The Way is Perfect – an old poem by Amy Carmichael
copyright La Nina de Sus Ojos by GlobeRoamer 2012 -2015. Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law. Long is the way, and very steep the slope, Strengthen me once again, O God of Hope. Far, very far, the summit doth appear; But Thou art near my God, but Thou art near. And Thou wilt give me with my daily food, Powers of endurance, courage, fortitude. The way is perfect; only let that way Be clear before my feet from day to day. Thou art my Portion, saith my soul to Thee, O what a Portion is my God to me. (Amy Carmichael) Psalm 16:5-6 “Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”
Short Poem by Charles Kingsley
Be earnest, earnest, earnest –
MAD, if thou wilt;
Do what thou dost as if the
stake were Heaven,
And that thy last deed
Before the Judgment Day.
copyright La Nina de Sus Ojos by NinadesusOjos, 2012 -2013. Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law.
An Old Martha Snell Nicholson Poem
by Martha Snell Nicholson
One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
And I walked earth’s highways, grieving,
In my rage and poverty.
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to Me!”
So I held my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.
And at last I comprehended
With my stupid mind and dull,
That God could not pour His riches
Into hands already full. (Martha Snell Nicholson)
Julia Cameron on Creativity
copyright GlobeRoamer by NinadesusOjos, 2012 -2015. Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law.
“Creation: Bake or cook something. (If you have a sugar problem, make a fruit salad.) Creativity does not always have to involve Capital-A art. Very often the act of cooking something can help you cook something up in another creative mode. When I am stymied as a writer, I make soups and pies.” – Julia Cameron in her book, “The Artist’s Way”
Is it faith? Or is it faith in something or someone?
“The Christian faith is faith IN Christ. Its value or worth is not in the one believing, but in the one believed — not in the one trusting, but in the one trusted.” – TNETDAV, Volume 1, by Josh McDowell
The Kids
Spending time with the kids is…something else. The large group of 3 – 6 year-olds can tend to be unruly; I don’t think there is any space in their lives in which they are made to obey anybody on little, medium-sized or huge issues, aside from threats of violence. So they are not used to being orderly. Also, they are not used to there being ENOUGH of any good thing. Colored pencils to do their drawing paper with. Food. Treats. Play-doh to model with. They exhibit a HUGE worldview of scarcity and have trouble believing their turn will come in 3 seconds, so they scramble and compete.
There’s not another separate space, indoors, for me to use as a classroom. Last time I went, I brought a large, clean old sheet and as soon as I’d arrived, spread my sheet on the dirt outside (we don’t have a blade of grass in the whole Center), plopped my teaching bag down on it with myself beside it, and waited for the kids to be sent to me, one by one, as they finished their other homework, from their schools, for the day. An hour later, with everything working smoothly if a bit exhaustingly, I’m still sitting there on the sheet with 14 little kids clustered all around me, their sheer numbers having caused them to overflow our sheet and be sitting in the dirt also. I hear some muffled choking noises from behind my back! I crane my neck around, then reach out in horror and grab this little guy’s jaw! “Jhonny, OPEN YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOW!”
Jhonny is scarfing down the home-made play-doh by cupfuls! His filthy little hands are wet with saliva and spit-diluted play-doh, he has a deadpan, funny expression on his face. The other teacher has come out and we get Jhonny to open up and we extract the rest of the soggy play doh from his mouth, having no idea how much he has already ingested. Johnny gets a scolding, threats of visits to the hospital and stomach pumpings. I murmer to my colleague, “Don’t worry, it’s not toxic, though he might get a whale of a tummy ache and be very thirsty for awhile.”
“NO,” she said. “Let Jhonny THINK it’s poisonous and then maybe he won’t eat it again, and also eat DIRT.”
“Eat DIRT?”
“Yes, he often eats the dirt. He has to be watched, for that. He’s hungry. They don’t feed him at home. So he eats dirt.”
I looked at our little Jhonny boy, with new eyes, closely. Yes, I can certainly see it now. He’s tiny, absolutely TINY, for four years old, and his little arms and legs are like toothpicks, his face like a little old man’s. He is malnourished and underweight.
