Montana Skies

Truly Montana is big sky country. On a canvas stretched across eternity, clouds charge across the sky like Disney animations on steroids – empty-eyed flying dragons strike at fat furry bears that fly by, nipping at the tails of celestial squirrels. 

Look below and a different drama unfolds. Cavorting through the tall grass a wild black bear forages. It pokes, unconcerned about the people pile-up on the road – anglers for a glimpse of a creature that is cute and uncontrollable, darling and dangerous.  

  In a meadow a lone bison lounges undisturbed, chewing his cud. We joke that although we appreciate his ubiquitous quality – his stolid, preternatural presence – if he gets paid per viewer he will lose to the bear.

It’s the vistas that most enchant me – the lone dwelling settled in a pasture of sweet grass dotted with prairie flax looking like a pointillism masterpiece. A warm speck of life against a majestic snow-capped mountain, it whispers in the wind: Here there is time and space.

Channeling Sarah Winchester

I get Sarah Winchester.  She thought as long as she could hear the sounds of construction in her house, she would never die. I too feel happy when I hear the industrious buzz of worker bees in my house –updating a bathroom or installing fresh carpet that banishes old red wine stains and cat barf we discovered when we moved the piano.
 

It seems that I wake up every morning to unfinished business. Unlike Sarah, my agenda is not to live in this body, in this house, on this earth for eternity. Still, I feel compelled to wrap things up in an orderly fashion.

I want to put my house in order, literally and figuratively.  I want to finish things – the revision of my novel, my ancestry tree, the pile of photos and photo albums sitting in the corner.

Even though I know it’s a race I won’t win, I want to maintain things. In aerobics the other morning the instructor on our tape encouraged us to let the house go and take better care of the temple – this body we live in. If I took as good care of my body as I do my house, I would look like Queen Esther.

Life seems to have a heavy maintenance schedule. I’ve started considering that when some delightful shelf dweller wants to go home with me. Is it worth the time to learn how to use it, the space to store it and the aggravation of caring for it?  Usually not.

It’s come to my attention that I got way to good at acquisition, and now I can’t get rid of stuff fast enough. Today I tossed a pair of Capri pants because they take too long to iron. Also a pair of vacation pants I bought for my husband so he would look like a stud.  Because he defines “stud” as a surface that doesn’t require a molly bolt, they’ve never been worn. I sorted my Tupperware into square containers and round containers and bagged all the round ones. Square containers without lids are followed their round cousins to the thrift shop.

In the glee of divestiture, I still find I want to start things – not new rooms in my house but new life experiences. I think that’s where Sarah and I part company.  I don’t need any more rooms in my house.  I need room in my life for God to fill with good things.

Gold

Singing praise songs in church on a Sunday, I became aware of how like our thought life a praise song plays. I focus my conscious thought on what the words and phrases mean in a song like In Under Your Wing*:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills

For I know where my help comes from
You will sustain my weary soul
For it’s by Your grace I stand here today.

Focused attention forms the melody of my thoughts, but soon I hear a harmony.  It’s the nether song of the muse introducing a contemplative accord or a cognitive dissonance into my praise:

The hills – the peaks of Yosemite were beautiful this morning.  Jesus, why don’t I look up more? We should go into the park next week after the holiday crowd leaves; no, we shouldn’t, we have to get ready for the carpet installation. Focus!

By your grace I stand here today – and, where is everyone else? Attendance is light today. I wonder if the kids bothered with church today. Focus!

Thank you Jesus that I am in this place, with the beauty of your world in my backyard, singing with this praise choir of precious souls. I am blessed.

The harmonic balance of tension and peace give depth to praise in the much the same way that subconscious thought – the kind that comes through the door at our invitation or bursts into our interior rooms unbidden – gives rise to understanding and creativity.

Sometimes my soul yearns to hear a descant. Musically, a descant is a counter melody that floats above the main melody and carries the theme. A counterpoint in the life of the mind might be the still, small voice we all long to hear.

Folk singer John Stewart performed a song called Gold. It had a wistful refrain:

“People out there turning music into gold.” 

Although the gold he yearned for was the money that could be made from music in the right market, this is a beautiful phrase when placed in a different context.  People turn music into gold when they direct their song to God. Perhaps our praise is the gold that paves Heaven’s highways.

