Waiting for trains

Only a few hardy souls venture out at dawn to walk the DeAnza Trail at Canoa Historic Ranch, especially this time of year. For sun lovers and cravers of warmth, the 49 degree starting temperature requires walking gear more common in a Northwest fall. Thus, we have this become accustomed to walking this trail alone.

But there is another hardy soul, a transplant from Alaska, who comes a little later dressed in little but shorts and a light jacket. For her, this weather is “balmy”, and having clothing that allows freedom of movement is important because of her job as a dog trainer and dog walker.

We can always spot her on the trail as she usually has 2-4 leashes with various dogs tied to them. The leashes tangle and untangle as each, at their own speed, revels in the smells of the desert trail. She calls them to her, always her voice encouraging and filled with gentle humor.

And then there is Ginger. Walking free alongside her.

When we first met Ginger, a rescued pit bull, she was afraid to even get out of the car of her new owner. Greeting anyone was impossible, so scared or scarred she was from her previous experience. Over the year we have been encountering her, we have seen her transform into a friendly, adventurous, confident dog.

Being loved well will have that effect.

Ginger’s confidence shone today as we approached the dog pack. Her entire wide face exploded in a dog grin, tongue flopping out one side. We thought she was happy to see us, but her owner, when she approached, drew attention to the clacking of rail cars cutting through the desert in the distance. Ginger was staring transfixed across the desert landscape.

It’s the train, she says.

Her owner, ever the dog whisperer, has been writing emails to the train company with a simple request. When you pass by the desert alongside Canoa Ranch, will you blow your train horn for my dog. Today, for the first time, the whistle blows, and we watch as Ginger’s grin explodes further.

Because Ginger loves trains more than anything, her owner says she often sits with Ginger by the wash in the distance for up to an hour waiting for a train to pass. Ginger will stare into the distance with an anticipation that is palpable. And she always knows when one is about to appear.

Ginger feels the vibrations of the coming train, she says.

I think about Ginger’s anticipation…her ability to sense when joy is inching closer. I think about her absolute trust that what she craves will be supplied. And I think about her singular focus on what matters most as she walks this trail:

The train is coming.

Sadly, my focus is often on the dangers in the desert and in life. I am constantly being struck by the venomous behaviors of human beings towards each other. My heart is stabbed by the needles and spikes of human cruelty. There is so much I do not understand.

And sometimes, I lose my capacity to register hope.

But this morning, I thought about Ginger, who like Jay Gatsby, seems to have an “extraordinary gift for hope.” Her hope is not deterred by circumstance or challenged by experience. She knows the train is coming, and she is willing to wait for how ever long it takes until her heart is filled to overflowing with its sound and motion. She is in the moment, feet firmly planted on the ground, eyes ever scanning the landscape beyond her vision.

And so it should become with me.

I need to attune my senses to what thrives in an unseen world and yet is ever present and ever available to me here on the ground on which I walk. I need to remember that the dangers around me are temporal and will never outlast what lives just beyond the horizon. And I need to focus my vision on that which I can not see but which is more real than the needle ridden landscape before me.

I need to attune my heart to the vibrations of hope in the distance.

And in these troubled times, I imagine you do too.

The Woman Who Talks with God

“People are meant to live in an ongoing conversation with God,

speaking and being spoken to.” Dallas Willard

One of my dearest friends is a Woman Who Talks with God. She is not necessarily on her knees in a closet or screaming prayers from a corner sidewalk. She is conversational, I believe, in a way of someone who loves another with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And more importantly, she knows she is loved passionately and without judgement by the One she loves.

Being soaked in this knowledge infuses her with an innate ability to love lavishly. Her metaphorical table is constantly being set with her best plates and drink glasses whenever she meets a new person. She wraps the stranger and the friend in a warm embrace and she listens deeply and comforts richly. To know her is to know love.

When she says in conversation, “I was talking to God,” you can trust she was, in that constant casual way of friends who, because they know each other so well, seek constant communion. The fact that God speaks back should surprise no one.

It never surprises me.

What does surprise me at times, though, is the depth of insight that she receives from the Creator of all things. There are times that the word spoken “just for her” is so profound that it transcends just her own life circumstances.

And I am still reeling from her last communication received in her life of prayer conversation.

My friend has been going through a relational situation for years with someone she loves with all her heart…someone whose life is characterized by issues beyond his own control in many ways. Someone for whom she would willingly give up her life.

Someone for whom she has literally endangered her own health and safety.

Because she has felt so helpless to know what the “right thing” is to do, she has been sharing her heart with God for a decade or more, wanting so badly to discern the best way through. She has not asked for the struggle to be lifted, because she is a woman who never gives up on anyone. A woman of great courage.

But she has sought counsel and direction from an omnipotent Creator.

A few days ago she shared that in her latest time of conversation, she kept asking for help in knowing how to proceed and kept listening for a answer that would help her best serve her commitment to love no matter what the circumstances. And God, as always came through.

