Porch Stories :: August & Summer 2018

• July 2018 Highlights

• June 2018 Highlights

• Time to summarize another meteorological season and review the month almost past! I've been neglecting writing a weekly Porch Story and haven't blogged anything else. Most often I pick up the same topic as Porch Stories host Kristin, but despite formatting my porch header image at least a dozen times for a post that never happened, as August concludes with a seasonally sunny southern California day and urban foresters noisily trimming magnolias up and down the street, I'll claim two of Kristin's recent themes:

• trusting the time keeper

• changes and seasons

• and I'm participating in Emily P. Freeman's summer 2018 seasonal linkup.

• Today (I'm illustrating more blueberries because they've been abundant and succulent) I finally link up again with Kristin's Stories from the Porch in August. I love how she divides her months into categories!

• Although this month's overview is image- rather than text-heavy (but not because of the old Photoshop sub-app ImageReady), its progression from the 2^nd to the 28^th plus August including outings and activities provides you, the blog visitor, a sense of trusting the Time Keeper and Life Giver with changes and seasons. At the end I don't say any more about this journey, about railroad tracks, or about homecoming, yet all those were all over desert spirit's fire! during my last few years in Previous City. You can look under labels tell the story, tellingthestory, and life stuff.

• To say I'm still extremely discouraged is an understatement, yet symbols as ordinary as a stack of dishes on the shelf (color-filled stock photo from unsplash, but I could've pictured kitchen actuals), the agricultural cycle doing its thing, the church's year of grace keepin' on keepin' on till by now it's run three-quarters of its course continue to remind me to trust the Divine Time Keeper who self-reveals in commonest everyday objects and events, whose claims to fame include subverting the status quo and resurrection from the dead. (If resurrection isn't "subverting a status quo," what could it be, what could be?) Not long ago friend Sara I met in Previous City when we were neighbors blogged about praying intently and incessantly for a couple of years about a situation, almost decided the Time Keeper must have gotten things wrong (so for a short while almost rejected God's surprise answer), then by grace realized it was Heaven's gig, not hers or her family's. This sixteen plus year long blog (still!) remains my testimony to my life being Heaven's gig, not mine...



• Railroad tracks are a major new world icon. Visiting Promontory Point was a touristy highlight of my entire life—or minimally of my mixed reviews years in A Former City in the Intermountain West. Railroad tracks are the Wolverine and the New England States humming underneath my berth (riding the train because logically that meant we were rich so didn't need to consider time passages, ha ha (and to minimize chances of another of "Lost Luggage in Cleveland" incident?).) Maybe. Train tracks mean Previous City to Current City to Previous City.... on the Amtrak.

Train tracks mean waiting for the Buddliner south to North Station on a snowy late December evening in Salem; they're endless freight cars alongside the freeway as we returned home from Idaho late on a Sunday evening; countless freight cars accompanying our drive back to Previous City from any of JS's many concerts late on any weekday evening. More than anything, railroad tracks still are Al Stewart singing, "Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight." Name of the song? Time Passages! This photo pictures the tracks around the corner from where I'm living; the header for another of my other recent monthly rundown blogs featured tracks around the corner from my place in South Central.



• First Saturday in August at church we hosted a visit from famous artist John August Swanson and a demonstration of woven paintings from our office manager. I've finally divided my notebook portfolio into five sections, and showed off two to John August. I'd describe him as "beyond excited and impressed" with what I'd done.



• Green Team met again in Glendale. No excellent art or other fun stuff from the resident school, but I captured some greenery in late summer glory.





• A short post-Glendale side trip to the Farmer's Market in Hermosa (lovely, beautiful, gorgeous) Beach and still more examples of what a major architectural treat Current City can be.




• The morning of Tuesday 21 August at Hollywood Bowl, "Where Summer Plays," meant huge excitement of an open rehearsal with LA Phil, Gustavo Dudamel The Dude, guest violinist Itzhak Perlman. Two famous pieces formed the program: Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony No. 6 and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. Parks and Recreation oversees or manages – or both – Hollywood Bowl.



• Backyard bed of moonflowers has been constantly interesting as I've watched spiky fresh green pods full of unready seeds gradually turn brown and then burst open. First picture on kitchen table shows how open pods form graceful flutes; next pic is from the morning of 28 August and a rare total of eight new blooms; third is an open pod and seeds beside the garden bed. Pods won't and can't break open until the seeds inside are ready to open them; the seeds won't be ready until sufficient time has passed. Etc. You know!

• Moonflowers/ datura have been a daily reminder of trusting the time keeper plus trusting changes and seasons. I need to figure out an analogy in my own life to the flowers that bloom mid-evening, stay bright and wide open only until the next mid-morning, yet always always, more are on the way, now and then missing a day.

Porch Story :: July 2018

• Porch Stories host Kristin takes a retrospective glance at July; I'll do the same.

About Time





• Trains run on a preplanned, often published schedule, sometimes on time, sometimes not. Most of us anticipate life will run on a schedule, but life doesn't very often happen within the parameters we set for it. However, we still need to plan, we still need to hope and expect—because otherwise the world would stop spinning? Not quite, but a lot of essential services wouldn't happen, a lot of basic needs wouldn't get met.

• I haven't yet opened it, but I noticed the "Career, Job, Calling?" subject line in today's email from The High Calling, a site about Theology of Work.

Dreams

...by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

• As I still keep agonizing why the life of service I dreamt of, had been gifted to do, had taken advantage of opportunities to develop the gifts into high-level skills could have crashed and burned so badly, I never quit quoting Eric Andersen's It's not the times, it's just the dreams that die.

• What do I want to talk about when we meet on my porch? Most often I turn the spotlight over to my guests. That's ironic, because I'm very much an outgoing classic extrovert and I adore being the center of attention. I want to talk about myself. I don't want anyone to explain anything to me; I've already almost choked to death on untenable rationalizations.



• Typically two to four backyard moonflowers bloom each evening; here's a group of nine from early July. Several seedpods are getting ready to burst so more flowers can blossom. Seed times and harvests also are about time; the seeds can't break open the shell until they're ready.



• The USA's Fourth of July birthday – Independence Day – is my favorite holiday. No special activities this year, but during most of July we flew the Stars and Stripes from the actual front porch.

• Every July is blogoversary month! 2018 marked desert spirit's fire Sweet 16!



• Four O'Clocks flower only at 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. "People have seasons," I observed during one of our Monday evening women's bible studies that met at my home the first time I lived in Previous City. Not a novel declaration in the least, but everyone instantly picked up on it, probably because everyone always needs to be reminded life is not about constantly producing and endlessly contributing to The Greater Good. A good life includes times of lying fallow; life needs times of receiving rather than giving.

• You may have noticed I didn't include any outings or events for July. Way back in those bygone days, whatever happened to be going on in my life, I always loved summer. I always wanted summer to last forever. Then a few years ago life became so dicey even summer didn't cut it any more. My previous three summers (2015, 2016, 2017) in Current City I still had a sense of excitement and anticipation, but now, for 2018, I gotta yell out loud to tell everyone I haven't yet rewoven a life of adequate participation—of both giving and receiving. By any measure or standard. This has not been a fun summer... I hardly can wait till it's over; I can't wait to experience what God will do next ... but I still need to plan and prepare.

• Wherever the place, whenever the time, I cannot let my dreams die.