Before a couch or a chair, but with enough to smile.

As it was on this day last year, it’s our anniversary. And so it has been now for 48. The above photo is one of only two we have from those early days. By the date and the look of the place, I believe we were still in Georgia, just about to move back to California. We were still without furniture to speak of, but with love, what else did we need?

Not that every moment’s been perfect. I’ve been the source of a few challenges. I remember a friend commenting in our early years how Anne must be very long suffering. What did he mean by that?

But we’ve survived, and raised our five children. Anne just sent Valentines to our 16 grands. (And we’ve long since had a lot more furniture!)

Speaking of Valentine cards, I don’t think Anne will mind my sharing the one she just gave me. Note the “mostly.”

Too small? Click card.

If you want another look at the other remaining photo from that era, and the story of how we met and married, see last anniversary’s blog, here.

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Years ago I asked what was keeping me from finding and doing what it was I was supposed to be doing.

What I got back was one word: Distractions.

Distractions!

How I recognize that. They are those pesky or even “necessary” things that come into my life, my days, my hours, and claim manifest destiny.

They walk in without knocking, sit down in front of me and say, “Well, I’m here. I’m not going away. Deal with me.”

And of course I don’t want to be impolite, and I would like to be able to move on, so I tell myself I’d better handle just this one.

Meantime, my invited guest, the one I wanted to spend time with, waits.

Okay, she (or him, or it) knows she’s the one I’m trying to get back to . . . when all these other random guests stop coming. But they keep coming!

By the end of the day my journal, if I kept a journal of such, is full of all the things I handled. People would be impressed, if they knew, how many things I do, and many at the same time. I have a very busy life.

But is it busy with the right things?

I read this morning how at the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, when people were almost barging down the door to hear what he had to say, to get healed, or delivered, the next morning before dawn he went off to be alone. They couldn’t find him. He was out seeking guidance.

Following that, he left the area. And that at the height of great success!

There it is: Even good things can become a distraction from best things.

Our days are so full we wonder why they’re so brief. But what is the one thing we should be doing?

Stop and ask.

Then bar the door.

_________________________
Mark 1:35-39

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I’m amused that some, on referring to this Oregon trip, call it “vacation.”

Vacation from what? I ask, except the regular routine, the distractions, the pesky nuisances, to-do lists of the mind.

And I suppose, from all these things, it is a vacation. At least I hope to have vacated most of them.

But the mind is not vacant at all. Maybe I sit longer in the morning, reading, musing, climbing, spelunking, all four limbs engaged among the cranium’s cracks and crannies. Ever moving from one to another, getting almost stuck, then seeing another to explore. Sometimes it’s sheer, like Jerusalem’s wailing wall. I come across fragments of old prayers wedged in the cracks; I make new ones and wedge them in too.

I keep moving. Something else attracts, a distant idea. Will it mean a leap? Or do I take the safe route, longer, going back where I’ve been and coming at it another way?

But wait, there’s a rope. Can I trust it? Can I swing? Is it affixed to anything up there?

Do I go, or let go?

Is what I do now dependent on what I’ve done before? Or am I a continual blank slate?

If this is a vacation, is it from what?

And to what?

This is what we’re here to find out.

Meantime, fellow travelers, keep climbing, keep spelunking,

And don’t fret, even the pitfalls are only in the mind.

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Wale Cove, for anniversary dinner, two ago.

True, February isn’t exactly tourist season on the winter rainy Oregon coast, but we weren’t thinking about that when we got married. For some years now we’ve made a point of going somewhere special during our anniversary month. What with the ever-expanding commercial titillation surrounding Valentine’s Day, everybody can celebrate it with us!

Upcoming will be our third February trek to Toledo, Oregon. We will stay in the same art studio/lodgings as before. And, as before, we’re taking a van load of art making materials and equipment. That includes most significantly Anne’s heavy hand-press, lots of paper and ink, tables, an easel, canvases, brushes and paints.

It’s a time we look forward to, particularly Anne, who, with the general press of life, gets very little time for doing art at home. Away, full days are dedicated to it, for almost three weeks. For me too, though this time, what with a book project as well, I suppose half my time will be on that.

The fact that rain is forecast for as long as the weather service is predicting doesn’t bother us much. It’s all the better to keep us focused.

Of course, the time in the car is part of it, talking about life, listening to books, overnighting with our kids in Palo Alto, spending a day with friends at their Strawhouse Resort in Northern California, then winding up the wild Oregon coast to our destination.

Life’s a journey. Sometimes literally.

We’re glad you’re with us.