*Christy Cooper

Watercolors

I took my first watercolor class yesterday.  Let’s put a frame around that.  I took a watercolor class at the Yosemite Art and Education Center; with my five and seven-year old grandkids (GKs); on a day when sunlight tangoed with the trees in the meadow and the falls spilled snowmelt like a bosomy matron in a bikini.

I’d spent the past two weeks observing the GKs who sponge new experiences with thirsty glee. On this year’s summer visit, they learned to keep a horse’s head up and out of a tempting salad of poison oak and swim without water wings to the platform in the middle of the lake (don’t tell their mom). The boy improved his aim with the BB gun he keeps here and the girl learned to knit. (I will make no comment on gender roles; it was their choice.)

It was interesting to see how differently we all approached the lesson as we sat in the meadow and sketched our view of Half Dome. The five-year-old drew big a teepee-shaped rock in the middle of his paper and then filled in detail around it from his imagination. After the seven-year-old pulled her attention away from the “eeuuuwww” factor of small bugs flying into her face she produced a very credible sketch. I, on the other hand, put pencil to paper and froze.

As I pulled my pencil along the pebbly paper a refrain started up in my head – I am really bad at this.  I pressed on, filling in more detail than is appropriate for a watercolor sketch and assessing my progress at intervals – the perspective is off; the scale of the tree in the foreground is wrong; this looks more like Mt. Fuji than Half Dome.    

We returned from the meadow and pulled out the paints.  At the end of the day, the children each had a drawing they were proud of and I had a soggy piece of paper. They learned the difference between poster paints and water colors.  I learned some life lessons.

Where to begin -- the sky or the grass? No, begin with the focal point. I may make that a daily practice.

A sketch is a roadmap for your painting.  It should be drawn lightly enough to be erased before you add color. It should include notes about color choices. Note to self: what in my life could benefit from an eraser and what needs color?

Blending watercolors is a delicate and mysterious art.  Who knew that gray wasn’t black dumbed down a little with white. “Try pulling in a bit of yellow into that muddy drop, or a little blue, and see what you get,” our teacher suggested. We got thrilling purplish and peachy grays. 

So much to learn – like any art, watercolor must needs be learned from a master and practiced over time.  I wish I’d started earlier. I return to my writing with a fresh perspective.  There are so many rich experiences in life to pull in.  

Borderline

When life changes and the family dynamics suffer a seismic shift, it’s time to reframe the future.  I’m still adjusting to a universe in which my parents’ generation has disintegrated. As the stars fall around me and the galaxy rearranges itself above my head, I will draw new borders for my life. Then, I will cross them.

My new borders will feature places that comfort and inspire me.  I pull out an atlas and search for a favorite city.  It could be as close as San Francisco or as far away as Paris. It does have to be accessible – a place I can tuck up in for cultural feasting.  

I think I’ll start my western border at the Pacific coastline and look for a signature beach town to call my own. When my soul needs soothing, I need to rest my eyes on the horizon and fill my ears with Poseidon’s throaty roar.

My western border will extend from the Puget Sound to San Diego. From there I will draw a line through the Sonoran Desert to Santa Fe and then wiggle my pencil over to pick up Chicago and the Upper Michigan Peninsula before I scurry back to the Pacific Coast.

Like a proud spider contemplating her intricate web, I will hang out in my corner of the Sierras. When I spot something juicy in another corner of my world, I’ll scuttle over and check it out.

New holidays are in order.   We’ll downsize old favorites like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ll celebrate Columbus Day with a trip to an unexplored mecca and Valentine’s Day with a romantic adventure. No dutiful recycling on Earth Day for us, we will choose a day to dub Big Sky day and celebrate it in the air.  

Our seasons won’t be related to the weather but to our mode of transportation – Wings, Wheels, Waterways and Wanderings. Our seasons are not consecutive they are whimsical, like the weather, and when we run out of money – the ice floe, baby; new vistas.

Cheap thrills

I get it.  I get that internet addiction – flirting, sexting, virtual hook-ups – is as much about the thrill of pursuit as it is about sex. Life is stressful and people need their distractions. In the grand scheme it’s trivial, people say.

