I’ve spent my whole life not having the experience of being on a motorcycle and I’ve always considered that to be the best default position to take. I’ve never watched someone on a motorcycle and thought, “Yes, that’s the thing I want to do someday.” It’s not been on my bucket list unless you consider it being on my bucket list to keep away from motorcycles for the rest of my life.

Then my husband bought a motorcycle. That took some getting used to all by itself. But then he started hinting that he’d like me to try riding with him as a passenger. Inwardly I said, “NOPE.” Outwardly I also said, “Nope,” but not with all capitals, so as to soften it. Nevertheless, he persisted. I realized that it was really important to him that I give it a chance, so “nope” became “okay, if it means that much to you.” Then came the fateful day that he enrolled the two of us in an advanced motorcycle class with the goal of him learning how to ride with a passenger and of course me learning how to be a passenger. I marked the day on my calendar and devoted some time to both dreading it and praying for peace about it. I’ve been at this crossroads between fear and faith before. When you pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way,” you better know that the Lord is going to do just that. (It’s not my prayer, by the way, it was written by King David.)

Yesterday was the big day! That’s a spoiler since now you know that I did, in fact, survive the class. We had a cheerful instructor named Jed who said in all his years of teaching, he’d never before had someone in his class that had never even been on a motorcycle. Nice to know that I’m breaking new ground in more ways than one. Also I was the only one there as a passenger, I was the only woman in the class and the oldest person. Yay for me!

Here’s how I thought the class was going to go: I’d get on the back of the motorcycle and we’d ride back and forth in a nice straight line making the gentlest of possible turns to come back around. Ha ha ha ha ha!!! What was I thinking? Instead, we did “S” turns, “U” turns, swerves, weaving in and out of markers on the pavement, hard stops, leaning turns (Lord, help!), etc. I did a lot of praying. Each time some new maneuver got explained it sounded like we’d be taking our very lives in our hands to try it so I’d try to back out, but my patient and gracious husband continued to encourage me to keep on with the experience since the whole reason we were there was so he could learn how to do all those things with a passenger.

I’ll be honest: it was a rather stressful experience. I’ll be honest again: I’m glad I did it. When I explained to the class afterward that it had been a big deal to me and I’d had to face my fears, one of the other students, a fellow closer to our age said, “And who better to face them with than your husband?” Who, indeed?

I’ll probably lean into the curve on this one in the morning.

Something bright yellow caught my eye as I was going by a stand of arborvitae with a wheelbarrow full of the castoffs from last year’s hostas. There, nestled in the grass and weeds, a feather had fallen. As I got closer, I saw another, and even more, scattered in the shadows. I half dreaded finding the corpse after finding so much of its clothing, but all I could see were the feathers. It doesn’t take much detective work to figure out what happened to the rest of the bird. Nature, red in tooth and claw, that’s what happened. While I cannot get worked up to weep over a dead bird, I felt a moment’s sorrow while gathering up fragments of its pretty cloak. I don’t begrudge the meal to the creature that killed it – I mean, predators gotta eat, too. But those beautiful feathers, once imbued with the glory of movement were now stilled. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

This blog post will soar away with golden wings in the morning.

Some of you may have noticed that the blog posts have been a bit absent lately. I always think I’m going to continue these while we’re gadding about, but it doesn’t often happen. Traveling is a full-time activity, especially when you get to be amongst the people dearest to you that live so far away.

On the way back, we spent a day driving through Wyoming and somewhere along the way, a poem emerged.

Wyoming. Oh, Wyoming.
A state designed for introspection
As the miles fade away behind us
And stretch out to infinity before us,
Wild, and stark beauty on every side.

Cattle stand with noses to the ground
Building muscle and bone from the grass
Thinking their placid bovine thoughts,
Unhurried and untroubled by the rain
Hanging like a dark curtain up ahead

There’s a regular rhythm
Of telephone wires dancing gracefully
As they go from pole to pole
Telling stories and carrying secrets,
Whispering all along the line.

The wind was born in Wyoming
And spends its days roaming
Seas of sagebrush on undulating fields,
Picking up tumbleweeds and hurling them
Head over heels, head over heels.

Wyoming, Oh, Wyoming.
Stop trying to woo me with your
Mountains, your long winding Wind River,
Your ranches and your red sandstone cliffs.
I belong to another state. Farewell.

And that’s the end of that story.

I’ll nip this one in the bud in the morning.