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Thought I’d share these thoughts as they came to me the other day. Don’t know if that had anything to do with my recently perusing the contents of a book in the Brisbane airport on “Ten Ways to Succeed,” long on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Would be good
To start right over again.
Go back to the beginnings,
To Christianity 1-A,
Go see what Jesus said.
And not just said, but first said,
At the beginnings of his formal teaching
To those most earnest to follow,
Where he sat on the mountain
And uttered truths most basic.
Things most important to get,
In terms easy to remember.
And what do I find . . .
But words most attractive to avoid?
A list of aspirations, NOT!
And I say, “Really, is this for me?”
Be poor in spirit, “What?”
Mourn,
Be meek,
Hunger and thirst to be good.
Show mercy,
Be pure,
Make peace,
Maltreatment for right action, accept.

“What?” Hardly aspirations for the successful life.

But there it is—the starting point.

It’s an upside down world we’re called to. I’m trying to fathom the meaning. Maybe as I put them into action, then I’ll better know.

___________
Taken from Matthew 5:3-10.

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The smile, perennial to the end

Moses Vegh died last Saturday. Thoughts of that and of his life keep coming back to me. That he was 80 and I’m 70 have no little part of it.

I only came to know Moses during the last six months. He’d spoken at our church, as had I. He spoke about his new book, which I bought and read. After I spoke he said, “Let’s go to coffee.”

It was while in Spain I read his book. Not that Spain has anything to do with it, but I was away from my normal routine, and thinking thoughts outside my normal routine. And Moses’ book describes a life outside of anybody’s routine!

It’s an autobiography, something friends had long coaxed him to write. Just in time, as it turns out.

Without boasting, it overviews a life transformed by and dedicated to the service of God in the lives of others. In his teens he was already a speaker in demand in various parts of the US and Canada. Over a life time, he traveled the world doing same.

Though he never benefitted from higher education or seminary, he was part of founding a number of such. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in China. (“Made in China,” he called it, never taking himself too seriously.)

Every page of his book gives an account that for someone else’s life would have been its high point; then you turn the page and there’s another one.

When we’d go to coffee (actually breakfast, weekly) I’d take notes on our conversation. He seemed to have not only the exact biblical quote to every situation, but chapter and verse. My current sketch book has a number of pages recording our times together. I never expected this chapter would close so quickly.

I was in Papua New Guinea, just this month, when I heard he was ailing. And that of multiple threats, Stage 4 Cancer on top of diabetes and I don’t remember what all else. By the time I got home I learned he was in the hospital, and then the final news: Dead.

Somebody said that on visiting him he’d been in his normal spirits, quoting a segment of Psalm 1, “He maketh me to lie down . . . ”*

There will be a big memorial for him this coming weekend with, I’m sure, many, many tributes.

But my reflections aren’t so much along those lines. Our lives are what they are. Each has its own history, and we can’t go back and live them differently. My reflections are more about its limits.

“The length of our days is seventy years, or eighty if we have the strength.” That’s a statement by the original Moses, in the Old Testament. By coincidence, that’s exactly what Moses Vegh had.

Another truth knocking about in my memory of late is this one: “Death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.”

Moses was 80; I’m 70. What are you?

Do the math.

______________
*     Psalm 23:1
**   Psalm 90:10
*** Ecclesiastes 7:2
PS  If you missed the report and photos of Papua New Guinea, click here.

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The Anderson house, a classic “Swiss Family Robinson” affair, built years ago by Neil on a hill near the end of the earth.

I’m off to Papua New Guinea. I flew out of LAX the very hour 2013 became history and 2014 arrived. Perhaps it’s symbolic: Another new year, another new project.

I’ll be in Papua New Guinea for three weeks. I’ll be with my friend Neil Anderson who, along with his wife Carol and their four children, called this place home. We’ll work together on a new book.

It’s not our first. Back in the ’90s my family and I also lived in Papua New Guinea. We weren’t in a village, rather a center, with people of many nations and most of the normal comforts. It was then that Neil and I collaborated on our first book. It was his material; I was the writer.

Neil Anderson is a Bible translator. With some 850 separate languages in Papua New Guinea, there is plenty of work for such linguists. These languages have previously had no written system at all, so it’s always starting from scratch, requiring much grit, considerable brains, strong faith, and many years.

The book that resulted was In Search of the Source. It’s an account of adventures and discovery of new terms for deep truths–and how they look from the vantage of a completely different culture. The book still enjoys popular readership. Every now and then I receive a copy that’s been produced in yet another language (some ten so far). Now Neil and I have been commissioned to write a sequel.