I listen to the responses to Representative Weiner’s predicament.  An eye-winking press cites a long history of this type of behavior in men who have otherwise been judged as good leaders.

Outraged supporters go a step further to say that if people would just ignore You Tube and all the issues that get us off track, the country would be better off. They believe that issues like the state of marriage and family take us off track when we should be worried about the economy and the environment.   He is doing a good job for his constituents, they say. What he does in the privacy of his own gymnasium is his own business.

But is not private, it is a public display of a complete lack of integrity. Integrity is the steadfast adherence to a moral or ethical code. What belief system or code of behavior does this sneaking around serve?

We have been served well by good men whose public and private lives have survived intense scrutiny. John Adams comes to mind.  We have possibly been served well by scoundrels who have owned up to a long list of bad behavior, but at least they have owned it.  There is some integrity in their "this is me, take it or leave it." stance.  It is consistent. 

There is no integrity in a man who demurs, deflects and defies his party when they ask him to step aside. "I know your deeds, that you are neither hot nor cold," God says in Revelations 3:15,16. "I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm -- neither hot nor cold -- I am about to spit you out of my mouth." that is a perfect definition of a man who lacks integrity.

This one man is not my real concern, but the numbers of men who are amusing themselves in this way.  How many marriages break because a husband or wife so distances themselves behind the closed door of internet addiction that they destroy the fragile bonds of intimacy?

Marriage is sustained by meaningful conversation, shoulder-to-shoulder labor and mutual joy. Good government is sustained by meaningful dialog, shoulder-to-shoulder labor and mutual respect.

Internet addiction is not a recreational pastime. By its very nature it consumes large amounts of time and attention and encourages deception. That is time and attention stolen from wives and children. I can’t think that the electorate, whom  offending politicians are sworn to serve, benefit from inconstancy and corruption.

Circling Facebook

Fool’s give you reasons. Wise men never try. I wanted to post this on my facebook page today but decided it is more appropriate to be enigmatic on a blog. And, it’s a nice lead-in to a discussion about facebook, which I promised two new acquaintances I would do on my blog.

I met these delightful women at a reception at the top of the Transamerica Building in San Francisco. After exploring our various connections – we’re all passionate about what we do – pharmacology, hedge fund management and writing; we all love cities on the water – San Francisco, Seattle and Stockholm; and we’re all mystified by where facebook is taking interpersonal communications. In particular, one woman posed this question. Why are so many people willing to broadcast their personal information?

I opened a facebook account for two reasons.  I wanted to understand social media and I wanted to understand my kids. My son and daughter-in-law use facebook to keep track of each other, sometimes when they are sitting in the same room.  I see the discussions they have about myriad mundane issues – clogged sinks, who will do the dinner dishes, who’s tired and headed for bed; facebook has been criticized for banality but it’s the pedestrian nature of their conversation that delights me. I have access to the information that the tomato vines survived the hornworms and the surf was good on Saturday morning. I see that all is right in their world.  

It is interesting to contemplate that the song, There must be 50 ways to leave your lover, was written before the advent of social media, so now, counting email and twitter, we can add at least three more ways to that list. If we open a discussion about what is happening in our lives to the full spectrum of our personal network, is that a good thing or a bad thing?  It tests the waters of who is interested enough to comment and indeed, they may have valuable feedback. (That’s how I found a mechanic when my car developed a new rattle and my husband was out of town.)

Facebook seems to serve many functions, from back-fence gossip to the venting or validation of emotions. Being a writer, I can understand the value of wanting to edit your words before you place them in the public arena. You can’t take back what you’ve blurted out at the height of emotion. You can wordsmith a tweet or delete an ill-chosen posting before it’s done too much damage. So maybe there is some element of control at work here that might be missing in a face to face encounter.

A good test of appropriateness remains what I learned in Journalism 101.  Play it as a headline. If you have any question about words you feel led to share/ actions you feel compelled to take, write it out in your mind as a newspaper headline.  Hornworms attack early vines, stir debate over pesticides seems acceptable. French banking magnate jailed for attacking maid in hotel room – I just shake my head. Morality aside, if he’d taken 10 seconds to write that headline before he dropped his towel, he might have made a better decision.