You need to let him go, or he will never find his way to Me.

That was it. And that was all that was needed. Because this woman, whose capacity to love is limitless, would never have enough love to equal the love that was waiting in God’s embrace. Because sometimes human love is not enough.

And sometimes, the greatest act of love is to let go.

Ever since our phone call, I have been haunted by that Sacred voice speaking into my own life. Who are the people in my life that I love too much to release to a greater, more redemptive love? What are the situations that I seek to control out of the best intentioned love that need to be released to a universal source whose wisdom has no boundaries?

And what is it in me that is drifting in uncertain, treacherous waters that needs to be released to the One who calls the sea to be still.

As Rilke always reminds me, it is going to have to be enough for right now to love the questions…to let them permeate my heart and cleanse my soul.

But in my wondering, I was reminded of a conversation with an elderly woman of great wisdom years ago who had endured so much in her family. She shared openly of her struggles with various children and a less than perfect husband. I asked her how she handled all of her concerns. Her answer was immediate.

I put ‘em in a box and give ‘em to Jesus.

My friend has been given this insight. And since she shared her wisdom,

I am out searching for a large enough box.

An unillustrated life.

My daughters were grown, their rooms were vacated, and the possibilities of developing a creative life again inspired me to consider how I might decorate one of the rooms to make a dedicated space for writing. Seeking inspiration for my newly acquired home office, I had scoured old boxes and files and crudely stapled and pinned evidence of my former life as a musician and songwriter on an entire wall of the room.

But I was still deep into my real life of teaching, and rather than encouragement, staring at that wall haunted me with a pressure to create I could not muster. I remember standing in front of that wall of memories and having a “Come to Jesus” moment with myself.

That life was my past.

Those memories were too raw for me. To move forward and not live in a constant state of discontent, I had to exorcise that former life from my heart. I stared at the images and letters on the wall one last time. Then, one by one, I slowly ripped every memory from that wall, shredding them as I did, leaving a blank wall dotted with the tiny remnants of push pin holes and staples.

And I said goodbye to my old life.

But somewhere in the back of my brain, I took comfort in knowing that there were keepers

of those shared memories living their lives in places throughout the country. Perhaps, they, like I, had moments in their mundane lives where they recalled those days of life filled with with creativity and laughter.

Perhaps they, like I, recalled days filled with the dark shadows of lives lived without common sense and boundaries, which often left a trail of human misery in its wake.

But you know how it is.

Mostly the memory of misery dilutes with time, and so, over the years, I had been sporadically trying to locate old band mates through social media, usually in moments of boredom or discontent with the daily grind of life. I wanted to reconnect to those memories…to find someone to relive the stories with.

Of all the musicians I had worked with, there was one whose image loomed large. He was inordinately talented and sadly addicted, a flaw that had kept him from true greatness. He was charismatic on stage, unless the alcohol took over. His passion ran deep for music, for drugs, for alcohol, and for just about any other vice.

But I loved that guy.

Over the years, Tim and I talked about how cool it would be for them to meet. My husband had heard some of his work on recordings and came to view him with the same admiration I did. I envisioned our getting together, playing music, and getting caught up on decades of lives apart.

My research was sporadic over the years as work consumed all my energy. But one Saturday in my fifties, I decided to actively pursue finding him so Tim and I could plan a reunion trip. The rabbit trail I followed was time consuming, hitting dead end after dead end until I saw one article with his name in the headline.

The headline, dated three years prior, announced to the world that he had died at 58.

My heart exploded. A chasm opened up and into it dropped all the corroborating evidence of that old life, the life that floated in a sea of possibilities and the life lived outside the lines. Gone was the corroboration of nights of music in biker bars and drinking vats of cigarette flavored coffee at the local IHOP while the sun rose over the plains of Colorado. Gone was the corroboration of long drives with a car crammed full of sleepy musicians and instruments, just me and the moon awake and a trucker's radio station blaring to cover the sound of their snores.

Gone the corroboration that there was a time when the music was all that mattered and being broke for the love of the muse was a badge of honor.

It's a bit like going to your high school reunion and finding out you are the last one standing. With whom do you swap tales of memorable moments? With whom will you muse, "remember when” and then share the tears and laughter such reminiscing brings? With whom will you imagine that you still have what it takes to do that again?

At the time, I wished I could go back and piece together those torn photographs and memorabilia ripped from the walls of my home office. The pictures told the tale of a life lived passionately and, sometimes, recklessly in the pursuit of creativity.

But, as Thomas Wolfe stated, you can’t go home again. That was a home that lived its purpose. And my life now is lived not in the memories of what was, but in moments of what is…

A quieter creativity floods my life now, free of the tyranny of schedules and unembumbered by the weight of bad decisions. It is soaked in a desert landscape that fills my life with inescapable beauty and inspiration.

And for that, I need no pictures on the walls.