that fickle thing of humility

I read a book, which in light of the Gospels, rang true as the key to living Christ-centric. There was but one ingredient with the centrifugal force to create a black hole in our flesh that sucks all the cosmos of our human condition by this one thing--

Humility.

"This is the true self-denial to which our Savior calls us--the acknowledgement that self has nothing good in it except as an empty vessel which God must fill...If we feel that this life is too high for us and beyond our reach, it must, even more, urge us to seek it in Him. It is the indwelling Christ who will this life in us, meek and lowly....The root of all virtue and grace--of all faith and acceptable worship--is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon on God for it."  Humility, Chapter 3 (pages 24 and 25) by Andrew Murray

And yet, there is a smelting process which refines the impurities of our condition. That extraction of all our godly props to knowing our inky, black hearts in light of Christ, which humbles us from our own good works, our religious virtues, even our redeemed qualities which we use in judgement of others.

It doesn't mean we must live poorly or cast all material things from us. This western culture lures us with trinkets and play things and idols on every corner but it's the poor in spirit, the empty of heart He calls us to be.

He's interested in the beating pulse which bows low, not the worldly material things we toy with.

This I've wondered, even struggled with lately-- after my pious pride was fell-ed among the rubble of this farm, how do I build a new, shiny house and not forget the lesson? I beat my chest in silent fear I will walk away and return to my former-self.

Do I pause here forever and not move forward? My former Amish friend reminded me: it's the heart which holds weight with God, not our surplus or our poverty. Oh to stay clothed in all things, humility! This is a hard thing to do and yet--

"Men sometimes speak as if humility and meekness would rob us of what is noble and bold and manlike. Oh that all would believe that this is the nobility of the Kingdom of heaven! If they would understand that this is the royal spirit that the King of heaven displayed, that this is God-like, to humble oneself to become servant of all!" Humility, Chapter 4

I've read "Humility" by Murray, but it's the living it out by revelation where it takes root, only. Living it in relationship to one another, in forgiving seventy times seven, in recgonizing my own wicked heart which leads to Grace, but first comes through humility. And the more I learn of it, the more I'm aware of my need for an ever-increasing supply.

"When in the presence of God lowliness of heart has become, not a posture we assume for a time when we think of Him, or pray to Him, but the very spirit of our life, it will manifest itself in all our bearing toward our brethren." Humility, Ch. 6

This is our work: "The command is clear: humble yourself. That does not mean that it is your work to conquer and cast out the pride of your nature and to form within yourself the lowliness of the holy Jesus. No, this is God's work.....Accept with gratitude everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling, and to help you to it." Humility, Ch. 12

And the very gratitude of this work requires His miracle Spirit enabling our surrendered hearts to walk up the top of that fire-y furnace and be thrown into the fire, so we may walk with Him among the flames.

May we learn more of it, lower our self to the very pit. Some days I want to grab a shovel and help Him dig, but even this is a surrender. We must be lowered by His Spirit so He may clothe us in all the finery of Christ's humility, allowing this super-natural working to remove the yeast of our natural-working-pride-flesh and leave glowing words on headstones for the world.

"Water always fills the lowest places first. The lower, the emptier a man lies before God, the speedier and the fuller the inflow of the divine glory will be." Humility, Ch. 12, Andrew Murray

Sharing at Ann's this week--Humility.

when you put your {scared} self out there

It'd been a month ago when I had written a simple little note of encouragement God had put on my heart for our local homeschooling group. I stashed it away. Waiting for if and when God would prompt me to send it.

And the more time went on, the more fear grew in the belly of that beast-y flesh.

I trembled.

I began to think I heard it all wrong. I wondered if maybe pride was the thing that propelled me to pen it in the first place.

I questioned everything, thinking God never really spoke that to my heart and what a foolish, fool-hearty pen-woman I must be to think God gave me any words at all.

Besides, it'd never been done before. Ever.

But several days ago came the passionate burn and I was thrown back in fire of the beast. I pulled the note back up, re-read it. Nibbled my lip in worrisome thought and opened "post message" on the homeschooling loop and stared at the blank page. I couldn't even "copy" and "paste" for fear it would accidentally "send" before I was Gideon-fleeced sure.

