Heaven on earth (Good Friday & Earth Day musings)

When you look down

When you look up

Heaven on earth

It’s an overcast morning. 

The skies are gray with weeping clouds.  (Although the clouds have been overwhelmed by a rising sun and the sky looks orange behind that eastern spruce tree outside the window.)  I took the camera outside.  No.  Not a morning for photos.  Too dark, too dismal, too cloudy.

Yesterday I traveled to Marquette for a Title I Spring Workshop for the school.  About forty of us crammed in a small room at the Marquette Alger ISD to digest a presentation about new requirements.  Every year the state and federal government change their minds about what we’re suppose to do.  (In the name of accountability, you understand.) 

After the workshop I met Barry–who was in Marquette for Baraga’s track meet at the dome–for lunch.  It was a nice time together.  Our weekly “date”.

Upon returning home, it seemed an afternoon walk was required.  You know, to exercise after a long day in car & meeting. 

“Which way are you going?” Barry predictably asked. “Up the road or down the road?”

“I will know once I get to the road,” I predictably answered.

The feet headed down the road.  Ah-hah!  Looked like they were headed for the eagle pond or perhaps the lake.

But no.  They veered into the woods, toward the old hollowed-out tree where porcupines sometimes winter.  But then the feet did an even more unusual turn.  They headed almost to the deep-cut ravine, but started up through the woods on a perpendicular path to the road.

Luckily, most of the snow hath melted.  Luckily, the feet didn’t lead into one of those dastardly puddles of melted snow-water which appear all over the woods at this time of year.  (The feet have fallen in two of these puddles already this year.  Apparently they wanted the experience of being soaked.  However–I want you to know something.  It’s only the Mind which thinks this experience is Devastating.  The feet don’t mind.  If they’re walking, they don’t even feel cold and soaked.)

When you’re back in the woods without a compass, the Mind gets fussy.  It thinks you just might get lost this time and have to spend the night in the woods finally, after all these years.  Especially since you didn’t tell your husband where you were going because, of course, you didn’t know which way the feet would amble.  (Of course, I did learn how to make a debris survival hut back in Tom Brown Jr.’s wilderness survival course.  Here’s what you do if you have to spend the night in the woods.  Heap piles and piles of  leaves over your body and burrow in like an animal covered with fur.  Of course, you’ll shiver.  But you probably won’t freeze to death.  Except if it’s winter.  We won’t discuss winter.)

Yesterday the sun shone in the west without its cloak of clouds.  Therefore, unless the sun disappears, you know your way out of the woods.  Follow the sun.  Leisurely.  Marvel at the tiny tiny lupines leaves which are popping through the spring soil  (well, mostly along the road where they get enough sunlight.)  Marvel at pussy willows. 

Walk slower.  Slower still.  You’re in heaven on earth.  Just like what Jesus was saying to the people way back then.  Today is Earth Day and Good Friday.  It’s possible for it to merge, folks.  We can realize that heaven on earth is possible.  It’s possible to find our way out of the woods–even when we think we’re lost.  It’s possible to resurrect.  It’s possible to find heaven on earth.

I believe.

P.S.  Pardon the photos all bunched together at the top.  I tried to insert them in the blog at proper intervals, as usual.  However, the photos refused to cooperate even after two or three tries per photo.  That’s when you realize part of the Secret of Heaven on Earth is gracefully accepting the “what is” of allowing photos their independence.   🙂