe someone wise will show up to point out the way to me.  That would be nice.  Where is that guy when you need him?

Well, one good thing is that the Sheepdog Trials are over.  I think two or maybe three times as many people as live here showed up to watch this thing.  The whole place including the ferries were close to grid lock.  But now it is over and the cleanup begins, kind of how my Monday morning feels.

Well, time to go.  Take care and hopefully it will all come together.  Love, Felipe.

I know it’s June.  Sometimes we have a Junuary though, which appears to be happening. The corn does not appreciate this and it’s growth is slowed.  But have the weeds slowed down, not so sure?

Had fun with Catherine going to Mass this morning.  Father David was better than his usual self which is pretty darn good.  Today was Trinity Sunday.  To me Father was saying that God sees me as who I am rather than what I have done.  I am/we are all created in the image of God and that is who we are.  My muddling my way through life is what I have done.  So, God only sees who I am, a reflection of Himself.  Father wanted us to come up with a name for God for today.  I chose the Forgiver.

We went off to tailgate at the supermarket afterward.  Well, actually we sat in the cab because of the cold snap but we got theology done just the same.  And four baby ducks followed mom across the parking lot and jumped up over the curb into the tall weeds.  Of course there was the last little duck that had a little harder time and it takes a few tries to get over that high curb.  God the Forgiver looks down.

OK, I know I am going to miss the walk today.  I got an invite to go to the Mariner’s game with Matt my Marine Corps buddy.  Then have a birthday party for another friend tonight.  I am going to have to miss weeding today.

OK, you are the best, Felipe.x

Felipe’s at a total loss at what to write about today.  Is that going to stop him?  Naa.  Yea,  just taking a break right now from running around the ranch.  I’ve got to make some chicken salad for din din and do the dishes.  Somehow I’m the housewife today.

“Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”. Right?  That Yogi Barra quote just came up on TV baseball.  That’s going to fit in here somehow.

My Rebecca is up at the Sheepdog Trials today helping to man a couple of booths.  The Vashon knitters have displays of their craft down there.  But the trials themselves have just gotten so popular that it is hard to believe.  There are so many people down there from off island I think they are going to cause a balance problem and we are all going to slip into the sea.  It started out so small maybe ten, fifteen years ago and now we are on some national circuit.  They have Temple Grandin down there to top things off.

They probably took some cues from Phil’s Camino which started with some folks just walking in the mud a few years ago and look at it now.  Shoot, it’s on the international circuit.  I hear someone needs to get out there and do some mowing so those poor pilgrims can make it around.  I wonder who gets to do that?

OK, well, I have to get to work.  Miss you guys, love, Felipe.

Back at the treatment center and it is noisy and my ear plugs are in so I can get to  Blogland.  There.  What kind of mischief are we going to get into today?

This morning I had a glimpse of something extraordinary.  I was just driving on the Island and suddenly it was like a veil was lifted and I was viewing a bigger picture than normal.  I know, pretty woo woo.  It didn’t last for long but was definitely there.  I remember thinking can I function safely here.  I was driving and was doing well at that so I concluded yes I could.

It wasn’t as  though I didn’t have my own thoughts but they were joined to a larger vision that’s all.  I don’t know what else to say about that but it didn’t seem so complicated or impossible a place to get to.  Maybe it is a deal like prayer or contemplation where you practice spending longer and longer times there.  Yea.

You know, this is a journal of my journey and things come up and I report on them.  It is partly cloudy out right now and that would be a report.  In the present everything sort of has the same value, it all seems equally important.  But somethings  are more important in retrospect for seeing patterns or trajectory say.  So, just reporting.

I talked about this before but let’s review.  A book that I read about the Korean War written by a young Marine officer who later became a famous writer left a big impression on me.  At one point he listed all the things that were in his pockets that day.  Seems very mundane, as in why bother but it put flesh on the bones of his story.  Things that we take for granted in the present may just be important to someone down the road  so I continue.

I think that I will read a few poems from my Brian Doyle book.

See you tomorrow, love, Felipe.

On the 2nd we were were talking about Brian Doyle and his final letter “Dear Coherent Mercy: thanks. Best life ever.”  That was very moving to say the least.  Yea.

My Rebecca was so impressed with him when she saw him at a talk at Seattle U last year maybe.  And she bought several books of his, one of which I am holding in my hand entitled “How The Light Gets In And Other Headlong Epiphanies”.   On the title page in Brian’s hand is this note, “To Phil, with my regards – welcome to the wild weird joy of Catholicism – Brian Doyle”.   Yea, that’s it.  I might mention that Seattle U is a Jesuit school and Rebecca probably told him that I was a recent convert to this wild and weird joy.

So I am just getting around to reading this wild and weird book after all this time.   Now I am having  a rest from the pace that folks were giving me books at which seemed like two a day.   I mean there was no way that I was going to keep current under those circumstances but am trying to catch up now.  It is a poetry book but it is made up of  prose poems, a new one on me.  But it is good as his letter and am enjoying it.

So at this same time I am listening to a lot of Pink Martini and my current fav song is “Hey Eugene” written and performed by China Forbes.  It is a wild and weird song about her meeting this guy at a party on Avenue A and hitting it off and leaving her phone number and for whatever reason he doesn’t call back, just nothing.  So, the song is this intense longing for a reconnection.  “Hey Eugene, remember me?”

OK Felipe, how does this all fit together?  Well, last night on the very last page of the book in Brian’s hand is his email address.  It’s like a “Hey Phil, remember me?”  I’m so touched.

Yea, life is fleeting, make stuff happen.   Love you, remember me?  Felipe.