A Poem

By Patrick N. John (for Kristine M. John)

I watched the sun coming up on the hill at the entrance to work. It inspired this poem.

I walked down a canyon

At the breaking of dawn

The shadow enveloped

The side I was on

Like a candle just lit

The other side burned

By the light of the sun

The shadow was spurned

I raced to the bottom

Seeking the light

The light raced to meet me

Oh glorious sight!

We met at the bottom

In a long warm embrace

And welcome warm kisses

Soft on my face

I walked up the hill

From whence it had come

And saw there a cross

And God’s Holy One

The shadow rejoicing

The Son was put out

Dark surrounds everything

The world full of doubt

Three days sat in darkness

The world in despair

Would the Sun e’er return

To that hill o’er there?

Then warm welcoming kisses

Broke forth on my cheek

The light had returned

The world to the meek

My hope in the Son

Forever in light

My darkness he’s taken

And banished the night

Though only in spirit

Have I witnessed this scene

My heart feels warm kisses

And I know Truth serene.

A Camper's Prayer

by Kari Diane Pike

Have you ever played, “I’m Going On a Camping Trip and I’m Going to Bring A….” Someone is chosen to go first. He/she makes up a rule about what everyone can bring on the camping trip…but doesn’t tell anyone what the rule is. The other players have to figure out the rule by saying in turn what they want to bring on the trip and finding out if the first player will let them bring it or not.

We played this game as a family while we waited by the side of the freeway, twenty miles south of Camp Verde, Arizona, for a tow truck to pick us up and transport us to the nearest car rental agency. We continued to play as we rode in our disabled vehicle high atop the tow truck, laughing at how often we were startled that Dad wasn’t watching the road. By the time we hit the road again in our newly rented mini van, the game had ended, but conversations between parents and children continued. The clouds and rain and even a bit of snow made our world seem just a little bit smaller…not in a confining way…but in a protective kind of embrace.

We easily found the turn off the highway that would lead us to Oscar and Winnie’s property near Four Hills Ranch. We were anxious to get there because we knew Oscar had a dead battery in his motor home and needed jumper cables so they could use their heater. Somewhere along the dirt roads, we missed a turn. About the time we realized our mistake, seventeen-year-old Ammon asked,

“Dad, aren’t we getting a little low on gas?”

Right at that moment the warning bell signaled. We were on empty. We were a good 20 miles from a gas station and we had no idea where we were and the cows sure weren’t telling. We had tried calling Uncle Oscar a few minutes earlier, but he hadn’t answered. Now we couldn’t even get phone service. It was time for some serious praying.

After our family prayer, we drove back to a spot where we thought we had missed a turn. Right at that moment we got phone service. This time Oscar answered his phone and we made it to the campsite safely. When we told Oscar about our predicament, he laughed and said he’d trade us the jumper cables for the can of gas he just happened to bring for a chain saw they needed to cut some dead trees. That gallon of gas got us to the nearest gas station.

After we returned home, we talked about the trip with our kids. They will never forget it. Our fifteen-year-old daughter said,

“It was so much fun. Yeah stuff happened, but nobody got upset or anything. We just prayed and did our best, and things worked out. We got to be with family and we got to see our prayers answered. It was cool.”

Next time I go on a camping trip, I'm going to bring...

A Dry Season

By Sarah Albrecht, sitting in for Rene Allen

Given the heap of dirty clothes in the laundry room, either the kids have been mixing their stacks of clean clothes in with the dirty ones again, or science is wrong and there is such thing as spontaneous generation. Whichever is the case, laundry makes me empathize with camels. It’s something about those ponderous, shapeless burdens strapped to their backs.

Feeling like a camel requires coping strategies.

Humor helps, so several years ago I started keeping an alphabetical list of items I’ve found clunking around the t-shirts or banked against the dryer door like driftwood. I do check obviously jingling, crinkling, or bulging pockets, but, in spite of all the stuff that has come through the wash over the years, I don’t check the rest. Call it a streak of perversity, but that would be a lot of pockets. Besides, throwing all those boys’ blue jeans in the wash adds an element of risk to life. It’s not quite like bungee jumping, but it does make the heart race a titch—and my alphabetical list is almost complete.

“C”, of course, is for crayon, the red one left in my husband’s white shirt pocket after church. It ruined almost a whole batch of whites. I definitely should have checked that pocket, but who would have thought? Funny now, but it’s taken a few years for the memory to mellow. “N” is for the handful of nails my son found at a construction site. They made such a ruckus I thought the dryer was about to self-destruct. “T” is for tissue, disintegrated into fine, clingy pieces, and I have to admit guilt myself over this one.

Even the hard letters, the ones the kids agonize over finding in the alphabet game while we’re traveling—no sweat. J is for jolly rancher, although of course the washer dissolves the candy and only the wrapper makes it to the dryer. And Q? Quarter. Piece of cake. I have to make allowances for “X” and do something cheesy like “xtra.”

I made my best dryer discovery ever just a couple of months ago—letter “R.” It’s not that I always open the door with bated breath. Usually I’m in a rush and distracted, as was the case this time. I hurried into the utility room and flung open the dryer door only to find a mob of raisins waiting to stampede. Still abnormally plump from their journey through the washer, they tumbled out with bits of the snack-sized box they started out in. True, extracting the remaining raisins and box fragments from the rest of the clothes was a pain, but imagining the raisins’ journey as they rehydrated in the washer and then desiccated in the dryer seemed wildly funny to me.

One of these days the kids will be gone and I’ll add a final entry for “Z”—zero. Zero sounds sad and final. So until then? Yeah, I can deal with it.

The ARC Nazi

by Marsha Ward

Although I never rabidly watched the TV show, "Seinfeld," I did catch enough bits and pieces to know what a Soup Nazi is. I guess you could call me the ARC Nazi.

What on earth is she talking about? you may ask. What's an ARC?

An ARC is an Advance Reader's Copy, a pre-release version of a forthcoming novel. These are soft-cover versions of the-book-that-will-be-out-soon. They may or may not come wrapped in final cover art, may include errata, and the text may be an iteration that precedes last-minute changes. Publishers usually send them out several months in advance of the book's release to publicize the next big thing in reading, and book reviewers are the intended recipients. More and more, though, selected general readers are getting their hands on ARCs, either through contests, or from a list of the author's fans.

By the way, it's considered very bad manners to sell an ARC on ebay or the like. If you don't want it, just give it to someone who will appreciate it.

Okay. The reason I'm the ARC Nazi is that I have a pet peeve concerning ARCs. Not the existence of them. I love getting ARCs, when I'm fortunate enough. I just hate to hear the acronym referred to as an "Advanced Reader's Copy".

What about slow readers? Don't they ever get any ARCs?