Update

I know it's been a while since I posted anything on this blog. You might be wondering what I've been up to, or maybe you don't care at all. Either way, I feel like I owe you an explanation for my silence. I don't feel like I want to be done here and there are still things to say.

The struggle with depression really has diminished a good deal for me and I am grateful for that. I feel more myself and there is a lightness for me and I am starting to feel like my old old self. Yay.

The summer was good for me. I've been going through a deeper spiritual shifting as I have been looking at turning 60. So, much of the summer was spent in conversations with God. And they were conversations more than just monologues. There was hope there and faith as the Spirit and I conversed.  So things are shifting. Inside of me and in our lives as well. They are shifting at God's direction, so we will see how autumn unfolds. I am excited.

Hillary and her three guys are coming for Christmas, which is exciting too. I am already looking froward to that. Those twins are growing up so quickly. 

Oh and I am doing the Daily Prayers again and enjoying that too. It energizes me to spend some time in study and then in prayer with people who are out there. The numbers are humble, anywhere from 5 to 20s viewers a day. But that activity is good for me too. It was one of the things God and I talked about this summer, and so I have a strong sense that its his thing and the numbers are his worry. So I am learning things still about service. You can see it at thefieldpastor.com.

Maybe as the snow tries to fall and settle on these cold fields, here's a good poem to end with.

Winter Fields

I love old winter fields-they seem to hold

A sort of kinship to the wind and cold—

The frozen furrows clogged with sodden leaves,

The stubble with a few thin scattered sheaves,

A plow up-tilted . . with a broken share

(They just unhitched and left it sitting there).

A few old twisted trees that sort of lean

Down the steep edges of a small ravine,

A few thin cattle waiting to be fed,

Humped in the shelter of a broken shed;

A rim of frost along the water's edge,

Old nests revealed behind a tangled hedge.

There is a strange affinity between

Our homesick souls and fields of budding green;

Something within us answers to the sound

Of new life bursting through the quiet ground.

And yet a frozen field where Winter dwells

Sings in my heart like muted temple-bells.

Night.