Thinking about truth…
I’m a steel-firm believer in the adage that “all truth is God’s truth”. Please don’t misunderstand me – in other words, IF it’s really TRUE, it’s God’s! How could it not be, since God is the Good Creator of ALL, as WELL as so much more! This does not mean that I believe anything and everything is truth, or even that everything has a grain of truth in it! Where the challenge comes in is discerning whether or not any particular piece of input IS truth. I’m GLAD God gives us the responsibility to discern that for ourselves. Highlights the importance of education for ourselves and for our children, that teaches the person to THINK for herself, and of an autodidactic attitude throughout one’s life. I’m a Christian who believes the Bible is the inspired Word of God, the special Revelation of his mind and heart and will for us. His “special”, less general truth and personal guidance for us. I like the fact that Holy Father God, who is, or wants to be if we let him be, our loving Abba through personal relationship (a difference, from all the other religions of the world) in his over-arching plan ordained that we, his children, through God’s Spirit dwelling within us from the moment we believe, have the responsibility to think hard, to sift for what is genuine truth, and for what is not. God didn’t make us washing machines, or cars, or little robots. He gave us tremendous responsibility to choose, to respond to Him. Or not to. It adds so much spice to my life to think about, to read about, to study about, the vast span of God’s creation, in its variety and beauty. And to be able to know that what I learn from doing that, after looking at all the facts, studies, objective data and sifting that from other people’s interpretations of facts and data, is truth from my God, for me! As much as, is ALSO and much more specifically to ME, all the words of the Bible! The Bible is my authoritative truth, by which I evaluate the bodies of opinion, from others, that postulate in society, as truth. We have all of God’s creation to enjoy also! He’s given it to us and it’s a priceless gift of love! The iridescent graceful magnificence of a tropical fish darting among the blue-green and malachite nuances of a coral reef off Aquaba, in the Red Sea. All shot through with sunlight from the surface. The sight of it, the memory of it, is a gift to me from God! The inner workings of the human mind, its self-healing properties, its intuitions. Its emotions. Family relationships. The intricacies of the human body, and how God makes babies to develop in utero, then be born, then grow. The properties of human language! The taste of a mango. The healthy pull you feel in your leg muscle as you climb an Andes rock face. And the interesting thing is, if one looks really closely at the Bible, studying it, the Bible has things to say about our noticing and our enjoyment and our use and our personal decision making about all these things too! Satisfying. All gifts from God to me. And other, similar ones, to you. A countless variety of different gifts. God, please help us, your children, to do a little more naming of and being grateful for, and searching out more of, your gifts to us this day, in all their abundance and variety. Amen.
The Big Mudhole
Our first trip to Sakbayeme. I remember getting off the ship in Douala and being in a huge unloading hangar area, and Uncle John Smith walking up to us – tall, oh so tall! He had black hair, and was wearing long-ish light khaki shorts, a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pith helmet!
Daddy and he shook hands with each other, then went off together to try to get our CAR – our tiny blue Volkswagon BUG – out of CUSTOMS.
I remember the drive from Douala to Sakbayeme that night, in the pouring rain, and the GIANT MUDHOLE in the road – all the long string of logging trucks and French men puffing on cigarettes and Uncle Dale’s power wagon truck all getting STUCK in the depths of the GIANT MUDHOLE, but our tiny, light, navyblue Volkswagon bug (when it was finally our turn to go!) revving and skooting and skiing right up and forward OVER that sea of quicksand, that abyss of deep, red, liquid clay, around the EDGE of that miles-long string of logging trucks stuck in the middle of the road, the ONLY road, through a NEW WORLD OF virgin African rain forest, to our home, our Sakbayeme.