One day my friend Sara asked me whether or not I knew about tithing. “What?” I’d heard the word, but wasn’t that an Old Testament thing? I knew that when the offering plate went around, you were supposed to put something in it, but I didn’t give much thought to it. In fact, I usually forgot about it until that time in the service, and then I’d just rifle through my purse to see if I had anything. A dollar ought to be plenty, right? Sara patiently explained to me that tithing meant giving 10 percent of what you earned to the church, and that it was to be given cheerfully, not grudgingly. It was a privilege to be able to contribute to the functioning of the church. I was pleased to have the whole thing explained to me. I was “earning” $125 per month, a generous stipend that was given to internship students, so I began giving $12.50 per month, not begrudging it in the least. It was a relatively easy and concrete way to be obedient. I think I would have been a Pharisee if I’d lived in Jesus’s time. Make a checklist and voila, righteousness achieved! But of course, I knew my righteousness was in Christ and like David, my sins were ever before me, so it was clear that I wasn’t riding into heaven on the strength of my $12.50 per month. 🙂

Meanwhile, there was a small group of Christians in the dorm where I lived, mostly nursing students. We decided as a group to take turns praying about certain things daily and each person had an assigned day. I decided to put cheerful little reminders in each person’s mailbox on their prayer day, using Bible references for them to look up. One day I slipped a reminder into Sandy’s box and gave it no more thought until she stopped by later in the day. Poking her head into my dorm room, she said, “Lynn, I looked up that Bible verse you gave me and I don’t quite understand what you are trying to tell me.” The look on her face was a picture of confusion. I had thought I was referencing a verse in Jeremiah that says “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things that you do not know.” Seemed clear enough to me. Sadly, it turned out I had memorized the reference incorrectly, as Jeremiah 3:3 instead of Jeremiah 33:3. Poor Sandy had looked that up and expecting to be edified and exhorted to prayer, she read the following, “Therefore the showers have been withheld. And the late rain has not come. Yet you had a harlot’s forehead; you refused to be ashamed.” Oops. We had a good laugh over it once we got it straightened out.

There was an intense young woman at our church that I’d gotten to know. One day we were talking and I mentioned that I’d been praying for my family to come to faith in Christ. When she realized that I was the only Christian in my family, she fixed her gaze on me and challenged me, “How can you sleep at night knowing your family isn’t saved?” What a startling statement! I didn’t respond out loud to her the thought that came to my mind, which was, “How will my losing sleep accomplish anything toward their salvation?” I suppose she thought I should be praying instead of sleeping – I didn’t know and I was afraid to ask. From almost the beginning of my Christian walk, I had a surprisingly strong view of the sovereignty of God in salvation. I believed in the power of prayer, but I knew the difference between my part and God’s. Once you begin thinking that the amount of time you spend in prayer is the thing that turns the wheel, then there is never any end to it. Two hours will have to be better than one hour, and three hours will be better than two and so on. No, I did not want to go down that particular rathole. I have a very sensitive conscience; it was one of God’s many kindnesses to me that He kept me from that way of thinking.

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1

Next part: Adventures Part 8

I’ll probably lose sleep over deleting this in the morning.

Pay attention on the walk that you take. You might just see and hear fantastical things like I did.

The salmon jumped over
The bumblebee
The red-winged blackbird
Sang “O-ka-lee!”
The pine cone bristled
A hundred green arrows
A dewy red tulip
Told of her sorrows

And the red-winged blackbird? She declined to be photographed.

This post will probably jump over a bumblebee in the morning.

Admire my ears!
Beautiful, aren’t they?
Silky, soft
Bendable, flexible
Twitchy, itchy,
And strictly off limits.
Don’t touch –
DON’T TOUCH!
I will bite you.

In other news:

Crispy, crackly, crunchy leaf
Sucked dry by winter
And ready to make room
For green buds.
Joy supplants decay,
The Divine Design.

Snow crystals on the move
But are they ascending
Or receding?

‘‘Twas a poetical day here on the eclectic blog of Lynniebeemuseoday.

Deleting, repeating, adorning the morning. (Poets can talk like that all day long)

I’ve taken a lot of photos of things far away, using the telephoto lens to help me get up close. I put that lens away for a season. It’s time to focus (as it were) on things that are right next to me, things I can hold a camera up to nearly touching them. I’m training my eyes to see what I usually walk right past. Come along with me.

In other news, let me tell you a tale of real life, a small comedy.

I went into a public bathroom today. As I was washing my hands an older lady came out of a stall to wash her hands. “I didn’t think we were going to get here on time,” she said. We were the only two people in this small bathroom, so I felt as though I’d been dropped into a scene without a script. She went on to tell me something about some town in Minnesota. “Are you from around here?” she asked. “No, we’re just traveling through.” I told her where we were from and she offered up that she was familiar with it and told me the city where her son lived, not far from us. “Oh, my sister lives there,” I told her, somewhat surprised that we were still talking to each other. “Really! Well, we live in Spearfish, now,” she went on. At this rate, I expected we’d be exchanging phone numbers any minute. “I’ve been to Spearfish!” I told her, drawn almost against my will into this cozy little exchange. “We visited a church there.” Why was I telling her these things? She perked up and asked, “Was it Our Savior’s Lutheran?” Growing fonder by the moment of this lady, I had to inform her that sadly, it was not. I was ready to leave and suddenly didn’t know how to end this connection, two strangers talking in a bathroom. Instead of a simple “goodbye,” what came out of my mouth was, “It was nice seeing you!” What on earth possessed me?!

I told my husband about it afterward and great was our mirth.

