The Bean of Crazy!

I am a lover of coffee! Some say I am obsessed a bit, not sure if it is the fact that I do not function properly in the morning until I get my cup or the fact that if I am driving down the road and see a coffee shop, it takes everything in me to keep my eyes on the road and keep driving. Not sure if any of you have ever seen a bugs life, but if you have and can remember a scene where the bug sees the light of the bug zapper “the light is so pretty” as his friends yell “look away” “don’t do it” zzzzzzzzztt!! Pretty much me in a nutshell. I have tried to wean myself from the gravitational pull of the bean goodness but lets just be honest, this is not going to happen. If it is true what they say about “you are what you eat” then I most defiantly am a coffee bean.

I frequent a local coffee shop not far from my house on a regular basis to read and write and just clear my head. I love to be in the hustle and bustle of people even if I do not know anyone. I think it is a just the comfort of knowing that I am not alone.

Speaking of not being alone there is this woman who is always at the shop who I believe is certifiably crazy. She sits in the middle of the coffee shop and has full conversions with herself or someone for that matter. She is always here, in fact if she is not it kind of throws me off a bit. Sometimes I wonder who she is talking to, if she can really see them, and if she really hears them talking back to her. I wonder what has brought her to this place of craziness. The thing is she seems to be having the time of her life, laughing and smiling and enjoying the company of her invisible friend/friends. It reminds me of the scene from Patch Adams where Patch is in the mental hospital and his roommate will not leave his bed because he is afraid the squirrels are going to get him, so patch proceeds to get an invisible gun and start shooting the squirrels. The scene goes on as patch and his roommate yell and laugh as they extinguish the invisible varmints and overcome his fear of squirrels. A beautiful scene of helping the helpless. I watch people in response to her as they realize she is crazy. I think she makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable, and rightly so it is not everyday you encounter people like her. It is a sobering reminder to know that God loves her as much as he loves anyone of us. I would like to believe that the person she is talking to is Jesus. Maybe he is wooing her, sitting with her, talking to her cause know one else will. I might never know whom she is talking to but I know that God is speaking to me. Teaching me to love the loveless. Teaching my heart to have compassion on the people whose lives are different than mine. Teaching me to open my eyes to see that he is moving in and around our lives like a raging fire.

There are a lot of broken people in this world, in fact I would say that all are broken, but only a few admit it. We like to believe we are all right, that we have it all together; it makes us feel better about ourselves. It’s all right to be broken! It’s there that we become who we are meant to be. It’s not until we can lay down our own efforts, pride and control and rest in the fact that God is the healer, the author of life, that we can experience life the way it was intended. At least I believe this to be true. I pray that God would do in us the things we cannot do for ourselves, that he would help us to trust that he knows better than our best thinking.

Grandfathers and Fishing trip!

A couple summers back I decided I needed to spend time with my grandfather since he was getting older and I didn’t know how much more time I would have to do things with him. My grandfather is more like a father than a grandfather cause he was the only man figure I really had in my life growing up. My father was and is still a drifter that really has no reason for living outside of his own wants and needs, a man that I will never be, by the healing and mercies of a loving God. My gramps taught me many things in my life, the art of chess, the Mickey Mouse way of fixing everything and the love of fishing. From the time I could walk I have memories of fishing with my grand dad. Hours and hours of patiently sitting and waiting for the lurkers of the water to bite my ever bobbing hook that I had placed there to lure them in. An art that I mastered at a very young age.

I decided that the best way to spend time with my grandfather was to do the thing that we had spent so much of our lives doing, Fishing the secret rivers of Oregon that have become some what of a passion of mine. Oregon is a very different place in contrast to the rest of the US. A land of hippies, rugged mountains and beautiful cold water streams full of massive Brown and rainbow trout. A sanctuary of life and beautiful memories that will live deep with in my mind till the passing from this life and in to the next. Oregon will always be my Home!

My grandfather and I packed our things loaded the Four Wheelers on to the trailer and headed east for one of the best fishing trips I will ever experience in my life time. We drove into the high desert of Oregon and parked our truck, unloaded the four wheelers and then proceeded a crossed the plains of sagebrush and Juniper trees until we had came upon these beautiful canyons full of lush life and cold rushing rivers. They were extremely hard places to access yet the best fishing is to go where others don’t. To be an explorer of places less traveled! It is kind of like God. Nothing good in life is easy, yet instead the best things are rugged and hard and sometimes seem impossible. The places you have to struggle to get to, I have found are the places you find the most treasure. So many give up when it gets hard cause maybe they just don’t believe that they have what it takes. Maybe they never had a father to tell them. Even if this is true, then hear it from my lips; I believe you have what it takes.

I have seen and done so many things in life. Things that I never dreamed that I would do, nor would I ever see. Life has been a journey of pains and joys, ups and downs, forwards and backwards and a lot of trudging through the mud. I just dive in and try what I do not know! This is by far a hard way to live but I have discovered things I never knew possible. I have failed a lot in my life but if given the chance to do over I would opt not. Experience far out ways redoes. My grand father taught me to always do my best, to always pick the hardest way, and to give it my all. That education is good, but heart is so much better. Little did I know that those fishing trips were counseling me on how to be a man of great heart, that you never know what lies beneath the water and that good things take a lot of work, but are well worth the struggle.