October 11, 2001

For those of you who haven’t heard, our “new” home sits perched upon the edge of a rock ledge way out here in the “Gateway to the Texas Hill Country.”  Where the stars spill down to the edge of the earth...

Out here on the edge, Gene has been hurrying to get our taxes done before the 15th.  Every year we "extend" to the limit.  Each spring we swear we won't let it drag into fall.  Never have we ever filed on or near April 15.  Always we are late, late, late.  We can't even leave the house together in one gesture.  One of us always forgets something and has to run back in at the last minute.  Usually him.  He says it's a family trait.

So I should be helping him go through the mountains of cardboard box files, but I just can't seem to get out of this chair. I think my ISP even kicked me off line ten minutes ago for being idle...Oh, well; Gene will just have to fret over those boxes by himself for awhile. Meanwhile, I am just going to sit here in this chair until my keyboard begins to type a letter.  With, or without me.  After the past month, I don't want to remember how to hurry anymore.......And one can , indeed, get away with procrastinating when one is at least 40 miles from the nearest Babylon.  Time isn't held in the same regard out in country.   In many ways, it is hard to keep track of time, at all, out here.  I guess fresh air and lack of urban freneticism does that to you, eventually.

But it is something more, lately.

We always notice how it begins to get really quiet just past the city limits, when we return from errands in Austin.  We get quieter, too.  Everything starts to move a little slower the closer we get to home.  But now it even feels safer out here, too, somehow.  Less complicated.  Less conspicuous, perhaps.   There's no noise way out here on the plateau, you know----like that day after the bombing when no planes were flying.  And it's always that quiet when we walk outside in the morning.
(Well, except in early spring when the bullfrogs are singing).  For the past year it has been gratifying to look out off our back porch down through the arroyo past the blue notch to the 40 mile mesa and beyond, and have it shout back to us "view here made by God!"  And before 9/11, having lived formerly as city-dwellers we found it plain humbling to walk out our back door, hear no noise, see forever, and be repeatedly reminded that no human being could ever make anything so beautiful as what we see down that canyon.

But now it more than comforts me to walk out there with a steaming hot cup of coh-fee-reg'-u-lah, and remember that the very One whose own hands created all this incredible rocky, hilly, green tree'd river canyon vista, with its
hawks-sailing-above-my-head-on-trasient-thermals-in-a-relentless-blue-October-sky, with deer-always-chompin'-on-the-daisies, and-armadillos-diggin'-up-my-roses,
bigass-roadrunner-chirpin'-at-me-from-the-backporch-railing,
last-three-rubythroated-humming-birds-of-summer-buzzing'-by-my-head,
praying-mantis-on-the-window-screen-lookin'-at-a-walkingstick-on-the-backporch-door, country-kind-of-morning -- and remember that He, not we, made all of this, and is still in control of this big blue spinning ball we live on.
And it makes me think about a time long ago when the Almighty One must have lifted up His huge Holy hands to part the waters, squeezing mountains from mere clay, raising from dust every single living thing that breathed, blowing His Own life into all molecules everywhere as He went along, happily painting even-our-own-green-meadow-with-golds-and-purples-and-reds.

Oh, it just makes me weak in the knees to gaze down that canyon He made (and has now brought us to) and weaker still to remember that long, long ago The Same One looked down upon all this that He had created, and for centuries has watched us all fall down, felt us thump His free watermelon, witnessed us fulfilling our worst potential, patiently let us blame everyone else for our own trouble, and suffered us blaming Him for making us.... He's had to hear His own creation deny its Creator's hands, long suffered our attempts to define the process of creation as we've dissected Him like a frog in biology class, then ultimately tried to write Him out of the equation entirely, or change His name to one-who's-more-pleasing-to-us, more manageable.  He's indeed held His Holy breath as we've squashed one another's heads and toes endlessly playing King-of-the-Hill, then waited on us with great forbearance while we, His own sheep, attempted to roll out of those ditches of our own device on our own, and Who has so incredibly and unbelievably mercifully withheld His Holy wrath from us as we raised up ashera poles in high places exalting ourselves and all our desires, while profaning Him and simultaneously spitting on the very tree we used to beat and nail His Son to------and I gaze back down this canyon which no human hands could make and I swoon with joy and relief at the promise He has made, that Our Bright Dayspring on High, Our Lion of Judah, The Rod of Jesse, El Shaddai, El Elyon na Adonai, Our King of Kings, Son of David, Son of God, God, Messiah, Our Same, Holy One, He has also promised to all of us losers who couldn't find our way out of this horrific mess we're eyeball-deep-and-waking-up-daily-in with a proverbial map and a flashlight, to us who can't even live up to our own expectations most of the time, let alone live up to His -- this One, from the very foundations of His own earth, has devised so extraordinary a plan for all those who would ever call upon His name, no matter how soon; no matter how late---------this Same Immutable Holy One has promised that He would never leave nor forsake us.

He has further promised that -- to those of us who believe His unbelievable story and who love Him----that He still works all things together for good (Romans 8:28, Job 38-41).