Yesterday my precious friend, Mark Nichols, posted a plea for help. Not for himself. For a friend, Stephen Phillips, who is thankfully recovering from emergency heart surgery following a massive attack while traveling from New Orleans. Multiple arterial bypasses and a valve replacement. Stephen will be in the hospital for at least a week, followed by at least two months of at-home recovery. Mark writes: 


Being self-employed and uninsured, Stephen is facing the very high cost of live-saving cardiac surgery and a lengthy recovery period. Stephen will be unable to work during this time. In lieu of balloons, cards, flowers or food, his family and close friends are asking for your financial support. Please consider this...what would you do if you were in Stephen's shoes? Stephen has opened his heart to so many of us over the years. Stephen now needs that same kindness, love and support extended to him. Any and all funds raised will go directly towards deferring Stephen's medical expenses and loss of income. In fact, the instructions below have been created so that you can send money directly to Stephen's bank account. If you would like to provide financial support to Stephen during this difficult time, please follow the instructions below to SEND MONEY FOR FREE directly to Stephen. You can choose how to donate funds - directly from your bank account, by credit card, or from your PayPal account.


 1.   Go to https://www.paypal.com/
 2.   Click on the "Send Money" link
 3.   Enter the amount that you would like to donate
 4.   Select the "Friends and Family" radio button under "My payment is for:"
 5.   Click the "Continue" button
 6.   Enter Stephen's e-mail address = bamastephen7@aol.com
 7.   Enter your e-mail address
 8.   Click the "Continue" button
 9.   Log in to your PayPal account, or create one for free


If you have any technical issues at all, please contact Mark W Nichols on Facebook or at mwnichols91@gmail.com.

Stephen's Valentine's Day was a heart-breaker. But we have an opportunity to shower him with a love that trumps Hallmark.  I know that he would appreciate hearing from you during his convalescence. Leave him a message in the comments below. Or go to 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Stephen-Phillips-Recovery/239004069519421?sk=info 

Belonging

Even those who belong don't belong if they don't have the rights

The list of non-belonging belongers is long.

Fortunately, you know from the scriptures and confessions

You options include turning the other cheek 
and assuring the belonging believers

Blessed are the poor in privilege,

I met such a morning as this in June while on the boat.  Mug of tea in hand, I watched color morph into shape. The bright light of morning brought the details. So many dawns, each a promise. If the start of the day is a preface, then sunset is a punctuation mark, a counter of sorts. Ticked off another day. Reset button, please.

One particular thought has stirred - and recurred - in recent weeks: life on the edges. Especially as we drove up Highway 1 on Sunday, along the headlands of the northern California coast, then out to Point Reyes. Past herds of Tule elk, deer, and cows. Lots of milk cows, mostly Holsteins. I scanned the fields, looking for an elusive breed I encountered in Ireland. Right there, in the middle of a field, lo and behold, I saw them. Not milk cows but big, beefy critters. The breed’s markings fascinated me when I first encountered a herd on the way to Killarney: black, curly coats swathed with a wide white band around the mid-section. When I searched in 2007, I found nothing. Yesterday I typed "black cow with wh" and Google populated the search window with "black cow with white band around the middle". Oh, yes. Finally, I can assuage the doubts of all who thought I was hallucinating heifers. I have found my beloved Belted Galloways. The following description is from the nice people at Oklahoma State University (http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle):

[Galloways are] a very ancient [breed], with obscure origins shrouded in antiquity and its name derived from the word Gallovid or Gaul. The Gauls were the native inhabitants of the regality known as the Province of Galloway. This province once comprised six shires (counties) in the very southernmost extremity of Scotland's Lowlands. The cattle of the region were said to be dark, smooth-polled, wavy-haired with undercoats like beaver's fur and for centuries they went unnamed, referred to only as the black cattle of Galloway. From this coastal environment of winds and damp cold, combined with an undulating terrain of moors, granitic hills, heathery mountain ranges and fertile glens ... emerged the Galloway breed of cattle.


William McCombie, (pioneer Scottish Angus & Shorthorn breeder) said, "The Galloway undoubtedly has many great qualifications. On poor land they are unrivaled, on land so poor our Aberdeens could not subsist upon it. There is no other breed worth more by the pound weight than a first-class Galloway." "Galloway cattle are generally very docile," quotes William Youatt, (English researcher, scientist, veterinary surgeon, historian & standard writer on cattle in the early 1800s.) He goes on to say, "This is a most valuable point about them in every respect. It is rare to find even a bull furious or troublesome." Galloways are very courageous however, and if annoyed by dogs or wild animals, they will act in concert, by forming a crescent and jointly attacking. There are claims that one or two Galloways in a field of sheep prevent any danger from dogs.


There you have it. I celebrate the edge of day, the rim of night, much as I did my brand-new box of Crayolas and pristine Blue Horse notebook on the first day of school. Inside, the promise of a clean start, along with the allure of perfectionism’s seductive but deadly dance.  I dearly love sharp tips of color, clean paper with no pockmarks of last Monday’s theme pressed into the surface. But it was in dog-earred notebooks scribbled with dull nubs of crayon bits that I met my metier. And daily I find my mettle in life’s rocky fields, in the glare of harsh light, in the depth of dark moments.

When I land dead-center in the morass, when I long for edges and drama, I try to remember that I am a temple under construction. Like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, I am unfinished. What a generous man of faith, Gaudi...how many architects do you know who would willingly, yea willfully, pass along an incomplete vision to unknown others? I daresay that far too many skyscrapers populate our cities, fully built and occupied, yet incomplete in both form and function. Would - or could - Capote have written as he did without the full realm of his experience?

And when I depart this earth, I will leave my incomplete human form, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Lessons yet unlearned. Promises dangling. Humility still not my strong suit. Yep, there I’ll be, trailing dust bunnies, not clouds of glory...how fitting.

I am drawn to beautiful, dramatic edges where land meets sea. And aware of life's approaching edge as well. Thank you for my green fields wherever they are, for those places I do not choose to visit but where my center is rooted. Here's to the indwelling.

Oh, my darling Belted Galloways, preach on. Not with words but with every plodding, docile step. Meek: powerful in submission to a master, peaceful. Whisper to me, remind me, "Over the next hill, Celeste, lies a coast, but this present spot is quite good, too." You're my people!