And right then, with two pages open, one blank and one full of those words, my "inbox" received an email.

Thankfully a distraction. A meditation from some ladies in my home fellowship, something to ponder and yet, the email was the first sign. But I closed the windows, shut down the computer and let it rest, but I didn't rest well.

The next day came and I scoured other words, read blogs, left a zillion comments (which I don't normally do) and more "signs" were broadcast like highway billboards. Others in their own words of doing the thing never done before and doing it scared. I dropped my own fears in the comment boxes and this time I queasily waited.

When the third day came, I was slammed full-frontal with the dew on the fleece.

One of my super-quiet friends from the fellowship put her scared self out there and shared a humongous blessing of an email. Oblivious to my own dilemma, she typed, "I will share without proofreading for fear I will delete it before sending it!"

I thought "What courage! What a great God we serve!" Who knows what small, step you take, with fear and trembling, might be the very thing a person needed? And who knows the harvest of it but God?

As I read her email, the same theme in her words where in my note, worrying about tomorrow, what we will eat, wear, what it holds and how it holds us bondage. Who can do that but God? And here she was with the courage to "send". While I clung to the cliff to save my life, she hurled hers over it's dark edge.

My friend in cypersphere reading this, if God has given you something and you're re-applying some anti-perspirant because your in an all-out sweat on a cliff-hanger, sling yourself out there in God. And don't just do it afraid, but do it very much afraid.

When we plunge over that dark edge, we find His brightness burning at the chaff of our stinking flesh. The painful nails of the cross comes by fear, or conflict, or trials and tribulations but never in comfort. So when the nail of fear comes, let it pierce our rotten flesh to the wood of this world and do it, anyway.

Dear one, I tell you, when we are called to die to self, we fall as if dead at His feet because this is the exact position in which we exalt Him.

So I ask you, and myself, what small or big thing has He called your scared self to do?

"And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid... Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. " Revelation 1:17 and 19 NKJ


 At Laura's and L.L. Barkat's today....also over at Jenny's:

when you think your God-dream died

"Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. So he said to them, 'Please hear this dream which I have dreamed..'" Genesis 37: 5,6

Sometimes we're hated for our dreams, those big, lofty looking things which float in our hearts.

Some of us are brave enough to give them wings, to set them free and in motion by lifting them up through our lips. Don't we all want to tell it? Shout it from the rooftops "I have a dream!"

Our fears are we'll be hated for them, we'll be laughed at, viewed as some silly, nimwhit. They're shot down like a fly swatter finding it's target.

So we deflate their lofty air and chide ourselves, "what was I thinking anyway?"

But if they are holy dreams, set apart from all others, the ones consecrated to God, He's always breathing them back to life.

Over time, the nibbling dream re-occurs and we see the theme. The steadiness which seems to bob up and down like a fish tugging the hook of a fishing line.

We begin to see His design for us, how we're created for this special thing. And yes, He plans on taking us all the way to the end of it.

But first, there's a process, painful as it is. Our dreams are given and then they die before fruition. This isn't some accident or fate. Their death only looks lost to the natural eye.

When holy dreams are lost, it may mean we've entered the refining work, a most baffling part when we're in it. We feel we missed the mark, altogether off. We have now entered the survival phase and we're struggling in our own lifeblood as a baby needing a Physician to birth us from the womb.

We've become helpless, given up our hold on that dream to hold on for dear life, to Him. The fires of debt, or self-depravity, or loss of work, or sickness, or financial ruin, or just life in general our now licking flames threatening to consume at every turn.

If our God-dreams our to be golden, we must go through the furnace.

And Joseph had a dream as a youth. Little did he know how much that dream would cost him. Rejection, attempted murder by his own family, prison, slavery, false accusations, alone and forgotten along with so much tribulation before the dream was turned to gold.

But it did turn golden, much later.

If you have a God-dream which seems dashed, there is Hope. Because after all, it's His dream you're carrying in the heart.

But the cost will come at a price worth every tear drop, every painful hurt, every dark death of our flesh, because when it comes, then it's all of His glory and none of our own.



