fourfeetsixinches

I drove the interstate to work today instead of the county roads. They were a little bit treacherous, and I was not all that adventurous today for some reason. This is a photo I took as I got off on the exit ramp. Melbs posted a photo on FB a while ago with a yard stick stuck in the snow up the 12 or 13 inch mark. He was not joking. It’s lovely. And I’m sarcastic. And I never did totally buy Al Gore’s brilliance on the global warming thing…at least not to the degree that he was trying to sell it.

So here we are on the second day of May and we’re a little buried in wet, heavy, snow. The trees and shrubs are doing this prostrate thing all over the place. [have you ever noticed how people seem to interchange the words “prostrate” and “prostate”? Just an observation…and I seem to easily digress.] The daffodils were just starting to push up through the mulch here. The buds were just starting to break open. And now we have regressed by weeks with our biggest snowstorm of the entire winter.

I am sitting at my desk at work, and so far everyone has either cancelled or not shown up for their appointments. And I don’t think I have anything of much substance to write here today. But the snowstorm has left me restless and a bit disoriented. Perhaps even a little more than a little disappointed, as I’ve been longing for spring for quite some time. Thus my trip south last week to the Iowa Arboretum where I snapped this daffodil shot. And I much prefer it over the snowy, slushy photo above…

“Don’t be deceived, my dear ones. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights; who does not change like shifting shadows.” – James 1:16

So I know the snow will be gone in a few days, and spring will be back in full force. And the verse in James is a good reminder to me that whatever kind of craziness is going on around me, [even if it is just a late-spring snow storm], that goodness comes from the hand of God. Even if it is a foot of snow or hiding somewhere under that snow. Have a safe day, my midwesterner friends!

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Join us tonight for a “Save the Theater” event at the Forest City Cabin Coffee Company. They will be serving all your favorite Cabin beverages from 5-9PM. I will be playing, joined by a few of my talented friends, from 6-8PM. “Thirty-One Days” will also be available for sale and/or signing this evening. Come out and join in the fun for a great cause!

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Am re-reading a book I read a decade or so ago, and came across this verse of poetry quoted in one of the later chapters. It somehow caught my attention today, so I am going to type it out here, along with this photo of my son Jon and a friend sailing in Wisconsin. Not the sea, but in the open waters outside the safety of the bay where I sat with my camera…

I have studied many times

The marble which was chiseled for me –

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

For love was offered me, and I shrank from its disillusionment,

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid

Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, 

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire –

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

                              [Edgar Lee Masters]

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on the way back from harlan after celebrating thanksgiving and christmas with the mathiasen family, we stopped at a tree farm south of home and cut an eight-foot balsam, got it baled and tied on the roof of the jeep, and headed for forest city. it now stands quietly and fragrantly in the corner of the living room, strung with white lights and a host of ornaments from years past, most of which have some memory attached to them from their particular year of our lives. mare thinks it looks a little hodgepodge somehow. and i agree, but i also think it looks a little like how our lives have been. scattered with all kinds of experiences and situations, all kinds of people and moments. and it all adds up to the storyline of our lives. you who are reading this and many others have been and continue to be a part of that storyline. and as such, you help to add to the depth and richness of the hodge-podge of our lives.

for some reason, this hodgepodge style of storyline is how it plays out for us. people come in and our of our lives. sometimes for brief moments. sometimes for season after season. although hodgepodge is not always used as a positive descriptor, i think there is something deeper going on in our lives. something with more purpose and beauty than just a quick glance perceives.  i believe that God orchestrates it somehow…in some way. mare and i, jonathan and maggie, are grateful for the ways that you have added to the richness, the depth, the joy in our lives. and we wish you the most bless’d of Christmases this year. we wish you a new year full of adventures and new discoveries. discovering or rediscovering the Christ child, who once showed up in a stable outside of bethlehem. may you see see him in ever surprising places and ways in the coming days, in the coming year…
“What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snow-blind longing for him.”                                      – Frederick Buechner

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I’ve been working on this project for the last seven weeks in every possible crack of time. And the people in my life that know I can have some tendencies toward perfectionism in some areas of my life have forced me to hit the send button. To send it to be published. Here’s a glimpse of it for you. It is ready! If you’re local I can get a copy or two in your hands, or if you’re from a distance, it might be more practical to go directly to http://www.blurb.com. It is available in three formats including soft cover, image-wrap hard cover, and hard cover with a dust jacket. Wait, it’s available in four formats. It is also an ebook that you can view on your iPad or iPhone in the Mac format.

http://www.blurb.com/books/3899541

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i woke up a little before 5 this morning [at least i think i was awake] to see the legs of a huge spider around the edges of the bedroom window. there was just a hint of moonlight that showed this shadowy creature lurking out there. it looked to me like it was trying to get inside. to get at me. so i rolled over and pulled the blankets over my head. but i just couldn’t get back to sleep. so soon i was up and headed for the coffee pot and some ‘stoney creek blend’ from cabin coffee company.

with a mug of steaming coffee and cold feet up on the warm hearth, i flipped through photos from earlier in the fall to find this spider web i snapped in the window of a run-down shed along highway 9. there is a lot i want to get done today. things that i know will require some mental discipline. some focus. things that i have to work for. and i know there is a risk for me to get caught up in other things that rob me of productivity and purpose. so this web is a reminder of that for me today…a reminder to not let myself be caught in a place that prevents me from getting it done. and also, to not be deterred from going into places of solitude from which honest creativity happens. sometimes you just have to get past a web like this to get to the real stuff of life. don’t be deterred today…

“..but i press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…”    Philippians 3

