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.