At "Faith Barista"

the great "rebellion"--of resisting {spiritual} authority

The keyboard doesn't come lightly.

And as the "stats" counter seems to rise (ever so slightly), I tremor a bit.

I fear my words. I fear they'll altogether fail.

I fear my clay-self, cracked pot that is, will seem harsh, or self-congragulatory, or religious, or heaven-forbid, pious or rebellious. I fear to speak at all.

"It is possible to be so anxious as to how and what you shall speak that your manner grows constrained and you forget those very points you meant to make most prominent." Charles Spurgeon's "The Greatest Fight In the World"

Sometimes, I key-tap words like dusty bones and shake them out across my desert screen where only He's able to water them into the flesh of a Person. Other times, they're a raging river pouring into the mouth of a deep, wide ocean of words, blogs, internet-worlds like a boat where only the Sailor can steer it to the right shore.

But they're from desire.

And so I'm baffled by the Church. There's an institution which needs walls and programs and pyramid schemes, and most of all, authority. I'm not talking about the heavenly Throne but the earthly ones.

As if you were to fall right out of Grace if you appear to be "resisting" or "rebelling" against this authority. I ask, what authority?

God's or man's?

Last I knew, Christ was the Head of His church and we rise "within the ranks" by going lower and dying. And even this we can not do ourselves.

Christ didn't nail His own hands, but instead allowed our very own depravity to bring Him to the Cross, by which we displayed our very need of His sacrifice by the wickedness of our hearts which said "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

But I would never do that, we think. Yet we're guilty of crucifying eachother and driving nails through the very Body, even worse, we injure ourselves because we're now part of this Body, if in Christ.

It doesn't mean we'll always agree, or that we won't ever part ways, or that my view of Church will be your view. It just means, we eat of the same Bread.

The Church isn't about esteeming ourselves higher than such an such in the Body, thinking we're more together than the next, lording a "position" over people, or intellectually-infusing ourselves with scripture as to maim eachother with it.

Which gospel is this?

This is the same false doctrine which nailed Him to a tree and still works today and all we need do is look around. Our own depravity witnesses against us.

But for what? To prove it only matters on one point.

Our need for Christ is evident. And that is all.

When problems arise we must go back and lay that foundation all over again, Christ, Him crucified and risen.

We wear the Holy Spirit like a betrothed ring to our Husband.

So why is He barred at the door? Why is the Spirit set outside the gates like an unwelcome guest, because He might disturb the service? Why are we so fearful of losing control, we don't give Him permission to even speak out of turn, as if the turn is ours to control? Order is lost or confined into tight knots only when man is overly involved in one extreme or another.

Why is His own intimate language, rebuked and repulsed by His Betrothed, the Church? What bride desires to live a celibate marriage? When a marriage lacks intimacy then there's trouble indeed.


We must get back to Christ! We must lay the foundation all over again, and again. We need to give up our works, religious laws, our programs, denominations, sectarianism, my church against your church, my theology is better than your theology and get our eyes back on the Prize!

When we are wholly Christ-centered it doesn't mean we don't fail, or don't make mistakes, or that we have become perfect, or that we'll magically treat eachother like angels, it means we die and Christ lives.

My friend, we are not enemies if we are truly in Christ. It's not by some intellectual assent, or weapons-of-mass-scripture, or one doctrine over another, or your way or the highway, that we are called the Church.

We are called to that baptism of the grave, where our soul must be buried, so Christ can raise us up in Him and resurrect the new {wo}man. It's by Him alone.

Nothing else.

If I should meet here or there and you do this or that, we still have but one Authority, one Head, one Mediator and if we're all looking to Him....He's able to set the order of everything else.

So why do we feel we need to be under man's spiritual authority? There are so many arguements, this order and that order, differing authorities, or spiritual coverings by a church pastor or denomintion. But if we're looking exclusively to Christ, then there is Divine order.

Question is, no matter how uncomfortable our flesh becomes, do we truly trust His order?

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.." 1 Timothy 2:5

At Ann's.

{farm update} red never looked so good

In our efforts to keep debt down, we prolonged the inevitable.

We have a farm. We have hay meadows needing care. We have standing trees that need felling. We have bales which need moving, but we didn't have a tractor.

