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First a Turkey Vulture soared overhead like a messenger from God, then 3 simple birds landed in 3 different trees and I felt close to God during breakfast today – even without colorful, rare or gorgeous birds – just plain birds smiling at me as I smiled back!
My heart is like a singing bird.
~Christina Rossetti
And tomorrow morning, Saturday, I leave for Palo Verde National Park. See yesterday’s post for more information.
¡Pura Vida!
That’s my new Kindle Fire HD 8 above beside a real book I’m also reading. It is my second Kindle ever and 1 inch taller which does make the print a little larger and easier to read, but there are some things I don’t like as well as on my old 5-year-old Kindle. First, the cover is simply not as good and does not stand up on my dining table as well as the old one. Inside it is more complicated and confusing to use electronically for this old man – beginning to show my age? But I will get used to it and love it eventually. 🙂
DIGITAL ON KINDLE: The Seven Storey Mountain
Written in 1948, this is the autobiography of a spiritual mentor whose writings I like and who is of the same generation of my parents, Thomas Merton. He describes his “coming of age” as an adult and discovering who he really is from first the adventures of life and then the spiritual dimension of life and at 68% through the book (Kindle tells you that) he is still struggling with what his vocation will be but even more so with his relationship with God. Been there, done that! 🙂
REAL PAPER BOOK FROM FRIEND: The Gringos Hawk (not available digitally)
I’m only about a fourth of the way through this hardback book which is also an adult coming of age autobiography of a young man of my generation this time, published in 2001. Not as spiritual as Merton’s, yet more adventurous as American Jon Marañon ends up in southern Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast (where I love traveling) and as a 23 year old buys a tract of land on the coast at a bargain price. Then the problems and adventures begin dealing with government regulations, local farmers, and even a “witch” along with illnesses, injuries, etc. And that is as far as I am in the story now. But it is the kind of thing I too might have done in the 1960’s if I had not been, like Thomas Merton, highly motivated by what I considered a “calling” from God. Young men struggling with who they are!
I will report back when I have finished both bios and how I am relating to them then. It is funny how I identify with both guys of two different generations and two different worlds and somehow ended up reading both stories at the same time. 🙂
Christianity Today has 3 good articles about one of the few great Christians of my generation, Eugene Peterson, who recently died:
Eugene Peterson Competed His Long Obedience
Eugene Peterson: A Monk Out of Habit
I guess his translation of the Bible called The Message is the biggest influence he had on me and my life, by far my favorite version of the Bible, but his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction ranks pretty high up there also. My spiritual focus for many years now has been on the spirit of God working inside me and in the lives of all followers of Jesus. It is where we find hope for this pathetically sinful world. Thus the title of my “spiritual page” on this site “His Spirit.”
This Presbyterian minister reminds me in some ways of my favorite Catholic Monk, Thomas Merton, whose autobiography I am currently reading, The Seven Storey Mountain. They are real people allowing “His Spirit” to control their lives as they relate to virtually everyone as Christ would. In some ways it reminds me of my youth ministry days and the simple WWJD phenomenon (What Would Jesus Do?), only much deeper and almost mystical as we are led by His Spirit!
I worked my entire adult working life for Southern Baptists, the largest of the Evangelicals talked about so much today and experienced the spiritual decline of a church, denomination and the broader “Evangelicals” as they became political with a focus on power, money, and the control of other people rather than allowing “His Spirit” to work through them as the voices of Jesus. They seemed to have chosen a self-seeking Republican Party instead and their self-centered leaders. It saddens me because in earlier days I experienced His Spirit working through Southern Baptists. Now they give us Donald Trump and racist Republican leaders. It is one of the reasons I moved my retirement to Costa Rica to avoid such poison that now seems to affect a whole nation if not the whole world. Scary! We need more Eugene Peterson’s!