A Somewhat Incoherent and Rushed Amount of Thoughts on a Trip to a Stunningly Beautiful Part of the World

A Somewhat Incoherent and Rushed Amount of Thoughts on a Trip to a Stunningly Beautiful Part of the World

By Jane Tawel

May 3, 2022

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Here are some random thoughts on a recent trip I was privileged to take with my husband to Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah, U.S.A. This was our second trip there and if you have never gotten to go, well, find a way. Go. Now if possible. Our trip was a celebration of my husband’s birthday, but it also turned out to be a retreat for our marriage and relationship, and a spiritual adventure for our souls.

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If you have never quite been able to believe in a Creator-Being, some call “God”, then you just might after visiting Bryce Canyon. And if you need to find solace, inspiration, and joy in putting one foot in front of the other, both literally and figuratively, then head to this area of amazing and incredible natural and glorious wonder. And if you want to learn about both the incredible creative Spirit that shapes towering red glowing rock formations and vast purple and yellow canyons, but that also shapes each human heart and lives within each human open to Spirit and Truth, a Quixotic and Incomprehensibly Wise Creative-Father that also shapes men and women into creative sources as well, then go to Bryce and Zion. You can just “be” there, which is the best, but you can also hear and read about the miracles of creation, both divine and human, that make this place a continual, evolving, and ancient as earth and native peoples – a story of glory and grace, determination and awesomeness, and practicality and natural magic.

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After a week of hikes and picnics, rest and play, Raoul and I drove the long day’s drive home and talked about our “take-aways”. Here are some of mine, in no particular order.

  • Sometimes you have to rest from trying to learn, in order to learn. Sometimes you have to play to let the hard work of relationship grow into something fruitful. And sometimes, you have to stop thinking, in order to understand – to understand others, to understand the Mystery many of us seek and call God, and to definitely, at times, understand oneself.
  • Forgiveness of others is hard, and forgiveness of oneself is even harder. The difficulty is why many of us never try to forgive and many of us never do it particularly well. True forgiveness means the annihilation of past judgments and the desire to avoid any future judgment.
  • Acceptance does not mean condoning, but it is better to remain silent about not condoning actions and let your voice speak loudly and lovingly of your acceptance of the person. It would be good to try each day to do this with myself. “Hello, dear Jane. I do not condone the fact you over-ate yesterday, nor do I condone the fact that you gossiped about that workmate or had that negative thought about that loved one. I do however, lovingly accept you – slightly chubbier, a little bit anxious and worried you – and I love that you are still seeking and going to try to do better today. I forgive you, Myself. I accept you myself. Jane ole Pal, Go out there and love!

  • There aren’t really any good words to describe Nature’s beauty. But I am so happy that people just have to keep trying to describe it anyway. There were a couple times I slightly embarrassed Raoul by bursting into the verses from the old hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth.”  I sing this to myself some nights when I feel anxious about my kids, or the world, or myself. I sing it sometimes when I can to stop myself from cursing other reckless and naughty drivers on side streets and freeways. I sing it to myself sometimes when I feel God moved off far-away too long ago, and I keep wondering when She will return to save the planet and the people in Ukraine and all the angry people in America. But…. There was something about singing it to Raoul and me and the red rocks, and the impossibly- surviving trees hanging on cliffs, and the chipmunks that find enough food each day to scamper along the dusty trails, and the American antelopes, that aren’t antelopes at all but a unique deer-like creature that has had its own completely unique DNA since God said, “Let there be!” – and it all came into being. Which brings me to this:
  • It is good to be “becoming”. If even rocks are still changing under the glory weight of a God Who Is, then so can we be “becoming”. So am I still becoming. It is good to be alive and as long as there are rocks standing in Bryce Canyon and waters flowing in Zion, there is not only hope for our planet, there is hope for you and me.
  • Surely the Psalmist was right, when she wrote, “For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place.” But it is good to tell oneself when returning to the ugliness of a city street or the boredom of a 9-5 job or the angst of a world gone headline-mad, or the fears for a child or loved one, that God also lives in us:

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. (I John 4:16-19) 

  • I couldn’t stop looking at what the world and nature– from the large towering impossibly colored rocks to the small, delicate flowering plants –what all reveal about a Mind, a Spirit that is beyond my comprehension and yet Who somehow created a planet that is not only perfect for life, but perfect for exploration and awe-inspiring and wonder. The Psalmist also wrote these lines that kept zinging through my head while in Utah:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. …

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Dear fellow travelers: Today may be a day when like I, you get up and do the same old thing and feel the same old way– if not even a little achier or crankier or scared-er. And beauty may seem long past or remembered as a dream that you can’t quite bring to mind any more. Some days, or many days or most days –hope may seem to have hit a years’ long drought in the living waters department and God, well, He might truly be hiding out in places like Bryce or Zion because He doesn’t always seem to be on our speed dial any more. I know if I were God, right about now, I’d be taking a centuries long retreat to Zion and waiting to see if old Jane or the rest of the folks on the planet decide to stop warring and waging war and causing mayhem or just creating irritation in people they say they love. 

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And so perhaps the best thing to do is to realize – if you are reading this – you still have the miracle of your eyes, along with the miracle of your hands and thinking brain – “Look, See, for the Lord is Good to have given you eyes that can see and hands that can work and a brain that can remember and envision something new to create today, even if it is just to create a perfect cup of tea.

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Breathe deeply and mindfully, some might say that is all prayer is, and then realize today is yours to live as you choose. Choose now. Choose joy. Choose love.