Oh sure, we have a small, oversized-lawn-mower-of-a-"tractor" which was more like batting a gnat. Just when you get rid of one pesky thing, you have another one and another and so on.

We haven't had the right size equipment to maintain, much less advance this place beyond a weedy meadow.

Last Thursday, that changed.

In all it's red glory, our new, big tractor arrived. Along with implements to take charge of this place, and at least, we feel like we're evenly matched in this battle to whip this place into shape.

So my Hubby's been loving his new ride and putting it to good use. Many a field has been shredded in quick time and it seems as if we can get a leg up.

And we're thinking of building in a couple of months. We designed a simple house plan and tried to include many cost-reducing ideas. And are still thinking of ways to reduce even more.

Our little farmhouse finally has.....landscaping! It was such an ugly sight before all the work we've done to it. I really, really need to post before and after pictures. But that was a problem. Um well, you know, pride.

I'll add pictures later, but for now, that's the latest.

With Ann and friends....thankful picks of the week:
--early morning visits with my Hubby, before the kids are up
--my late night reads, when the house is all quiet {and sleeping}...I never tire of that gratitude
--returning to the gym...ah, yes! my love-hate with the gym..(feels so good when the aerobics are over)
--leisure time at the pool with my kids, as I watch them swim better and better each time
--my Hubby, who shows the boys how to be a hard worker, works full-time and farms in his spare time, taking care of our needs, never complaining and instead, gladly doing it.

to whom are you married

The days have heated up to a swell of consistent 90's, even flirting with 100, and so many days have been shut inside or along bodies of water.

It's been almost 10 years since I had a real, intentional tan. I've preferred a lighter complexion and avoided my past pleasure of feeling the vitamin K absorbing in my skin.

But this year, I've regressed, in a good way. And feel more youthful, as I have the pleasure of enjoying these leisure times, while it also proves to be productive times for my kids to practice their swimming and for me to have creative times of reading and thinking.

Once again, thinking provides a clutter of thoughts, so I come here to pick them out one by one and remove the debris in my head.

And this is where I've been rotating: to whom do we give honor? Where's our time and attention spent most? To what do we place so high a value as to forsake all for it?

Who is willing to be an Isaac and walk up to the altar of sacrifice for his Father? Who's willing to lay down their lives so fully in love with Him that they're willing to risk the dagger? Humble themselves in bondage as a lowly servant to Christ even if a ram be absent to save them?

We work our own salvation. We extend our own earthly hands to preserve our decency and goodness. Our works are frenzied in an effort to prove our worthiness and yet, they fall on flesh and not by the Spirit.

"What then can works, done in such a state of impiety, profit us, were they even angelic or apostolic works? Rightly hath God shut up all, not in wrath nor in lust, but in unbelief, in order that those who pretend that they are fulfilling the law by works of purity and benevolence (which are social and human virtues) may not presume that they will therefore be saved, but, being included in the sin of unbelief, may either seek mercy or be justly condemned." Martin Luther's "Christian Liberty" volume 36 

Oh my God, it's this mercy seat I must seek on every occasion.

Works are as unbelief, not truly believing Grace can save. How many times have we've been guilty of working our own goodness, of trying to save ourself, of not seeking mercy but instead working out our own justification?

It's not the outward things He seeks, not the traditions of men, not the doctrinal arguments, not our goodness (of which there is no good thing apart from Christ) but it's the inward things. We must humble ourselves in our hearts and let Him examine all our ways.

When we fall at His feet because of our own wretched state, not as victims but as perpatraitors, do we become Grace disciples. When we forgive, Love floods in; but when we recgonize our true condition, we are cloaked in this miracle-working Grace.

It's not those outward things that a person does but those of the heart, of my very own corrupted one which needs rending. "Rend your heart and not your garments." Joel 2:13

And to what do we defend? Our own honor. Our status. Our reputation. Our perception of how we're seen because we don't want to be rejected so we frantically grasp at every slippery word and try to restrain it.

But this is what I desire.....my heart be rended to One and Only, so utterly abandoned to my first Love of which all my life is married and say "no matter if words crucify me, my honor is my Husband's alone!"