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i’ve been quiet on the blog front for quite some time. occasional posts. but pretty quiet, i admit. i’ve been busy pulling out some of the books that i’ve read over the years, some recent and some that go way back. decades even. foundational is my bible. it has been there making indescribable difference in me since sometime before adolescence. i hold to this statement from the book of second timothy:  “all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” that is just a foundational thing for me that i’ve never been able to stray very far from. at least not for very long.

there are several authors who have written in ways that have gotten inside of me over the years. a few of them are in the stack in this photo. ian morgan cron stated recently that “no one knows us or ever will know us as well as the books we read.”  there are books, or authors who write them, that seem to have the capacity to read me, to know me, more than me just reading them. it feels like they know something about me that i have not seen or understood before. and i can’t deny such truth once i have read it. they read me. they get past my defenses and inside my soul.

some of the authors who have “read me” over the years [such as nouwen, ortberg, macdonald, eldredge, palmer, lamott, cron, bode, just to name a few] have inspired me to live from a deeper and more honest place. they have stirred the sometimes sleeping coals inside my heart into flame. and a significant part of who i am today is owed to them, these author/mentors in my life.

so in the last weeks and months actually, i’ve been leafing through some of these books again, and looking at those underlined sections and notes in the margins, and remembering some of the more profound moments of being found out, so to speak, by these authors. and i am in the process of using some of those brief quotes and pointed verses of scripture and combining them with my own personal responses. am putting this together into a forty page softcover book.  using some of my photography as back drops or illustrations of metaphor, kind of like a hard copy of my blog, except that it is new material. i’m looking into the self-publishing avenue for some options and hoping to have this available sometime before christmas.

..and am wondering if any of you followers of fourfeetsixinches might ever be interested in such a thing…?

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yesterday evening, when dusk was approaching and the northwest winds were howling through the ash and oak and white pine trees, i loaded the log carrier full of firewood onto my lap and wheeled it and myself to the living room. freshly cleaned chimney and firebox. stacked split logs and old issues of the sunday globe gazette crumpled between. kindling and ohio blue tip wooden matches.

i am a bit of a pyromaniac. my wife even more diagnosable than i. i admit that i am powerless over this… mare is in denial of her powerlessness. but we press on and find ways to function in spite of this pyromania. and the fireplace in the living room is one such way. it is one of the few things i love about winter in north iowa. the warmth and glow of the firebox and native fieldstone mortared around it. it is where i wheel to when i get home after a long day away. i am drawn to the warmth.
this morning as i get ready to head for the office, and light snow flurries mix with the smoke escaping from the chimney, i am reminded of other things warm in this life. the gift of family. of friends. the comforts of living in this prosperous land we call the united states of america. i pray that we move past the recent divisive feelings of the the campaign and election and find a working sense of unity again somehow. i am grateful for the godly foundations this country was built upon. and most of all i am grateful beyond words to the God of the universe who quietly and mysteriously holds it all together, much of the time beyond our line of sight and ability to perceive.

may we never stop seeking Him in the midst of our hurried lives. the fireplace in winter slows me down more often than i slow down in the other seasons. it brings a good change in that respect. the warmth draws me closer and causes me to linger. and that changes something about the quality of my life. at least for this season. even though it is dormant outside, there is life going on inside.

i am reminded of a quote from richard bode’s book First You Have To Row a Little Boat:     “We’re sprinters running mindlessly against the clock, against ourselves, against the angel of death, and missing the essence of our existence as we go.” and as i think about that descriptor of how life feels sometimes, i pray that somehow we find time and ways to draw closer to those things of warmth, eg., family, friends, God, and slow down enough to increase the quality and purpose of our lives, the “essence of our existence” during this next season.

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quack grass. i have been fighting it since we moved here over eight years ago. it creeps in my garden. through my grass, mostly undetected. its rhizomes creep under the mulch and into the perennials and grow up through the shrubs. makes me swear. makes me buy more round-up than i want to. and after years of battle, it just keeps finding ways to grow around our property. i have gotten rid of some of it, but it is a persistent demon of the plant world in my mind.

yesterday i dug the last twelve foot row of potatoes. not a great year for them in the drought, but there are a few decent ones. i was working my way down the row when this potato came up out of the soil with a blade of grass sticking out of it. and then i saw a root coming out of the other end of it. are you kidding me? now quack grass is growing not only around my potatoes, but through them?!!
at a glance, it could appear that this is a potato that is beginning to grow, or still growing. in reality, it is a potato starting to be taken over by this invasive grass. quack grass. this demon of the plant world.  it would ruin the vitality of the potato if left as is.

i probably should have just turned and thrown it out into the field instead of putting in the bucket with the others. but i was  a little amazed by it. my camera was begging to take a photo of it. and i was reminded of the importance of paying attention to what we let grow freely in our lives. just as the battle with quack grass on our property has gone on for years, so is there an ongoing battle with invasive weeds in our lives. what may seem like an insignificant blade of grass coming up amidst the fruit in our lives, may just  have the power to overtake us in the long haul. unless, of course, we are intentional about what we let grow and what we refuse to let grow.

in life, the weeds will likely always be there. so perhaps the important thing is that we make sure the will to battle them is also there. on any given day i let things grow and take my energy that really produce nothing of substance. nothing that resembles fruit. nothing that gives life to me or those around me. i want to pay more attention to the quack grasses in my life. to dig or chop them out. to spray a little more round-up on them. to let the good stuff grow more freely.

in a letter that paul wrote to the galatians, he made a simple yet bold statement: a person harvests what a person plants. even though its now the end of october and the growing season is pretty much done here in north iowa, i don’t think we are ever really out of season when it comes to what we plant and what we tend to in our lives…

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