Women's Conference

This past weekend the girls and I went to the General Women's Conference.  This is a semiannual church meeting for the women of the church, ages eight and up.  This was Mary's first time to go and she did a pretty good job sitting still for the first half hour of the broadcast.  After that she was on my lap, sitting with Jesse, back on my lap, holding my hand as I walked her to the bathroom to blow her nose (she doesn't even have a cold), standing with me at the back of the room, sitting on the floor, and back on a chair for the last ten minutes of it.  In spite of all the movement, she manged to be very quiet.

The talks, music and video were so inspiring.  As soon as the meeting started, I could feel that familiar swelling in my heart that tells me that something is right and good.  I felt the strength of millions of women tuning in from across the world, united in a common cause- to be followers of Christ, to do and be good, to show and give love. You can check out some of the highlights from the conference here. The choir was my favorite, the singers and musicians were mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers, and they made some beautiful music together. 

Here's an invitation to join us for what we'll be doing next weekend, not just for women, but for anyone and everyone. 

Siwa has finals, so you probably won't be hearing from her this week- that means no Nature Sightings today.  She's been pretty busy lately- studying and throwing some awesome pottery in the ceramic studio.  We keep calling her and asking her what she's doing and when she's coming home, and can she check a book out for one of us, and get us some movies from the library while she's at it?  She's really good about it.  She even took Mary to the studio one day and helped her make her own plate with a big fat M in the middle of it.  Good luck on your finals Siwa.  I love you and I'll be praying for you.

Writing it down

Palm trees through the glass on a rainy day- a moment to savor.

Here are some recent, happy memories:

-Siwa and Jesse stay up til midnight last night laughing and talking.  I don't know what they find to laugh about, but they do it.

-Mary runs up and down the trail bringing me little flowers, kissing my cheek with big wet ones and saying "I love you," and "Oh, you can wipe that off if you want to."

-I go to town with a friend.  She zips in and out of traffic, changing lanes with ease, telling stories and making me laugh out loud.  She brings me home, I give her a hug and walk through the door smiling.

-A crash and a scream, and then, Mary crying.  I hear Jesse asking her if she's alright.  There's a mess on the kitchen floor of cracked bottles and spilled concoctions from a fallen fridge drawer.  I go into the kitchen and see Jesse showing her how to clean it up. She stays with Mary until it's done, calmly pointing out missed spots.

-We're driving home.  Through the rear view mirror, I see the girls' contemplative looks as they gaze out the windows, some facing the mountains, some the ocean.  For some reason this means so much to me.

-I have an epiphany, after weeks of struggling and asking for answers, my eyes are open, nothing changes in my life but me- my attitude, my perspective and my actions.  I see things more clearly and am at peace.  God loves me and life is good.

None of the above short stories are what you might call extraordinary- just quiet or simple experiences; but the writing of them has transformed them from passing, fleeting memories to the significance of lasting ones- memories that I can examine whenever I need to be reminded of how good life is.  The very process of writing them down pulls these happenings to the forefront of my mind, and reaffirms to me that God is aware of, and involved in my life.  That's one huge reason why this blog has been such a joy to me, blogging has been yet another reminder of the blessings dropping daily from Heaven all around us.

Writing down the events of life has helped me examine how God works in my life.  I understand better why He allows bad things to happen and I see how He has succored me and answered my prayers.  I can look back on my life, the written record of it, and say, "These things actually happened, I lived them," and day in, day out, over the course of years, in spite of trials, and maybe, especially because of the trials, they make for a wonderful and happy life- even an extraordinary one. I think so many of us are living extraordinary lives and totally unaware of it.  What quiet, simple things have happened in your life lately?  Even in the midst of challenges?  Got a pen?

Writing about my life has helped me to see and savor the good, in the middle of difficult times.  When so many negative voices are clamoring for attention, I can stop for a moment, pick up a pen and write; and in doing so, know that there was more to my day, more to my life than the tumult and the roar.  Sometimes I have to turn off the news and pick up a pen, and then it all comes clear again.  Writing has  brought a peace and stability to me, because I can see the bigger picture, like I'm holding a map of my life in my hands.  I may not have the whole picture yet, I may not know how the narrative ends, but I know who I am- the heroine of my own story; and I can see patterns in that story- patterns of how God works in my life, and that gives me hope for days ahead.