"The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh....Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things." Martin Luther's "Christian Liberty" volume 36

But if I marry the world or have an affair with it, I will love it more and also my resident value in it's fleshy state. We need a deep revelation of our Husband and allow that graceful Love to grow so strong as to bury all our worldly cares in a deep, mass grave.

And let the headstone read "Here lies the most vile of sinners who joined her Maker, but as of today, her earthly body has NOT yet expired."

May His hold be so strong on our hearts that we only focus on the beating of it's lifeblood perched on those nail-scarred Hands, so as not to save our lives (while we wait on the ram) but to gladly lose it for Love.

At Ann's.

i'm that wretched sinner.....

The pool glistened as it waved little peaks under the wind which was blowing, yesterday. And inside my head words tossed, peaking one thought, to only peak another until I felt like a cluttering mess.

When the head is full of words, how do you pick just one? But I try.

And I've been riddled with visions and this is the one I've had in my head this week....the sinner beating their breast saying "Woe, is me!", a person of unclean lips, undone by their condition as a transgressor.

And that is me, the transgressor beating out an "I'm undone!"

There is this mercy and grace as we grow spiritually, we recognize how much we need to grow even more, how we are unable to perfect ourselves and how we are utterly hopeless, in flesh. And in knowing our true condition, we're set free.

Free from works, free from being better than I was yesterday, free from trying to hold it all together, free from others seeing me trip up and fall, because we are all undone.

And if I fail you, I say, "Yes! I'm a failure. Didn't you know, I'm only flesh and blood. I'm not the Savior?" And if I disappoint, I say "Of course! I have this selfish nature, did you not know I'm totally imperfect? Give me time and I will certainly disappoint you." And if I sin something terrible, I say "Is this not what I was delivered from? And yet I do things I don't want to do and things I want to do, these things I don't do!" (from the Apostle Paul)

I'm not the worker who's to bring the good in me. I don't have any sustaining ability to make flesh walk the line. I can't nail myself to the cross. All I can do is lie down and let Him do the rest. Even in dying, I want to "help" and nail myself there, but even this I cannot do. I just lay down and let Him live and He puts to death and raises up, again and again. 

Not me.

It's when I think I'm a good Christian when I'm really at my worst. When I see my deliverance and judge the next person for being were I used to be, do I become pious. When I look at scripture as a tool to justify actions, do I become a Pharisee. When I reflect at how debased and debauch I was at one time, do I become proud of how I'm not anymore.

It's when I think I'm one of the good Christians, that I become bad like a spoiled fruit on the vine.

"Woe is me! Chief of sinners."  This is growth: to know we are still capable of all the debauchery of the world, not one sin is measured in degrees, but in length. And we all fall short.

When I think I've arrived to a certain level of Christianity do I risk injury from a fall from pride.

And I'm glad for this "Woe!" because we are all on the same playing field, no yards are long enough, no amount of touchdowns make the score, no player is Christian enough to save ourselves, let alone a team. We all fall short.

While sitting by the pool I had my 1,400 plus pages of a book when I happened to open it up to a chapter which spoke my heart, titled "Alas! I Can Do Nothing!".

And right then, I wanted to be in a quiet corner and soak in these words, but I tried to read them in the midst of noisy engines revving by our poolside retreat and kids playing, splashing little drops on the pages.

My highlighter pulled for the ready to find passages which echoed my condition. The pages now a bit crinkled. Drops of water which bled yellow circles where they landed on highlighted passages, all dry now.

The scripture "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom 5:6 KJV) referenced throughout the whole chapter and then this:

"There it stands: 'In due time Christ died for the ungodly.' fix your mind on that and rest there. Let this one great, gracious, glorious fact lie in your spirit till it perfumes all your thoughts and makes you rejoice even though you are without strength, seeing the Lord Jesus has become your strength and your song, yea, He has become your salvation....He did not come to save us because we were worth the saving, but because we were utterly worthless, ruined, and undone.....Let this text lie under you tongue like a sweet morsel till it dissolves into your heart and flavors all your thoughts: and then it will little matter though those thought should be as scattered as autumn leaves." Charles Spurgeon "Alas! I Can Do Nothing!" from the book-- "The Essential Works of Charles Spurgeon"

And I also reflected: "When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes." 2 Kings 22:11 (NIV)

He tore his robes over a nation's transgression. Without the Book, they'd lived as the generation before them and so it was when the Book arrived like a flash of Light, only then did the king know the depth of transgression.

