Monthly Archives: June 2012

Carbondale

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I drove many hours yesterday, from Tulsa to southern Illinois. I decided to pull into Carbondale. That’s where I lived while I got my degree in graphic art. I lived in Neely tower, on seventh heaven. Anyway, it was late, CJ was asleep, and as I drove into town it was sad at first. The place has changed a lot since 1975. I think I kept the place in a time bubble in my head. It reinforced the idea that it’s good to have memories, as well, dreams, but our life is best lived in the present.

We are aiming in the general direction of Zionsville, Indiana today. The hot weather in the 100’s has been following us since Wyoming. Back home in Newberg it has been in the 60’s and now in the 70’s.

I’m way behind on what’s going on in the world at large, but I’m pretty up on highways, exits, and the change of landscape across America.

Love

Day… what day is this?

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do you ever feel like you’re running out of time ?
that’s now how i’m feeling.
so many hopeful destinations
and cj doesn’t want to spend all summer in the car.
 
tomorrow we leave tulsa
and i plan on heading toward indiana
to see how it goes there.
 
i also want to get off the interstate
and travel some regular highways and 
byways, now that there are a few more towns and roads.
 
 
 

Day 6

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Going with the flow. Not too much traffic on I-80 in Nebraska. Headed to see a friend of Casey’s near Tulsa. Ok…okay. The flat open apace makes me feel a lonesome heartache. I don’t know why, it feels like I’m in love with something untouchable. The waves of golden wheat against a blue sky…schew. Love nance

Day 3

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We are at applebees in larmie Wyoming, and they have wifi. Headed to Cheyenne and then we will take a detour north to see my sister. She lives near lingle, which is a three hour drive from Cheyenne. She has no computer service right now, so I will be off line for a couple of days. It,s supposed to be 105 degrees there tomthoughts going across Wyoming has been big blue sky and a lot of angus and some horses. The angus were cute because there were a lot of small calfs. I can write a book on the rest stops of the northwest. I am getting better at pumping my own gasoline. To busy driving to get any photos. I am gonna give cj a go at driving on her permit whe we get off the highway. Hopefully we will stay out of the ditch.

Day 2

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Sage brush
Through Idaho
Sage brush
Through Utah
Sage brush
With purple
And yellow flowers
Rose cliffs
Before a golden sunset

Stop
For the night
Stop
Barely into Wyoming
Stop
driving
Stop

Day 1

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I have lived in Oregon since the late seventies and I remember the first time I saw the Columbia gorge. I had never seen anything like it. Today was beautiful, the wide blue green river had some choppy white waves, the douglas fir trees had the company of other trees with their green leaves. High cliffs on the Oregon side faced off with the cliffs on the Washington side. As we headed east the cliffs turned into hills and the trees became smaller and less dense. There was a time of flatness which was an illusion as we were continually climbing since we left Portland. After Pendleton Oregon there was a very steep climb with a grand view point. We have stopped for the night in Baker City, Oregon. Not too bad for the fist day. Today reminded me just how beautiful some of the saved areas are in this state. Tomorrow we will be headed for Idaho and a new time zone. No longer pacific, but mountain time.

seeds

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photo by tom heyes at flickr
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i have started sending seeds
by
e-mail
 
they are all packaged in little seed packets
 
i gather them from all different places 
tell a little bit about where i gathered them
and i leave the rest to you.
 
some
are being opened and enjoyed
 
some
are not getting opened at all
 
perhaps some are going into a spam file
 
…that’s how it goes with seeds
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if you are interested
just let me know by e-mail
and i will put you on the seed list
 
you can always take yourself off the list
there is that option inside each package
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nance.mdr@gmail.com
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coming and going

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Finally, cj’s last day of school.  And the sun travels high across the sky.  I hear a continuous drone of small
aircraft and distant whirring of a selection of machinery cutting back anything green.
 
My toes have been getting more air time and there has been less need for a jacket.
 
I have decided to try and post on the road, when ever i can get wifi with peter’s ipad.  But, not very much
reading…. so i hope that you all will leave me a comment once in awhile…or maybe an email.
 
I am still determined to spend most of my time off-line and turn that around to being more  present in my life… 
where i live. I am aware that it needs to be done for many reasons.
 
I realize that there will be a natural decline in readers here as i read less posts and cut way-back on Spacebook
and Flitter. I think that i will continue to write here anyway.  Writing is good to do, even if no one is reads it.
 
There is pizza on the menu for tonight, so i better get started with the dough making.
 
 
nance
(rhymes with dance)
:-)

places

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God willing, the plan is… for cj and i to be leaving soon on a road trip,  
to travel to and through quite a few states around the country.  It is our
waves of June. I am, with purpose, planing to spend very little time on-line.
 
