TODAY IS MY WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!

Jim and I have been married for 44 years today! This morning I woke up to a steaming, fresh pot of Breakfast Blend coffee and a card that called me the love of his life. This afternoon I came home to a vase of 24 LONG-STEMMED PINK ROSES! Here is a picture of this amazing man! Eat your hearts out, ladies, I know I'm lucky!

Tonight we will go out for a semi-romantic dinner. :>) Our son Matt who is visiting from Istanbul will be joining us. :) He's a lot of fun and keeps us quite entertained, though, so that's okay.

THE NUMBER 93

At his grandmother's birthday party, before she blew out the candles in one puff, my son Matt pointed out that 93 is an important milestone for her. The number 93 is of itself quite interesting, he said, for the following reasons:

     *The differential between 9 and 3 is relatively large.
     *Three squared is 9.
     *Three is the number in the Holy Trinity.
     *Nine contains 3 trinities!

"Yes, and it takes a long time to get there!" my sister Mary quipped.

Bright Spot in Reedley

HAPPY 93RD TO MY BEAUTIFUL MOTHER, DORIS HOFER!

I hope I have enough of her genes so that when I'm 93 I'll be half as beautiful, smart, and witty as she!

Out of respect for the people of Haiti and their grave tragedy, I did not make this post until today, though my mother's birthday was on Monday, January 12th.

When I asked her what she wanted for dinner, she said her favorite dish was tofu stirfry with peanut satay. So, that's exactly what we had! Dessert was our old family birthday favorite--that tantalizing carrot cake you see in front of her, served with quite a few scoops of  vanilla bean ice cream on each piece. M-m-m, eat your heart out people!!

Here's our party:

Mom with our son Matt

Clockwise Mom, my sister Mary, my love Jim, and Matt

Oh, yes, I was there, too. Clockwise Mom, RuthAnne

and Matt

Not able to attend physically, were my sister Fern and her husband Richard in Omaha; our son and his wife, Mark and Andrea, in Ashland; Matt's wife Fati, in Istanbul. Also unable to be there were Mary's son James, his wife Shannon, and their daughter Araya, in Kentucky, where James is in the army and stationed near Louisville. Last and FOR SURE not least was mother's great grandson Nathan Wilkins (Mary's grandson), in Albuquerque. We are world people, so there may not be many of us in the same room at any one time, but we have a good time no matter how many!

By the way, James, Shannon, and Araya celebrated Grandma's birthday in Kentucky by eating brownie sundaes and talking to us by phone at the same time we were having our carrot cake!

Sloth and Light

I started this post two days ago! And then yesterday I got sidetracked, as I often do. Yehuda, my friend and mentor, tells me that I never know how much time I have and to treat every day as if it were my last. "2day. act quick," he says. "There's no time to waste." Well, that tweet was yesterday, and today I'm acting a little quicker than usual. 

What sidetracked me yesterday was the way my day began, by waiting in line in the Valley's bone-chilling tule fog at Reedley DMV at 7:25 a.m. This was after the tweet from Yehuda, and I thought I was starting out quite well, thank you. By getting there early, I was second in line, and I'd be out of there with my new temporary license in a such a flash. I stood in line shivering until the doors opened at 8, sipping cold coffee that steamed from my Starbucks thermos in the colder fog. By being there early, I could also use the time to finish studying the driver's handbook. And why was I doing this?

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I had to show my driver's license as an ID after buying new shoes. I glanced at my license as I put it away and noticed it had expired--last September! So for a couple of weeks since then, I had been pretending I STILL didn't know about it until I could get to DMV during hours they were actually open. Now, here I was, standing in line, in the fog, no need to pretend any longer.

Finally, at 8:00 a very large, cheerful doorkeeper swung the doors back and boomed a big "goodmorning." I gave him my biggest, most cheerful smile and soaked up the rush of warm air from the room. 

"Where is your paperwork?" he asked me.

"What paperwork?" I asked.

"I need to see what you are coming here for," he said, smile gone.

"I just need to renew my license," I said.

"Well, first you'll need to fill out the white form in the rack over by that wall for that specific purpose," he said pointing to the wall, "and then go to Window Number one."

I stepped out of line, yanked one of the forms from the rack, and tried to quickly get back in line. Only about ten of the approximately 75 people behind me had gotten in front of me. I had to be in Fresno for a doctor's appointment by 10:15. I could still make it. A smiling employee at Window One apparently had been watching me and called, "Ma'am! You have to fill that form out over there, BEFORE you get back in line!" Maybe she didn't mean what I thought I thought she meant. I looked at her again to be sure, but, yes, she was nodding at me and jabbing a finger back and forth toward the counter under the racks of forms, smile and all.

Deflated, I stepped back and began to fill out my form and watch everyone who had been behind me in line push ahead to the front of me. I didn't finish the form, just stuffed it in my purse and trudged back home, on foot, ten blocks through the fog (couldn't have driven there, because I had no license, remember?), bawling like a spoiled brat. Jim, my husband, called me on my cell phone and asked cheerily if I had my temporary license. "No-o," I sniffled, and whined out my poor story through the mist.