Ode to green

It turns out I have another photographer in the family.  We went to the botanical gardens at Ho'omaluhia today.  There was a gentle rain and time seemed to slow with it. It put a wet gloss on everything, making the green more vibrant, the deep brown earth more rich.  We took our time walking, pondering around in that drizzle, looking at every beautiful thing, and pointing it all out to each other.  Elena took all these pictures.  She would show me each one after it was taken and I told her they were awesome, every one.  I always knew she had an eye for beauty.

We stopped under a huge overspreading tree and looked up into it's canopy.  She held her arms up and framed the view with her hands.  Then she turned by degrees until she had made a complete circle, telling me that every angle was beautiful and she wanted to capture it all.  I stood there smiling at my girl- with her face to the treetops- seeing the joy of a new found vision in her eyes.  I felt doubly blessed- blessed by the beauty, and blessed in my little photographer- that she sees it and gets it, she rejoices in it.  Take a look at these pics she took and see what I mean.

Here's a little something I wrote after our visit to the gardens.

Ode to Green

vine of spring
 wrapped around
 branch of winter

green, the victor

 from treetop
to mossy earth
 warmth glowing
 green overflowing

it hydrates

rejuvenates
exhilarates

 I soak it up
 and drink it  in

 it feeds my soul
 and makes me whole
 from yellow green

to every darker sheen
In honor of spring

 this my ode to green

 Awesome job Elena!

Wherever I go

For seven years I lived in the desert.  My husband took me there when we were first married. We arrived in the fall after the leaves had fallen, and my first view of the mountains looked like a barren wasteland.  People would say, "Aren't they beautiful?" and I would look at them, dumbfounded.  How could anyone say this was beautiful? I missed the lush rainforest, water everywhere, and most of all, my family; but I loved my husband and my home was wherever he was.  I felt that we needed to be there, but I didn't want to be.  I cried a lot in those days.  I was homesick in so many ways.  I felt the land and the weather were harsh, and well, mean- to me.  I took it personally,  I felt it personally.  I remember the winter wind rushing across the way and slamming into me, straight through my thick woolen winter coat.  It felt like a slap in the face, like I had been struck.  I felt knocked down a lot in those days.

But time has a way of acclimating one, and I very slowly adjusted to it.  I experienced real change in the seasons for the first time in my life.  My first sight of snow was a softly falling one.  It filled me with excitement and stillness, I had no idea what silence was until that moment.  In the spring I marveled at the profusion of colors and I picked wildflowers in the mountains, always wanting to stop and gather more and more. I marveled again in the fall, at the change in colors as the whole mountainside was set ablaze in fiery reds and golds.  I had never seen anything like it, but in books, and here I was standing in the midst of it.  It was beautiful and overwhelming and awesome to me.

 We took road trips down winding roads that we had no idea where they would end up, stopping whenever we felt like it, going as long and as far as we wanted.  We camped and fished and I tasted the "best steak ever", cooked over a fire, up a canyon, by a brook.  I liked bundling up when the air turned crisp and I loved the change I felt in the air, every time one season was about to emerge from another.

I know the pain of parting from what I love and is familiar, but I also know the joy of new loves and new familiarity.  I've been back on my beloved islands for awhile now, rejoicing in the present beauties.  But when our mild seasons shift, and I feel that change in the air, every once in awhile I get a hankering for tulips and lilies and crocuses, things that don't readily grow over here.  I remember the fruit orchards and the hay rides and the farmers markets with apple jelly.  I remember the magic of walking down Center Street in a lightly falling snow, bundled in a scarf and coat and thick boots, sipping cocoa, looking into the quaint shops and listening to the carolers.  Every place has it's wonders, and I've learned to appreciate them wherever I go.  By the time we left the desert, I could look at those mountains and with reverence say, "Yes, they are beautiful!"

