My Mind and My Travels

I hardly know where to begin this post. I've actually been putting it off, because it feels like reporting a list of events, and not actually thinking anything. And who wants to read a list?

Let's try and get the list out of the way quickly: we went to San Fran, I wandered around Market and Mission and we went to a Giants game. That's 2 pro baseball games on this trip. I don't even follow baseball.

Then we moved north seeking the Pacific Ocean, and found it. And it was very, very cold. We tried to stay in a hostel, but it was full and found ourselves camping for $10 night, not bad. We also picked up a "friend" who was very interesting! He wore pirate shorts, and nothing else, we talked about how he would sum up the world with the word "Huh?" and about pot. He slept on our picknick table at the campsite. It was Friday night, and since we were already where we needed to be, we tried to head up to the vineyard we were supposed to start working. But they wouldn't let us come until Monday. So we spent 3 nights camping and hanging out, bathing in the lake. The nights got mighty cold for camping.

When we finally got to the vineyard, we were greeted with "Hey you're here, put up this clothesline." Basically the folks we were working for were miserable people who couldn't afford regular work crews and were using WWOOFers to do harvest for them. The other workers were most interested in smoking up and drinking, but they were just fine, we enjoyed them. We only stayed for 3 days and then ran away in the middle of the night to escape the bosses and "slavery", and laughing to ourselves that they had actually made us afraid! We went back across the state to the Catholic Worker, where people are glad you are there, feed you well and treat you with basic dignity.

We contacted the ranch we had plans with next, and asked if we could show up early, and they gave us the go ahead. We arrived Saturday night, to horses, milk cows, and wide open spaces in the Nevada desert.

In the midst of all this it's tough to figure out how I see God at work, what I am learning, what the point in any of it might be. I've been having lessons in learning to simply be, sitting beside a lake with nowhere else to be, may be enviable, but it can also make one feel wasteful. Is being quiet and unproductive wasteful?

I've been rereading The New Friars and asking this time what I can apply to the life I am already living. I don't want to be immobilized by it's radical call, I want to be changed. And I'm asking God to make next steps a little clearer, I have the ideas I've been thinking about, but I want to be sure He is leading, not me. And then there is learning how to communicate well with others, how to put others first. Trying to remember that God wants to work the fruit of the Spirit into my life, and that I must seek first the Kingdom.

My brain and heart are in as much a whirlwind as the traveling and working we've been doing.