How that will go, I don’t know. Once again I’ll sit with Neil by the hour, recording his abundance, interrupting now and then, fishing for more, searching for closure. And then it’ll be working it all over and over, back home, in the months to follow.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Who knows how it will really go?

Wish me well, and Neil. If you pray, that will doubtless help.

It’s another work of faith. Which still means . . . a lot of work.

Just the way I like it.

Happy New Year.

____________

PS If you’ve got It’s About Life, check page 45, “Two Required to Make One Succeed.” It cites my work with Neil on our first book when I really learned this truth. If you don’t have it, click here for how.

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It’s one of the things I told myself when I first started painting.

There were a number of things: paint every day, find a place to do it, learn from the library, copy the masters, don’t make paintings—just paint, have fun, and this one: Don’t get depressed.

Why would I tell myself that? Because I know how I am. I’m quality oriented; I want to get good, and I want to get good fast. Just like you.

The thing is, growth is incremental; we hardly see it. In our mind it can seem like we’ll never get there. And that’s not an encouraging thought.

Discouragement, nurtured, leads to depression, and depression leads to quitting. Once we quit, that kills all chances of ever getting good.

So: Don’t get depressed.

Sounds simplistic, I know. And I’m not talking to those carrying the burden of chemical imbalance or demons, imaginary or real. Though, who knows? As I’ve said, we live in our minds.

I just know in my case, I can usually see when the early signs of discouragement and depression are setting in, and when I do, at least I can remind myself that I told myself, “Don’t get depressed.”

Because I have, and I have. (Gotten depressed. Reminded myself.)

Something about depression I’ve recognized is that it’s all perspective. It’s always “me” centered. There is remedy for that, if we’ll crawl out of our dark hole and see it.

Another thing: it has nothing to do with succeeding. In fact, succeeding can bring it on more. I just read of a young man, a brilliant creative writer, in his mid-20’s already at the top of his game, but dealing with long depression finally jumped to his death. I sympathize, with him, who he left behind, but I take a lesson: That’s the ultimate non-success.

Most of us won’t go that far, or suffer that deeply. But even the lesser levels, if left to fester, will cause us to quit. And that’s a suicide, a letting die of something that’s a part of you. Something that was  living, and should be growing . . . for your sake, and as contribution to the rest of us.

So, here’s my advice, given first to myself: Don’t get depressed. And when you do, remember that you told yourself not to. Even that will help you come out of it earlier.

Now, put on a smile and get back to work.

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Here’s something that will do you good and it’s a perfect time to do it. Look back and consider the last 12 months since you looked forward to the year ahead. Write it down. Then share it with a friend, or friends.

I wrote mine in categories (you can form your own):
Life in general
Relationship to God
Goals accomplished
High points
Low points
Learnings
Best books
New friends and living examples of life well lived

I found the whole exercise quite profitable. And you know what Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” (Or was it Plato?)

For me, the publishing of It’s About Life was a pleasant accomplishment of a goal I’d had for some time. And I learned that, what with self-publishing, there’s no excuse for not writing a book if you want to.

The death of my mother and the still slow dying of my father has been another “learning” about how our lives end and the inevitability of it all.

I turned 70 and realized afresh that meaningful work is as important as ever, just no longer in the form of a “job.”

In traveling to Spain I also determined that, for us, every year should include experiencing some new and distant place.

I saw again that home is a very pleasant place to live.

High points were plenty and low points few, the latter mostly of my own doing.

Under Relationship to God, I wrote: More and more, the only reason to live—and the only belief that makes any sense.

For New Friends, I named a few who are showing how it looks to live purposely.

So there’s mine. Make yours and you’ll find yourself further along on living purposely yourself.

Right on?

Write on.

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Hyatt iv and Lucas Asher, photo by Nicole (mother)

Christmas greetings to all my friends and faithful readers (with special thanks to all commenters back). I trust you’ve experienced a beautiful day and season.

This year we welcome the birth of grandchild number 16 (!), Lucas Asher Moore, born to Hyatt and Nicole, December 13 in Palo Alto, California.

Somehow it seems fitting to share such a photo on Christmas day.

Every baby is a miracle. But the one the world celebrates today was a gift to us all. It’s a story so simple, a child can grasp it. Yet it’s so profound, the wisest among us can only just begin to fathom its meaning.

Personally I’m somewhere in the lower category, but can look forward to an eternity of Christmases yet to come to begin to comprehend it.

Merry Christmas to you, with gratitude for our friendship.

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