In an almost New Testament manner, an earlier church we attended had a satellite campus at a winery east of Temecula. The pic above shows the view the gathered believers have during worship. This last Sunday, just after the sermon began, a small, yellow-breasted bird flew up to the window, beating his wings trying to get in. Tiring, he flew back to a grapevine branch, rested, then resumed his attempts to enter God's presence. After a few moments he tired…
Read MoreHave a Beer?
I may get some push back on this post. In a previous book, I mentioned that the Bible doesn’t forbid drinking alcohol in moderation and received some VERY critical reviews..some quite personal. Yes, reviewers, we remember the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, I did intentionally forget your name. Well, most of it. In the early 1970’s…
Read MoreFish by Faith, Not Sight
As you read this post, I’ll likely be on a stream like the one above. So please take a look at the pic. A close one, and focus at the middle of the pool just below the horizontal line of white water, just below the good sized rock. See any trout? Peer closely…
Read MoreHabituated
No, this may not qualify as unusual, but some time back my email account got hacked. A friend forwarded an email he had received “from me,” with a link that obviously wasn’t from me. So, I changed the password that I’d kept for several years (OK, I made some minor, rememberable tweaks) into a longer more exceptional one. MUCH harder to remember. Much harder to hack.
But for the next several weeks, 90% of the times I signed into my email account, I automatically used the old email password. Habits die hard. Before…
Read MoreA Whole New World
On a recent flight to Alaska for the wedding of a good friend, this traveling man received quite a shock. I’ve ridden a motorcycle in all 50 states and flown over most of the contiguous US, and love how an airplane window seat provides a God’s eye view of the world. I traced our trek from San Diego to Seattle over the California coast, Mt. Shasta in NorCal and Crater Lake in Oregon, culminating in Mt. Rainier. But as we left Seattle for Anchorage, something happened that totally rocked my world…
Read MoreSetting Your Spirit
The church building required refurbishing. Multiple decades had aged it, and the minimal remodeling spoke of bygone eras. Even worse, the entrance was on the opposite side of the parking lot, well hidden to first time visitors. Many people drove in, saw no entrance, and drove right out. So we embarked on a major project: cut into a retaining wall, install steps, remove vegetation, craft a new entrance by the parking, and paint the entire interior. One of our leaders, an Air Force officer, led the painting crew, and I struggled to say nothing as…
Read MoreGetting Beyond Ourselves--Love
At about thirteen, when I’d grown enough to be a fishing partner in the rugged Sierras, Dad initiated me into the mysteries of the fine art of pulling trout from mountain streams, a skill his grandfather had passed on to him. Learning from the master, we became fairly competitive on catching both the largest and most. Three years later, I landed a 16-inch rainbow on Oak Creek, huge there. I felt pretty confident until…
Read MoreRoots
Our annual cross country biker group calls itself the Gray Hogs, in a veiled allusion to Tim Allen’s movie Wild Hogs. Two prime requirements to be a Hog: you don’t need to belong to the Harley Owners’ Group, just pack a few extra pounds, and to sport some gray hair. Oh yeah, and to ride a bike and to get along with the charter members.
Even so, old totally dominated part of our ride to the Taos NM area. We visited the country’s oldest continuously occupied residence, Taos Pueblo, which dates back to 1000 AD. A bit later in Santa Fe we explored the country’s oldest church, the San Miguel Mission from 1610 (I snuck up and rang the bell before learning they allowed it), the oldest seat of government from colonial days with Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors, also 1610, and what some claim to be the country’s oldest residence, the De Vargas Street House, from 1646. All…
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