I did make it to my doctor's appointment--driving--50 miles through the fog, into Fresno, pretending, again, that I didn't know my license was expired. When I finished my appointment there, I noticed I had a voice mail from Ruth and Amy, the blessed women who clean my house. "We are at your house, but you aren't here, so I guess we'll just let ourselves in with the spare key." I just hate wasted days like this! I had no memory that they would be coming on Monday; they usually come every other Tuesday! The house was full of clutter and the usual stuff I hide away on cleaning day. I inched back home through the fog, wary of any flashing red and blues.

Ruth and Amy were gone when I got back. The house sparkled and smelled slightly of clorox, the clutter in neat piles, the laundry folded and stacked in a large chair in the bedroom. The only thing forgotten was the vacuum, not put away, but sitting in front of the open door of the closet where we store it, its attachments strewn through the hallway on the floor. I smiled for the second time that day. Today was Jim's dad's birthday and his folks were coming to supper tonight and the house was picked up and clean. All I had to do was cook. Sometimes the world goes on just perfectly in spite of me!

I sent a tweet to Yehuda later. That was the first time I have ever tweeted him, by the way. I usually wait to devour words from my teachers. But, late afternoon when I checked my messages I saw he had a tweet to everyone in general about wanting to hear from US sometimes. Funny, it never seems to occur to me that a teacher might want to hear someone else's words other than his own. He tweets to us every day. I tweeted back and let him know that even though I had done my morning meditation and had started out thinking I'd done everything right, my day had gone really shitty. However I'd seen light working in the world in spite of myself. He tweeted back immediately "its never inspite because there's always light inside that we don't always see." I like that.

A Big Hello From Reedley CA U.S.A.

Hello, it's me, RuthAnne, calling from Reedley CA. Yes, from the wilderness! I mean that both literally and figuratively.

But it's okay. After all, Abraham and Moses spent time in the wilderness, as did Jesus. I understand from some of my favorite spiritual mentors that wilderness is a good place to be. I do, however, prefer traveling to exotic places, such as Barcelona and Istanbul (which happens to be where my eldest son lives with his beautiful Turkish wife). And I honestly have traveled to both places, not to mention Santiago, Chile. I also prefer to be walking on the beach or standing in the tides as they wash the sand out from under my feet. And, I prefer the fresh washed air of Ashland OR, where my other son lives with his equally beautiful veterinarian wife. I love the way Ashland lines the river gulley and sprawls up high mountains to either side. I love its shops, wines, cheeses, chocolates, and Shakespeare.

But I live in Reedley, and it takes a long time to get anywhere from here. I live where the smog backs in from Silicon Valley and banks up against the snowcapped peaks of the Sierras. I live where high pressure systems keep the smog parked for months on end. Believe it or not, I live where the air quality registers unhealthy night after night on the 6 o'clock news. It's not just Silicon, either, but that's not really the subject of my blog. I haven't really done enough research to give the details of where the smog comes from, to tell the truth.

Reedley is in an agricultural area, and is actually quite scenic. In addition to being surrounded by orchard after orchard of stone fruit against the backdrop of the Sierras with their back country peaks jutting into the sky, the Kings River gushes down from Kings Canyon and swirls right through Reedley. The backdrop and the back country, by the way, are usually hidden by the smog, but that's not what I'm writing about, is it?

In the center of Reedley looms a monolithic cube-shaped church. That is ONE of the things I'll be writing about. Locally, it is referred to as the "Big Church." The sign in front says Mennonite Brethren Church, or something to that effect. If you are anyone in Reedley, you go there. I'm not, and I don't. Neither does my husband.

No, we spend Sundays at home, usually, watching Gaither Homecoming videos with my 92-year-old, wheel-chair bound mother (93, in a couple of weeks). She lives five blocks away from us in Palm Village, a Mennonite retirement and skilled nursing facility. We try to get her to our home on Sundays for a home-cooked meal, family time, and inspiration. She is the one who introduced us to the Gaithers. They are about as close as we get to church. There's just something about that whole-hearted, old time gospel singing! Who needs the sermon after that? My mother doesn't go to church any more either, though they have services at the home and songs and testimonies given by Sunday-school classes from the Mennonite Church, and God knows they have tried to get her to go. But she staunchly maintains her distance.

She has her reasons for maintaining her distance. She hasn't been to church since my father died ten years ago. Remember the Big Church I mentioned above? Well, my grandfather built that monstrosity, and he preached there before he moved on and built a Mennonite Church in Fresno and was pastor there. He was also instrumental in starting Pacific Bible Institute in Fresno, which has now grown into Fresno Pacific University. He did all this before he was excommunicated from the church, and my family (including me, I suppose, I was only 6 at the time) were excommunicated along with him. The short of it is that he believed in the laying on of hands and healing, and was "letting" people into the church who believed in it too. That's it. No affairs, no embezzling of funds, no anything else. Just healing! His name was J.D. Hofer and he was a famous person in the Mennonite circles back then. Many of the older people around here still remark on his "powerful sermons" and they smile upon reminiscing that he married them.


Well, the world can go chaotic and screwy on a lot of levels. I'm just a lone voice calling from a place where people don't put much stock in lone voices, a place where you need to be part of the larger voice. But, we are all, in our own way, looking for our own way, and maybe in the end we'll all join our ways.