Up the Sunbeam

-- Three days after God called LIGHT out of nothing into the blank space of His new universe, He gathered a handful of it up and rolled it into a fiery, glowing orb and set earth whirling around it. From that day to this one, there has never failed to come a sunrise. We set our lives in whirling motion of our own every day, based consciously or unconsciously, on our confidence that another sunrise will come tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that . . . Our faith in the next sunrise is not something we have to muster up, or exert effort and break a sweat to produce, or even think about most of the time. We have a good long track record to base our faith upon, we've never known the sun to sleep in or call in sick or go on vacation, so we trust that it will continue to be its faithful sunny self for as many bright tomorrows as God allows. When it is so easy to have faith in something as finite and beyond our control as the sunrise, I wonder why we have such cha...

It used to bloom. Sometimes it still tries, but it didn't bloom this year. Our crape myrtle, my husband's favorite tree with it's riot of ruffled clusters of bright raspberry flowers, should be capable of growing into a shady green canopy to cool all beneath from the blazing Contra Costa sun . . . but it hasn't. We had such high hopes for it wh en we planted it shortly after we moved into our house in 2000. Shown here (long before I had a good camera) on that fateful Tuesday morning, Septem ber 11th, 2001, when we knew the world would never be the same and nothing made sense, our crape myrtle was healthy and growing, still young and spindly, but go ing places. It proudly held our courage-flag as we tried t o keep hope alive in the midst of so much death and destruction in an event that felt i ntolerable. That was 2001--this is 2009. Wh y, after more than 8 years does that t ree look like t hi s? There are thousands of these trees in this a...

This picture isn't of me, but in many ways, this girl IS me and is so representative of my thoughts about my country. I have a very soft spot in my heart for the 4th of July and all that we celebrate today. As an American girl who moved to Canada at age 8, something wonderful happened to my patriotis m. . . at least I think it was wonderful. I always loved being an American, but I don't think I gave it much thought until I was in a new country, looking back across the border. As a little girl growing up in rural Iowa, the 4th of July was about fireworks and family and community and fun--pure Americana at its best! When we moved to Canada I learned about what was then called Dominion Day, Canada's equivalent to our 4th of July but celebrated on July 1st. I didn't mind celebrating Canada's independence, but I did very much mind that there were no 4th of July fireworks to go with it! As I got older, although I deeply loved my home in beautiful British Colu...