I’ll prolly delly this in the morny.

Not to be confused with The Green Hornet.

This one is for Karl. Bonus haiku below.

The green heron stalks,
Wading at marsh water’s edge
To ambush a fish.

Karl has done his part in the “Reforming the Lazy Artist” initiative. If you’d like to do likewise, just comment on this post and I’ll fire up a watercolor painting for you, small enough to put in the mail. This is mostly for my subscribers who know me, but I could be persuaded to do one for a stranger. Maybe.

I’ll be stalking the blog marsh in the morning to ambush this post.

I’m about to embark on the final project in the book “Little Travellers” by Simone Gooding. I made the first one in May of 2020 and had no idea that I’d not only go on to make the rest, but also would write a story about them along the way. It’s been fun. Let me introduce you to a squirrel named Twig.

As always, I’m open to other names. Twig has a stepping stone picnic blanket and a basket of acorns as well.

I’ve got everything cut out and ready to go – it’s quite labor intensive cutting out all these little pieces of felt and fabric.

I’ve already got some ideas about how Twig will fit into Fig Newton’s story, but I’m not sure yet if Twig is Mr. or Mrs. Twig. Still pondering that one.

There’s always a question of whether or not I’ll really delete this in the morning. Answers may vary.

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1

I became a regular attender at the local Evangelical Free Church while still going through the dietetic internship. I told my older sister that name of the church and she remarked, “I hope it’s more free than evangelical.” Well, if you had pinned me down, I’m not sure I could have explained what either of those words meant in the context of the church name. A group of singles (college/career) formed at the church and I began rubbing shoulders more with Christians than I ever had. One fellow, Bruce, played the guitar and wrote songs. When I inquired what kinds of songs he was writing, he told me he only wrote songs about the Christian life and faith in Christ. This was truly mystifying to me. “Why restrict yourself just to that?” I asked. He smiled and said faith in Christ was the only thing worth writing about. I was dubious, but remained silent, needing to think about it.

Another fellow, Pete, was a handsome, outgoing and cheerful man who was so friendly to all of us girls that I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought he was giving attentions that went beyond brother to sister. Ha! In fact, the issue of the guys being so friendly and the girls misinterpreting the cues got to be such a problem that the associate pastor called us all together for a meeting to straighten us out. “Now, guys, it’s good for you to be friendly, but don’t overdo it; don’t spend time alone with any of the girls and don’t single any of them out unless you have intentions that you are willing to make clear. Flirting might feel like fun, but girls take these things seriously. Be careful.” We girls nodded our heads in agreement with this kind of talk. We felt like we were being led on. But then he turned to us. “Ladies, you really need to keep more of a tight rein on your emotions and your imaginations. When a guy says hello to you more than once, it’s not time to start thinking about the wedding and what kind of curtains you’ll have in your kitchen after you’re married. Don’t blow things up in your mind that have no basis in reality. Be careful.” He had a point there. We did a lot of things together as a group and even though eventually some of the people paired off, it was a good exercise in restraint for all of us to be more careful about how we treated one another and about what went on in our thought lives.

The whole controversy highlighted another change that I’d begun to think about: I could no longer entertain the idea of a relationship with someone who didn’t share my faith in Christ. When I was still in college I had a roommate that had talked to me about the importance of not being “unequally yoked,” but it didn’t mean much to me then. I’m not even sure why she mentioned it to me. But now, I was beginning to understand the concept. I had developed an interest in a guy I had known for a few years and spent a little too much time thinking about him and writing about him in my journal – and I was pretty sure the attraction was mutual. It would take only the barest encouragement from me to get this relationship going. The facts had to be faced, however; he was definitely not a Christian. This was probably one of the first times that I felt I was being asked to give something up for Christ, something that I really wanted. I vacillated so much in my mind over this man that I finally realized that I had to surrender my will and give him up, as it were. I said those words out loud “I surrender,” and instead of a sense of sadness, I felt an immediate release and joy, a complete sense of peace. It was settled and the temptation was completely gone. Not too long after that, I wrote a letter to “My husband,” a letter I hoped to be able to give some day to the man I would marry, even though I did not yet know who that would be. But I knew he would belong to Christ and that was the most important thing.

I’ll probably put a kerchief on this post in the morning to cover it up.

The next one:
Adventures Part 7

If you look it up, birding books will tell you that one of the robin’s songs sounds like “cheerily, cheerily…” Pay no attention to those false interpretations – I’ve got the real scoop on it. By listening very carefully, I’ve divined that the robin actually has a very different message for us:

This one is for my friend Julie, who probably gets tired of hearing me sing that song to her. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll know that song, too.

If you want to contribute to the “Reforming the Lazy Artist” initiative, just ask and I will send you a small watercolor painting (that one is 4” x 5”). I’ll choose the subject. You can expect art of the same quality as above, i.e. fair to middling. But it’s free, so you can’t really complain.

If I don’t delete this post, I’ll be reforming the lazy blog post writer one post at a time…in the morning.