The arduous path ahead.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live. Ezekiel 37: 13-14

Everywhere people are beautiful or at least they have a beautiful side. On the boat from Manila last week was a painted woman, alone. I spoke to her because she was lonesome. Three of the ship's officers nearby tittered as though they thought a scandal was brewing, so I talked loud enough for them to hear. I told her I was looking for God. As naturally as a preacher she replied, “God is everywhere around us and in us if we only open our eyes. All the world is beautiful if we have eyes to see the beauty, for the world is packed with God.” “Thank you for that,” I said, “I love it! What are you going to Cebu for?” “To put on my special act. You see I dance before seven mirrors. Nobody else, so far as I know, in the world, has just this act. I am traveling alone, making my own engagements, for it is too expensive to have a property man. I was treated wonderfully well through India, wonderfully well!” I liked the way she pronounced that word, and the memories which lingered in her tired eyes. “And many people in Manila wrote me lovely letters, asking me to come back. Oh, the world is full of good people, full of good people.” When the dinner bell rang I said, “I am going about the world trying to find wonderful hours, and I shall remember this as one of them.”  - Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach, April 18, 1930

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability, and it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, the loving vine-dresser. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I struggle to find typical tourist shots here in Erbil to share with the folks back home. Erbil is a work in progress.  A 6000-year- old work in progress, stretching back in time before human memory. I set myself the small goal of capturing one glimpse of beauty a day both last year, and this year as well, on my morning constitutional, and I had to do the broad smile thing when I flipped through last year’s photos and noticed a familiar shot.

Not a world of difference a year has made.

But every morning a woman leaves her kitchen door slightly ajar as she crosses the alley to her small spot with a can of water and pours it out onto the thirsty dust, an offering of hope. Every morning.

And sometimes I feel like my life is that little garden carved out of an empty lot with broken up plastic crates and shredded blue plastic tarps.

How long, oh LORD?

Dry dusty bones strewn across an ancient battlefield.

One of my daily walking companions interrupts his laps by moving a cracked hose from tiny flowering plant to tiny flowering plant in a rough-hewn ditch alongside the cement slab. And honestly, I kind of think to myself, “Really? Why bother?” with this dry probably ancient battlefield dirt.

And it is really hard not to get distracted by the dry dirt clumps and chocking weeds. The injustice and pain that stretch out to the horizon.

How long, O LORD?

This morning I carried this trusting in the slow work of God to my “fixed prayer list” that I started at the kitchen table at Rancho La Argentina one morning after I sent Anita off with Cindy the goatherd to fetch our morning milk.

And life by life I gave thanks to the LORD God for His loving vine dressing over the years. And I sure don’t understand all of this “chief end of mankind is to know God and enjoy Him forever,” stuff, and I try to wrap it up with glimpses that He is not bound by time and all of that “a thousand years is like one day” sort of verbiage.

But yes, as my prayers once again ran through the list of names like so many beads on a thread, through the plantings of His love, how much beauty is found there and deep roots and sturdy trunks and bright leaves and sweet fruit.

Amen.