I can whine with the best of them but I will try and wrap up my winter blues whining today. We have a new month, there is noticeably more light to the day, bulbs are sending up shoots and maybe the best thing, the hens are laying again. Wiley and I had fresh neighborhood eggs for breakfast a few moments ago to celebrate. So things are happening in the spring department, time to get with it Felipe.

Time to get positive, get moving, right? One of the nurses at the hospital wanted me to bring her some rhubarb plants, time to dig those up. Terry from Sabbath Moment was over Saturday and gave me some ideas about blogging and bible study that are useful and maybe lead to a few changes. Our Jennifer has been worried about me and I need to do something about that. She doesn’t any extra worry. Yea, stuff going on.

Pilgrim Farmer John checked in last night with a comment on “What Is Love?” which is lovely. The post was part of the reading that I heard on Sunday morning at church here and he read at his Iowa church. He was the lector which he has been doing for a long while apparently. We are learning more about him as time goes on. But the main thing is that he has to fight choking up sometimes while reading particularly juicy parts of the bible. This happens to Caminoheads.

OK, time to walk here in a few moments. We are getting down the road to Burgos and the Cathedral there and thoughts of historical guys like El Cid. Burgos is where Kelly and I last saw Gracie our Australian Camino buddy. She was the one who saved my head from bonking on the stone floor of the church where I passed out. Falling into the arms of Grace I call it. A Camino moment, a Camino buddy for sure. God bless you Gracie.

And God bless you and your day, love, Felipe.

I am walking up a storm lately trying to tire out Roan the Irish Setter we are dog sitting. I think he is winning. So since last Sunday we have made: Vitoria del Rioha, Villamayor del Rio, Belorado, Tosantos and Villabistia. 44 kilometers to go to Burgos.

The current walking schedule:
Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630

Still need rubber boots but not quite sunscreen. Felipe.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Love doesn’t have a swelled head,
Love doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

First Corinthians 13:4-7.

Wiley’s happy about that. He needs a few days off to heal his aching body. Watching him wrestle with construction in the winter brings back memories of years ago when I was there. It’s a young man’s game.

Sorry if my Thursday post yesterday was too pessimistic. I didn’t intend that, was just trying to report my impressions. Things aren’t always pretty.

Perhaps I will just let that rest for now. I would like to explain more fully what was going on but this is not the morning. Too many things happening today that need to be addressed and I can’t seem to focus. The thing to do for me is to simplify things and maybe jettison a few items. My first priority is to not get overwhelmed.

Did you check out the fireworks show from China? There is a live link, just tap on “Fireworks!!!” on yesterday’s second post. OK, have to go, sorry for the shorty.

Deep breathes, thinking fireworks, love, Felipe.

Fireworks!!!

thanks, Oakville Ellen.

My Rebecca exclaimed that last evening at dinner after we were talking about several friends who were deep in their cancer challenges. And I said, “Well, there must be some reason for it.” Like there is some reason for mosquitos, but who the heck knows on that one. A part of the web of life I guess, that you can’t separate out.

At the Cancer Treatment Center parking lot there are a few bumper stickers and window decals that express nasty things that people want to do to cancer. Yea, totally understand the sentiment. Throw one at it for me!

But I was up at zero dark thirty mediating and getting in touch and a few ideas came to me then that are definitely blog material. I wrote down a few notes to remind me of the thread. Sometimes I don’t write stuff down and lose it. I suppose not to worry as it goes into some brain bin somewhere for recovery later, maybe.

Yes, we can hate cancer, of course. Hate, hate, hate away, somebody has to do it I suppose. But suppose we were to take that energy and do something else with it. I guess I should speak for myself here. Personally, I realize that I have only so much energy. What to do with a finite amount becomes something to work out. Somehow I have chosen to try to observe it, cancer, to run reconnaissance on it. Somehow “battling cancer” is not my way or it is not what I am doing now, although we hear that phrase everywhere.

I was trying to explain this stance to Sister Joyce at our last meeting. She put the words “active resignation” on it. OK, that will do for now.

My present thought is that cancer is a expression of our own untidiness, our own chaos, our own craziness. It represents an incredible challenge to our sense of ourselves, personally and collectively. We/I have to admit a lot of stuff to get that.

To buoy me up I got a beautiful email form Gracie in Australia yesterday and another from another Camino buddy Mary Margaret this AM. Thanks guys, can’t do without you, love, Felipe.

Super Bowl coming up in two weeks and Pro Bowl this weekend. I’m thinking over stimulation maybe for old Felipe. Really what I need is some quiet time to “run silent, run deep” in submarine talk, do some mediation in other words.

I am letting myself do that more and more now, take the time, that is. Dr Z, my beloved rehab doc, would be in favor of that. I don’t see him for another two weeks, it’s been a while. He is prominent in the rough cut documentary by the way which we have been watching lately working on the credits.

Our Catherine is off on a vacation to some place warm. We were talking last walk about the idea of studying the Prophets, the ones in the Hebrew Bible. Catherine has been listening to an Old Testament scholar on podcasts and listening to me talk about my Bible Guys study group and put those ideas together I guess. She wants to start studying them as poetry, OK. I have read and studied the books of Daniel and Esther and could do more. So that is in the works.

I did some little artwork for the documentary yesterday and have to have it scanned and sent in this AM to the animator. We will see if they can use it, looks pretty rough to me. Then off to Our Jennifer’s to work on our remodel project. I haven’t had a chance to spend time with her lately so that will be good.

Well, it looks like one of those gray days with no shadows apparent around here as I look out the window. It’s not bright and perky but OK will see what I can do with it. Off to my day and thinking about you, love, Felipe.

by Ted Kooser, (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006, from his book of poems following cancer treatment, “Winter Morning Walks/One Hunder Post Cards to Jim Harrison”)

Walking in the darkness, in awe,
beneath a billion indifferent stars
at quarter to six in the morning,
the moon already down
and gone, but keeping a pale lamp burning
at the edge of the west,
my shoes too loud in the gravel
that, faintly lit, looks to be little more
than a contrail of vapor,
so thin, so insubstantial it could,
on a whim, let me drop through it
and out of the day,
but I have taught myself
to place one foot ahead of the other
in noisy confidence
as if each morning might be trusted,
as if the sounds I make might buoy me up.

(thanks to Steve-O)

Yup, it’s here somewhere. I have to make it out to the shop to make somethings happen there and the hardhat will turn up I’m sure. I just need to get started and things will happen and by evening sufficient progress will be there.

Well, Our Beloved Annie just emailed in asking if I could do some things for the movie. She needs last minute help and what is a guy to say? And what that means for us here at the blog is I have to run for now. Will be back tomorrow of course.

In the meantime, it’s alperfect, love, Felipe.

The Love of Morning

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we’ve lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight’s gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident – our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth’s
beloved dust, leading the way – all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

~ Denise Levertov ~