And how many times has His words undone me? How I've torn my fleshly robes for grieve and rend-ed my heart to Him?

I'm like the sinner beating his chest saying "I'm a wretched sinner!" but not stopping there. Not staying in sin's groveling grasp, not sinking into the muddy mire of condemnation, not beating myself up with scripture, not pointing out my flaws for some self-help remedy, but looking to the only place my Help comes.

And I'm set free from my own good works. Because truly they are like a fickle wafer which easily separates and parts as crumbling bread, becoming dry scraps.

It's gladly and freely admitting, "Yes, it's me you want. I'm the criminal, the despondent who wronged you, the traitor, the one who needs correction, the one who deserves bars. Yes, that's me. I repent!"

It's when we admit our true condition do we know how many sins we've been forgiven. Even those "good" things we thought we'd done, those pride ones. When we see our true condition, the depth of our own debauchery do we really know how to love much.

Recognizing the many ways we fail, allows for Grace to invade and there Love increases. Knowing the depth of our darkness only means a Light has shone into the abyss and we now see it. And so it is, we lay down and let His work begin and become the fertile soil, where Grace plants a harvest for Love to grow.

"'Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.'” Luke 7:47

At E.E.'s:

 

Over at Ann's.....



And at Em's.....

If you're recognizing your wretched state, rejoice! We are in the same boat, hallelujah!

 Now you are ripe fruit to lay your life down at His feet.....and rest. :)

 



Saturday Evening Post...on Sunday

Since I've been camping I'm a wee behind here....we are celebrating May over at E.E.'s place with one of your posts written from that month. Join us and take a tour over there.

And I added my May post "when you're a condemned {wo}man, walking".....for starters.

when life heats up and you need to be held

We were camping when we decided to ascend the foothill of an Arkansas mountain to find this lake cradled like a bowl up against the dam.

The 90 degree temperatures begged for coolness to our skin and each afternoon we left stifling tents in search of water. 

And so we came.

The kids dipping in what looked like floodstage wetness, while we sat under breezy pines.

A concrete line, rimmed one side of the bowl, a dam which held this oasis as if it were God's big hands cupping us in. My visionary mind no longer saw a gray hard surface but huge fleshy Fingers holding a liquid pool.

But man-made strength is a fragile dam.

And it's that confidence we have in our own ability, in our knowledge of how solid we think we've built a life, or in a strength we've come to think is our own, like a dam ready to burst.  

A formidable wall wedged between mountain ridges, dwarfing cars at it's base, gives the appearance of strength.

But truly, it stands by Grace alone.


Let it be one hard rain, one crack in the surface, one failed system, one man-ly error and the whole thing is in peril. In all it's earthly splendor, the dam is still susceptible to the One who can storm it's walls.

There is only one Perfect dam which holds life.

Hidden beneath watery surfaces belied this massive backbone cupping it shut and I quandaried the vast greatness of how this wee, little dam is but a tip of the iceberg of how He's able to cup the worlds, the universe, the whole of creation and never weary or crack under pressure.

But should all the starry hosts fall from the sky, the waters run dry, worlds burn a vapored smoke, should He un-cup all of life away, remove His hand from here....there's still the faith-ink of our names written on His palm, cupping eternal Hope like a pool refreshing our souls.

And how tender was the vision of those precious Hands holding those seeking shelter, just when life began heating up. It's how He holds each and every day, etched on Palms, carrying us ink bled on His skin.

All the more, with Ann ....

--camping with several families and learning to live (temporarily) together and sharing our needs, supplies, responsibilities and knowing this is what community is really about
--soft, warm (sometimes, hot) breezes along cool water-ways and hearing children laughing and splashing
--singing praises in the quiet night, like incense going up with the campfire
--maybe it's the spoiled western world, but these conveniences of heating and cooling and sheltered walls, I thank God for....
--safety, no injuries or bites or major incidents during the whole adventure