slightly more serious than most

life of late has got me thinking about the nature of faith and the nature of God. someone close to me has recently had a breast cancer scare. someone has gotten married. someone engaged. two someones have lost jobs. one someone has gotten a job. another someone came close to losing a job and getting an ulcer with worry. two someones are trying to have a baby. one someone has two seriously ill family members. life is like this. i have noticed a pattern in myself. when something terrifying or sad happens, i find myself praying like tomorrow's coming depends upon it. when something beautiful happens, i say a quick thanks and, sadly often, don't think much of it again. if i were god, thank God i'm not, i would stop listening to me. i'm like the oposite of a fair weather friend. i only pray when the manure is being flung through the oscillating fan. it makes me think. God is faithful. the root of the word "faithful" is "faith." i claim to have faith. why, then, do i constantly seem to be without devotion? it's rather like a marriage without intimacy, without obedience to the vows. but here God hasn't divorced me yet. as far as i can tell, He has no plans to. He's patient. He keeps answering the prayers said in times of terror. more than that, He keeps saying yes. He even tells me to pray for certain things. why? if God has put it in my heart to pray for something, it's obvious He has it in mind already. already knows what He's going to do. so what possible effect can my faith-without-devotion prayer have? no effect on God, but that's not the point. He keeps reminding me to pray so He can keep demonstrating to me His faithfulness. it's a mystery. a beautiful, moving, challenging mystery.

travel conclusions

having been back in the holler for nearly two months-- can it be?-- i have been remiss in not concluding my vacation account. i left off, i think, with charlie’s rocks and my critters. you would think that, being in florida, less than an hour away from any number of beaches and the historical site of st. augustine, there would be an endless supply of adventures to be had. in all honesty, i’m sure there probably are, and yet as i peruse my vacation pictures, i find that most of the pictures consist of family members doing strange things (welcome the “fart transplant”) to one another, or else florida indigenous wildlife. and when i say “indigenous” wildlife, i mean such exotic creatures as pigeons and toads. we did go to the ocean one day to drink margaritas, build sand castles, and collect shells in the hopefully-not-vain hope that i would make them into jewelry some day. mom-in-law and i did go back to st. george's street in st. augustine to wander vainly in and out of fifty shops and find very little worthy of the price being charged for it. but all in all, somehow, the thing i'll remember most about the trip was probably the armadillo. it was the one thing i never got a picture of (those buggers waddle FAST) but it caused the greatest excitement. i’ve never seen one before. charlie’s never seen one before. and there it was, for reasons only it can understand, hanging out in my family’s landscaping. i can’t imagine that their artful shrubbery is all that tasty. what’s the appeal? i did see a lizard in basking on top of a light fixture in the same flower bed, but armadillos don’t eat lizards, do they? as fast at the lizard moved to escape my camera’s attentions, i think the armadillo would’ve had to be on crank to catch one. and all of this just serves to demonstrate that you can take the girl out of the holler, but she's still just a critters-and-barefoot-in-the-grass being wherever you plunk her down. you can't go barefoot in florida, though. they have scorpions there.