Oh To Be A Tree

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

The strength of a tree is such that it can break concrete. Then it lifts the weight.

This is destructive to a sidewalk, but it serves to remind me of the psalmist’s words. I am nourished by the Word, just as the tree is fed by waters in the soil by the side of the river.

God’s strength is matched by the compassion He shows to frail beings such as I am. As John Mark McMillan wrote, “loves like a hurricane, I am a tree. Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.”

Watered well and with a tap root way, way down into the soil, a tree. Breaking the constraints that this temporal world’s values impose on me. And experiencing His Holy Spirit’s wind and the free gift of mercy.

A tree

the Psalmist’s simile

I want Your wildness to blow through me

Your refuge too, is where I flee

I submit my all to Thee

And That's The Way It . . . Will Be?

He is young; he is bright, bilingual, ambitious. And he wants to be a journalist.

We have had lunch and talked (watch short video* now).

A soccer player, he aspires to sportscasting. I haven’t doused his desire to reach ESPN.

Neither have I made all of this look easy (“like on TV”). Many journalists exert the dogged diligence of toiling on in relative obscurity. (Having served in ag journalism, I love the line about “pork belly futures . . .”) But this trait is unportrayed by the quick conflict/resolution plots of television and cinema.

The journalist was negative, more so than I have been. This is due in part to my young friend’s interest in sportscasting. Whereas people may starve themselves of news (especially international news, decimated by budget cuts) the appetite for sports coverage remains. “Seventy-five percent of what people come to the page for is sports,” observed Mr. C of the Deseret News.

Time was, sports formed a portion of a newscast, even as the audience grabbed a view of the world from trusted voices – journalists’ voices. Walter Cronkite comes to mind, of course.

As my young friend attempts to learn something from me, the easier part is to evaluate journalism of the past. The harder part – as audiences continue fragmenting into niche segments – is to predict job possibilities and the future.

And to sound authoritative and conclusive with a summarizing statement like, “That’s the way it will be . . .”

*Video by: Lee Gjertsen Malone.

Some Shots From Ecuador's Coast

Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,

Your justice like the great deep.

You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.




















Yes, he is in there . . . yeah, he's there. Possibly a stenocercus iridescens, or iguana to most of us.








Here . . . let's get closer. A LOT closer. Actually, I never got near him. I helped a small crab escape the swimming pool where someone had put it. Yeah, picked that out of the water.


As to the beached eel, I was willing to let it be. I pointed it out to a passing beachcomber, and with his stick, he flicked it into the water.






And what do you suppose is going on here?




















Pelecanus occidentalis, which is known as the brown pelican, captures fish by a spectacular plunge from the air. Other species of pelicans swim in formation, driving small schools of fish into shoal water where they are scooped up by the birds.












There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Places Where Our Patterns Were Set

Yellowstone National Park

Another Astoria, A Different Aberdeen

It was a different Astoria than I'd known during my small town newspapering days of decades earlier. Crossing the long bridge, we entered the state of Washington.

So too, it was a different Aberdeen than I'd known in my younger years working at a rock AM station. At Aberdeen, Washington we stopped & piled out of the van at the Young Street bridge over the Wishkah River. We read the plaque informing us (perhaps incorrectly?) that ashes of a rock star, Kurt Cobain, had been scattered on the water after his premature death in the early 1990s. Amid the fame of his band, Nirvana, he was a self-confessed junkie.
After the trip, I am midway through Heavier Than Heaven, a Charles Cross biography of the musician. Musically gifted and artistically brilliant, Cobain spiralled downward inside even as Nirvana's popularity careened ever higher.

What went wrong? More specific to my own evangelical beliefs, what went wrong with Cobain's born again experience and exposure to Christianity years earlier during his teens?


A photo shows Cobain in Olympia, Washington. Behind him is a billboard that admonishes Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. By that time, the message seemed lost on him, although he continued exploring spirituality in one form or another. In a relationship, he sought unconditional love just as we all do.


"Come As You Are" Cobain urged a generation of young people. It is a message we need to hear from the Church -- that Jesus welcomes sinners in need of God's grace.


God chooses to love me, not for what I do but because He simply chooses to. His grace is central to the gospel message. So too, the doctrine of santification warns me that while forgiveness is great, God urges me on to holy living. I may come as I am, but He will woo me and work for a better me, a more complete me.


And another building block of Christianity - hope. Despite Cross' thorough reporting work in the book, I don't know just when it was that Kurt Cobain lost hold of hope.

Fabulous Falls and a Grand Gorge