Vignette from My Morning
This boy is helping his mom by rinsing the goat cheeses, to sell beside the road.
copyright GlobeRoamer by NinadesusOjos, 2012 -2015 Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law. I strode into the front room, grabbed and lifted the rickety metal handcart with its two brightly striped nylon shopping bags, placed , one in the top section of the cart and one in the bottom. A wicker paper plate holder blocked the big hole left by some bent and missing cart wires. Every time I use that cart the wheels wobble so violently I think one will surely drop off while I’m in the middle of walking across Blanco Galindho Highway with traffic bearing down and ten or fifteen pounds of vegetables and bananas in my care. The short shopping trip went well; I spoke with several vendors, the wheel did not fall off, the outdoor air was cool, the early morning high mountain light had that bright but not yet glaring quality. The vendors’ low, planked saw horses, heaped with small mountains of big red tomatoes, dark green broccoli, giant golden half-globes and wedges of Hubbard squash adorned with poignant beauty the ragged, smelly edges of the open drainage ditch euphemistically called “The River”. On the way home, I paused on the far side of Blanco Street, waiting for the surge of traffic to subside. The Newspaper Lady and one of her daughters, the child about 11, I judged, sat on the warm greasy cement beside a huge stack of Los Tiempos. The girl lay, half on her mother’s ample lap, while Mom bent low and close over the child’s head of long, glossy black hair, picking out lice and nits with a long black fine-toothed comb and her long strong fingernails. Mom would section off a small neat square of scalp with the fine-tooth comb, then work on it before proceeding to make the next square. Mother and Daughter bantered back and forth in that relaxed, intimate family way, oblivious of and a little bored with their surroundings in the shrill busy street. “I’m going to send you out on the bicycle through the neighborhoods, to sell more papers.” “Mom, no – 0-0-0-0-0.” “Oh, yea-a-a-a-a-h…..”
Graffiti Surprise! Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about this yet. Just got home from church and, look what we found painted on our plain brick wall!
Reading a fantastic book right now and getting so much out of it! Re-reading it, actually…
Yes. I have to admit it. I’m one of those people who reads books over again. Only rarely, these days, and only if the book is remarkable in some way. That’s how I feel about Gordon MacDonald’s “The Resilient Life”. For ages and AGES after the book came out I didn’t want to read it because I knew about the man’s (infamous, in New England, where we are kinda from) major and public moral failure about twenty years ago, and I knew this book of his had come out AFTER that. I got hooked on the book, however, and it’s so rich and honest and well-written and focused and practical for Christians that I’m squeezing more juice out of it, even yet. Here’s a quote from it on us seeking to identify and apply wise principles to our Christian lives. ” I’ve been impressed with a principle that separates mediocre chess players from the great ones: Where does this lead? What are the possible unintended consequences? Where in my past (or anyone’s past that I know about) is there precedent for what has happened? What decisions or choices lie ahead as a result of what has happened? Wise people look at yesterday and ask how it will affect tomorrow. They are aware that most things are interconnected, that things lead to other things. Wisdom comes in figuring out where things are going.” p. 140
“I discovered that hope is a way of seeing – a type of vision that defeats discouragement!” – Sarah Young
Graffiti Surprise! Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about this yet. Just got home from church and, look what we found painted on our plain brick wall!
Our Use of Our Energy
Such a dunderhead I am, sometimes. I was working on this blog and wondered why nobody seemed to be commenting or reading on it. This morning, I happened to check the settings and realized I’d completely FORGOTTEN I’d put it on “me only”settings to rest everything for a few days. Oh well! Goes to show how much time and energy some of us tend to spend on thinking stuff that’s not worth spending energy on instead of going forward with more productive thoughts and activities. I’m content because, I love my snapshots of Bolivia, some of them, and in the past few months there has not been access to them since my laptop had crashed, and we’d replaced it, but we had opted to put a lot of our photos onto an external portable hard drive that we got. And I hadn’t been settled geographically in one spot long enough to enjoy convenient access to that little rectangle of metal with its cord. Now I am settled, geographically. For a little while. This is a shot of Sucre, in the southern and historical of the two capitals of Bolivia. To me, it symbolized a little bit part of the journeys, or paths, of my life. And in a very positive way.
for love of writing…
Who could be a writer?
“There are invisible antennae attached to the writer folk: specially-honed perceptions; alerter ears; brighter, more-seeing eyes; super curiosity; an irrepressible urge to manipulate surroundings into words, to play with ideas till they fit a theme, to see a person and turn him or her into a character.” – The Institute of Children’s Literature
GlobeRoamer 
