“We live by faith… not by sight”

This photo was taken on Hwy. 89, heading north, just past the junction of Hwy. 160… Flying by at 60 mph…

It’s a corn field on the Navajo reservation. Sorry it’s so blurry… But it is clear enough that you can see the individual clusters of corn plants growing.

There are no water lines to the field… no way to irrigate. Hauling water is, at best, not worth the effort. All the tender of the garden has to rely on is rainfall… In the middle of the desert.

One has to believe that when the seeds are planted, they will break through the earth and grow. There can be no doubt, or it would be pointless endeavor. Then after the tender shoots appear, one must truly believe that life giving water will be given to sustain the growth of the corn.

It may not look like much now, but in a month or so it will be providing nourishing sustenance for the ones who walked by faith all summer to see it through.

It is no easy thing to do, this walking by faith and not by sight… We always want to see the end result before the beginning of something we attempt to do. It is hard to begin an unknown… something that we can’t see… We tend to be frozen in time while we stand to the side and idle. 

There are certain promises that have been made to the people of the earth by the Long Life Happiness One that can make the journey a lot more relaxing…

“A seed cannot become a ear of corn until it first dies and is buried, then it returns a hundred fold”

This promise tells me many things. First of all, it is an action phrase. Meaning that something has to be done. And if those things are done, the other things will occur.

Planting… Watering… Harvesting… Two out of the three are the things that we do. The third  is where the faith thing comes into be.

See it is the Long Life Happiness One Whose Ways Are Beautiful that brings the water, and causes the sun to shine… That’s the hard part… having faith enough to put into action something that you have no idea about the result…

Dry land farming in my mind has got to be the most faith testing endeavor that one could do… Faith to last you through the winter…

Just a little further down the road, this little house… Nothing to do with the cornfield… Just thought it was another lesson about building your house of stone… but that’s another day…

These photos depict a way of life that says a lot about the people that live it… Your whole existence depends upon faith in action… Easy to see that if you don’t work you don’t eat… but that work is done with faith and beauty… And the whole process brings to fruition the circle of life…

Live, love, work, play, and walk in beauty…

 

                                                 I am what I am

The adventures of a Gypsy and a Garbage Man…

Another weekend arrived and that was our queue… Loaded up the truck and headed down the hill for another adventure and get some shopping done while we were at it.

We got to the Visitors Center, Picked up my jr ranger book, of course, and headed out side to look around…

The first person I met was this guy… He was pretty silent but it was obvious he liked the attention…

Here he is getting his head scratched… He stood there real still while I scratched behind his horns…

The next was this little pony in disguise… maybe he was wanted for something… I didn’t ask… We then looked around a bit at the bunk houses

This is one of them, east I believe…

Then we went to the “Fortress” proper… This was built directly over a natural spring…

Inside view of the front door… “Windsor Castle” is it’s name… Established in 1870 as a Mormon Tithing Ranch. Butter, cheese, and cattle were taken to St. George, UT. Also it was used for the protection of the polygamists from the federal marshals…

Out of everything in the house, the coolest thing was this cup made so you wouldn’t dip your mustache in your hot tea…

The next person we ran across was this duck… All he said was that his name was not “Daffy”…

Here is a reconstruction of a Piute dwelling… Almost looks like a sweat lodge…

Oh yea, getting sworn in for the third time as a jr ranger… This time they snuck in the part about eating all my veggies and cleaning my room…

The badge is what sets it off, don’t you think?

On the way home we had some tricky driving… But we got through it all just fine…

And so the sun set on yet another adventure for our fearless duo… Gaelyn took all the pictures and I did all the driving…Check out the video she took of us crossing an over flowing wash. So I think on our next days off we’ll spin the wheel… Round, round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!

I am what I am