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Finally, no matter where you are, there is a dandelion growing in a sidewalk crack to remind you that the Earth is full of life and hope and beauty. And as long as you can see a wish-flower or hear a bird or taste a drop of honey or smell the morning air or touch your very own hand to your face, then you can trust that God is good and you are good to go.

And as long as people keep trying to create word-pictures that express the beauty of God’s creation and the beauty of God’s love, and the beauty of an hour more to live, and the beauty of our love for each other – well –then no matter where I am, or where my day will take me, or how simplistic and ineffectual my words may be, then I can have the teensiest taste of hope and glory and trust that “God is on Her throne and all will be well with Her World.” 

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For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

2. For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

3. For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind’s delight,
for the mystic harmony,
linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

4. For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above,
for all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

By Folliot S. Pierpont, 1835-1917

© Jane Tawel, 2022

Listen With Your Heart — a poem

by Jane Tawel

https://unsplash.com/photos/7LsuYqkvIUM

Listen With Your Heart — a poem

By Jane Tawel

April 12, 2021

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I don’t know why the birds keep singing, but they do.

When every thing is horrible. It’s true.

My mind is on the negative, transfixed.

The world is broken and our minds up-mixed.

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I wake up every day and burn the wick down,

Before my feet have even touched the hard ground.

But little bird is on a branch a-sway,

With ne’er a worry of the coming day.

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If God is in the Heavens, He’s in birds, too.

And that would mean, that God’s in me and you.

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Oh, listen to what can be heard, unseen.

And lessons from the birds and creatures, glean.

There is a cosmic beauty, love, and grace,

In every feather, furry paw, and face.

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We soldier on, when we should really dance.

And let the glory of the world entrance.

Today I will from mindful prison part,

And listen to the whole world, with my heart.

©Jane Tawel 2021

I Had Forgotten How to Live – a poem

Bird

“Bird” by CollegeRocker is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

 

I Had Forgotten How to Live

By Jane Tawel

March 12, 2020

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I had, too long, forgotten how to live.

And letting Time control my thoughts,

And taking more than I could give,

I had forgotten what I aught

pay heed to more than I should not.

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And then one day while waiting

And slow-drip coffee, hating,

I stood beside my own back door

And heard a bird song, me, implore,

to stop and listen, look, and find,

because to beauty, I’d been blind.

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There, just there, in my back yard,

Were little birds, like crossing guards,

Directing me to safety in,

The joy that could be found within,

The world at large, and lives at small,

If I would simply sense it all.

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I think I hadn’t really lived,

Or taken time to sense and breathe,

Not since I was a little kid,

And for lost years, I now did grieve.

But rather than waste one more day,

Determined I to savor,

To listen well, and learn to play,

And find a Mother’s favor.

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Oh, I’d forgotten how to hear,

And how to truly see.

But though I wasted life and love,

Life still believed in me.

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In Nature — A Poem

 

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In Nature

By Jane Tawel

September 2019

 

 

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In figs and pears

You oft appear,

And like the rose,

You rose

Despite the thorns.

 

 

What all I lack

In yon lilacs,

I find the glory;

As morning glories

Seek the same

Of the sun.

 

 

I too find rest,

Forever blessed

In The Son.

In bird and song

And honey bee throng

Like sparrows tended

By Your strong hand,

In sky and earth

In seas and land

You reign, You reign, You reign. . .

 

 

And like the rain

You fall on all

To grow the good

Among the weeds.

In winter mulch

Alive, all, much,

New life.

First, we die

Then rise to bloom.

Temporal as a weed,

But as The Rose of Sharon,

In death with You,  Eternal.

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If He Clothes

 

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If He Clothes

A Poem

 by Jane Tawel

August 11, 2017

 

 

 

Nature’s indiscreet ignoble ignorance

Revels before The Glory.

Lacking dignity, She indecorously decorates in bold immodesty;

Celebrating unselfishly in fuschia-crimson-midnight-gold-cerulean-purple-aqua-pink-cerise-ecru-limegreen-blue-chiffon-mustard-ochra-red-chocolate-chartreuse-denim-puce!

Creation greenishly proclaims “there is no self outside God’s Glory!”

 

In this de-meaning comes true meaning.

In this indignity lives dignified identity in Son of Sun.

In this un-nobling comes ennobled rampageous God-image.

In freely- clothed nature’s requited love comes uproarious beauty.

How much more…

How much more….

 

If Our Parent-Creator robes these in their tumultuous foolish nakedness

How much more should we exude our blooming grace?

 

If Fairest of Them All

Vestures with glory and awe-inspiring miracles of prismatic growth

How much more The Three yearn to en-robe me?

If I but dance with nothing to hide my love

Will not my barren heart be seeded in new life

as David’s was?

 

If I  de-mean my bleak self

in worship of Their Artful Meaning;

If my dour, dreary soul will paint praise

razzle-dazzled do-see-doed

with showy palm -fronded-joy;

Then I will dance

like David did

Before the Lord

as all Creation gawked in awe.

 

But if I do not cry lushly out

nor dance against the muteness

of my plain pride,

The very rocks–most ugly and controlling of us all–

will riot-up in worship,

kaleidoscoping their praise

for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.

 

If ugly rocks will dance,

I can only imagine what those crazy  flowers will do!

Antelope_Valley_Poppy_Preserve

Matthew 6:28 And why do you worry about clothes. Consider the flowers in the fields, see how they grow; They neither labor nor spin.

Psalm 96: 11 & 12 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.  Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

2 Samuel 6:14 “And David danced before the Lord with all his might.

Luke 19:40 “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”