Happy saint patrick's by Siwa

 To celebrate Saint Patrick's Day I decided to do a post of all green things.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Good deeds list

Here’s an exercise someone I love suggested:  Keep a list, a Good Deeds list, where you can see it, put down each good deed you do.  I’d like to add to that another list- the Blessings list- where you record all the good that comes to you.  The two lists show the income and the outflow, but I think that the two eventually merge- the expenditures become the income, because everything good thing you send out comes back to you in one form or another at some time or other.  Even the very act of doing good becomes an immediate blessing because you feel good.  It just feels good to do good.  I’ve performed this little exercise many times over the years.  I start out being able to jot a few things just off the top of my head and then after some thought I begin to pick up steam and the list lengthens and expands and explodes.  I find that I do more good than I realize and that God and others bless my life so much more than I imagined.  I can’t help but feel supremely happy every time I do it.  Sometimes the list goes on for days.  Siwa has a gratitude journal full of lists and lists of her blessings, and she is always smiling.  How could she not be happy when she notices every little beautiful thing around her, and she knows Who they come from.

In the Nursery by Siwa

 A few months ago I got my first regular job. I now work in a nursery taking care of plants. Here are some of my favorites from the nursery.

This plant is called either Leadwort or Plumbago (Plumbago auriculata). It is a native of South Africa. On the sepals (the green part attached to the base of the flowers) there are tiny sticky hairs that will attach themselves to anything that gets brushed against them.

An Orb Weaver spider (Neoscona theisi). The nursery is full of these and almost all of them have slightly different colors and patterns. I've found white ones, orange ones, even some rust colored ones. They spin their webs between the rows of plants.

A Green Anole Lizard (Anolis carolinensis) on a variegated form of Fragrant Dracaena (Dracaena fragrans). When a plant is variegated it has more white or yellow in some part of it than the normal plant would have. I think this particular one is referred to as having lemon lime leaves.

A Croton moth caterpillar (Achaea janata) on a crown of thorns leaf (Euphorbia milii). This caterpillar feeds on a variety of poisonous plants.

Another Orb Weaver spider showing one of the different patterns.

Two Grainy planthopper nymphs (Kallitaxila granulata) on a young  Beefsteak (Acalypha wilkesiana) leaf.

Raindrops on a spider's web.

I'm not really sure yet what kind of caterpillar this is; it was feeding on a Chinese banyan leaf (Ficus microcarpa). The caterpillar on the dead eaten part of the leaf makes it look like a butterfly.

Makapu'u point lookout

We went to Makapu’u to see the whales.   It has an easy paved hike that ends in a popular lookout for whale watching.  The whales were scarce that day.  We saw some breaches and lots of spouting, but I wasn’t quick enough on the draw to get any photos.  The day was hazy and gray making visibility poor and the whales we did see were so far out they were tiny indistinct forms jumping out of the water and little puffs of mist when they spouted.  But looking straight down from the highest lookout the view was awesome.

My favorite part of the day was the scenery- the huge expanse of water laid out before us, the amazing intensity of the deep blue fading into bluish gray as it neared the horizon; and all the spring green clinging to the cliffs.  It was so very beautiful and I felt grateful that we had made the effort of getting up early and driving far to come.  Some things are worth the effort, even without the whales. Here are some scenes from the day:

Little presents from Mary along the way.

Two state bird sanctuaries- Rabbit Island (the larger) and Turtle Island.  They are closed to the public, but shearwaters, noddies, petrels and tropicbirds breed on them.

Elena and Mary on the lookout along the trail.

The only photo of whales I was able to capture.

Mary can't stand wearing shoes any longer, luckily Big Sister came prepared with slippers.

Lighthouse on Makapu'u Point, as seen from the top lookout.

I stood at the highest point and looked out at the big blue.  

It's a view to take your breath away, 

to make you pause and remember how huge the world is, 

and how small we are in comparison; 

and yet, how significant, 

considering this is all for us-

 for our life and breath and sustenance, 

for our happiness and peace.  

That's what I felt as I stood there on that high place- 

happy and peaceful- even without the whales.

Clouds by Siwa

I love clouds. None are ever the same twice. I love the purples, pinks, oranges and grays, especially around sunset or sunrise. Here are some clouds.

Storm out at sea.