I don’t know how much i will even use the things i am taking along with the
objective to use them; of which are paper, pens, pencils, coloured pencils,
watercolour and at least one camera.
 
I have been sitting with this thought that it is mostly a matter of place.
At this point, i think that it is important that all of me (heart, soul, mind,
body, spirit) is mostly in the same place at the same time. 
 
I must say that i have learned a little about my own reasons for relating and the
ways that i choose to do it from blogging, and by using facebook and twitter.
 
I have met lovely people on-line that have a similar kind of belief, of which have
helped me to grow in faith.  At the same time that i have been growing in faith,
i have also been growing in awareness that i need to be taking a step away from
my dependence upon internet relating.
 
There has been much positive interaction and encouragement, but, that’s 
part of what makes it so insidious.
 
It is time…for me… to take a step toward the people in my physical presence.  
 
I am not saying that one form of communication is more real than another. 
And yet, there is a difference.  I need to point-out that many of us can easily
let our internet interaction take the better part of us.  
 
It can take too much, and leave little to give to face to face, friends, family,
and  in the place where we are.  And i surely can see that the place that 
we do our physical living in each moment is a powerful place and it is the
place where the goodness for society starts to break-down if our hearts
and minds are not there.
 
It’s also the place where God is best shared when we spend time
with our heart, mind, soul, body, spirit closer to being on the same page.
 
Powerful, grace-filled moments.
 
I know that we all could share more of God when we give God the whole package.
 
I know that when i relate too much by way of the internet, my mind and heart
can travel to places other than where i am.  And when i depend on it too much
i am divided, and i am not sharing what is truly needed in the place where i am.
 
Other things besides the internet could do this just as well.  Like work, fear, 
worries, sickness, addiction, envy, desire, the list goes on and on.  Some things
we can do something about, some things not so much.  
 
But, am i the only one that is feeling this way about the internet relating?
 
 

june

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you may think that the new year, in january, is the time that most changes take place. 
but, it’s not the truth.  even with all the talk before hand about resolutions and promises, all the 
hoopla,  all the noise.  in the end, it is really very little more than talk. 
 
the time of year when things really change is now.  june.  some people leave on vacations, and others 
graduate from some kind of schooling, or both. these are events that grab a person out of their more 
usual tasks and goals and throw them into new ones. it is a time to explore new options and challenges. 
it also causes other people in those lives to make adjustments.  statistically speaking, june is the most 
popular month for weddings in the united states. there are so many things happing in june with a great
amount of an unrecognized undercurrent of gusto that don’t happen the other eleven months of the year. 
 
maybe because it’s not a national holiday it is allowed to be personal, to remain our own. our very
own real-life changes.  and so they might go more unnoticed.  but, isn’t that the way we want it?
 
it’s the june waves of change…for good or for bad, they belong to us and to those who know us.
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15

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home
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there was once
a home here
roses tended
bed of rest
a place to hide
the nakedness
the tender skin
and delicate 
seasons of Love
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6.12.2012

wiman . three

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in the grass . nmdr
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the continuation of my series of Chritian Wiman…
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PORTION THREE

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The only way? Into my words, as into the things around me, seeps the silence that defeats them. Better to say that contingency
is the only way toward knowledge of God, and contingency, for Christians, is the essence of incarnation. And incarnation, as
well as the possibilities for salvation within it, precedes Christ’s presence in history:
 
Into the instant’s bliss never came one soul
Whose soul was not possessed by Christ,
Even in the eons Christ was not.And still: some who cry the name of Christ
Live more remote from love
Than some who cry to a void they cannot name.—after Dante
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♦♦♦
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I wouldn’t want any of this to seem like I’m blaming M. for her suffering, or that I’m in any way refusing to acknowledge the
full impact of it. (Christ is contingency? An absurd, even callous thing for me to have said to her at that moment. It was true,
but the time and the context made it, in any ordinary human sense, false.) There is a sense in which love’s truth is proved by its
end, by what it becomes in us, and what we, by virtue of love, become. But love, like faith, occurs in the innermost recesses of a
person’s spirit, and we can see only inward in this regard, and not very clearly when it comes to that. And then, too, there can
be great inner growth and strength in what seems, from the outside, like pure agony or destruction. In the tenderest spots of
human experience, nothing is more offensive than intellectualized understanding. “Pain comes from the darkness / And we call
it wisdom,” writes Randall Jarrell. “It is pain.”
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Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain,
that every experience is dyed with its color.
This is why, even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They burn darkly and beautifully in
the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.
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continue reading…
the rest of the story.
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