Journeys part 2: In the Sea

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Donna Coulson

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been spending a lot of time near and in the sea. Last week, we went out on the Renegade with Big Beard’s Tours for a day at Buck Island (our fourth trip with them – awesome!), I’ve snorkeled around the Frederiksted Pier, the coral at Frederiksted City Beach, and searched for chaney and sea glass along the shoreline. (Thankfully, I have a great little camera that will allow me to share a little of what I’ve seen.) I love the sounds of the sea, the feel of the salt in the air and the soft grit of sand on my feet.  I marvel at the hundreds of shades of blues and greens from sky and surf.  I love watching pelicans do loop-de-loops that end in a ‘boosh’ as they hit the water, diving for fish.  The water isn’t just warm, it is soft and inviting.  It feels silky against my skin.

Actually, when I’m snorkeling, I feel like I’m flying, weightless and without restraints above an exotic and foreign world. The moment I enter the water is always a surprise.  I’m standing, usually about thigh-deep, adjusting my mask and sliding on fins.  The world is ‘normal’, familiar.  The breeze ruffles my hair and the sun glints off the surface – since my sunglasses have been left behind in favor of a mask, I squint a little in the glare.  Then, with the mouthpiece now in place, I bend over a bit, take a breath and slide in.  Most of the time there are fish darting within arm’s length.  Small, tiger striped ones, or neon blue headed wrasses.  They’ve been there all the time but I couldn’t see them until my head was in the water. I kick out a little. Now the only sound I hear is my own breathing.  As I adjust to my new world, the rushing sound that is my breath slows and begins to mimic the rhythm of the waves, the sea, life.

Now I am somewhere magical.  Even if the scene beneath me is clean sand there are wonders to explore.  A shell, a tiny school of fish, a shiny black sea urchin making a trail in the sand as it makes its slow trek.  I like the coral beds best. Brightly colored brain coral hosts a forest of Christmas tree worms, a crab scuttles beneath a dust colored rock, a piece of sea glass adds its bright green to the scene. Coral that looks like a Dr. Seuss creation stands still as a sea fan beside it slowly waves back and forth.

Brain coral and Christmas Tree worms
Sea urchin, crab and a striped fish all hanging together.
Dr. Seuss would be proud…

And of course, the fish.  Tiny and large, beautiful and ugly, colorful and plain.  Some are loners, swimming solitary and content.  Schools of nearly transparent fish hurry past and then I watch as a yellow striped group ride the current in and out from under a rock ledge.  Some swim close to me, unafraid and uncaring, others dart quickly away or into a crevice in a rock when I approach. Something catches my eye beside me and I smile to see a needlefish swimming beside me, as curious about me as I am of him.  I nearly miss seeing the flounder right beneath me, he looks so much like the rock.  Sometimes the sea reveals to me special gifts – two turtles, one hawksbill and one green, swam beneath me last week. A barracuda slid by me at the pier, uninterested in me but even so making my heart quicken a bit.   Even more rarely, a ray, an eel, squid, jelly fish.

Can you see the nearly transparent fish in the foreground?
Beautiful!
Flounders are just too cool.

Mostly when I am snorkeling, my mind is so busy absorbing the wonder and beauty there is no room for thought.  But invariably, at some point, the magnificence of this world I am able to get a glimpse of and be a small part of brings me to wordless prayer.  The character and power of God are so apparent as I witness the detail and variety. The sheer grandeur of His creativity calls to my soul and I feel Him caress me, just as the warm sea water does, and I, for one small moment, am finally able to touch Him and feel Him touch me.  I am still.  I know He is God.

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Journeys – part one

Posted on April 8, 2019 by Donna Coulson
The Irish countryside new Newgrange, north of Dublin.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about traveling and journeys.  Our trip to Dublin a few weeks ago began this line of thinking, I suppose.  That trip was short, just nine days, and filled with family, and bangers and mash, and tours of the Guinness Storehouse, staring at bog bodies in the museum, and reveling in the truly emerald green countryside.  For that trip, plans were complete ahead of time, we knew our destination, where we were staying, and when we were coming home.  It was happily planned, predictable, and terrific.

Not every journey is as fun or easily dictated.  Our pastor, John, (here on our island) preached about journeys yesterday using Joseph and his life as an example.  John’s been on quite a trek himself – this Sunday was his first time in the pulpit for a while as he had hip replacement surgery and has been on a voyage of recovery.   He had to go to Miami for several weeks, and while he had a hope and an idea of how his trip would unfold, there were no guarantees. His journey started out with a plan, hope and prayer, and has led him safely back to his congregation.  My nephew this week became ill and is in the hospital.  It’s taken doctors a while to even diagnose the journey his body is taking him on, and even now that they’ve named it, it looks as if the trip may be rocky and unpredictable.  Some journeys seem unfair and frightening with no plan or clear destination. 

John’s sermon point yesterday was that during times when

*we have no idea about where we are going on our life’s expeditions,

*when we don’t even understand the need for a trip in the first place ,

*when  we feel and are unable to control our paths or anticipate the outcome,

*when tomorrow’s hours are hazy and unbiddable,

even then, we can be assured that God knows the plan and that He sees the destination.  Further, we can relax knowing that He has this trip carefully and intentionally laid out to grow us and shape us into the persons He wants us to be. I honestly don’t like this.  Oh, I love the fact that God is trying to grow me and that He knows the ending of the trek I’m on, I just wish I had a little more information before I begin because the ambiguity and the unknown scare me.  Joseph, in answering the Pharaoh in Genesis 41:14 made this bold statement of faith: “I cannot do it. But God…” So.  There’s my comfort and my joy for the week.

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Newgrange

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Donna Coulson

The word druid might conjure up for you thoughts of mystical, hooded people who perform cultic kinds of rituals and sacrifices among the standing stones in Ireland and England. In reality, that view of druids comes from a ‘Celtic revival in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ and is probably a gross misrepresentation of who and what the druids were. We know very little about them actually, because they left us no written records. While we were in Ireland, we had a close encounter with Druids on a tour to Newgrange mound.  Newgrange was built in 3,200 B.C. – that’s about 5,200 years ago! It’s a large, circular mound nearly a hundred feet in diameter – all man-made- surrounded by tons of cool standing stones. (It’s actually older than Stonehenge!)  To get inside the mound, you walk through a narrow passage of carefully placed boulders that leads to a center, high ceilinged space.  Many of the boulders (in the passage, inside the mound and outside the structure) are decorated with intricate and delicate carvings of concentric circles and diamonds and triangles. It’s difficult to describe, but once inside, I got the feeling I was inside a cathedral.  The domed ceiling is made with circular layers of boulders capped by one large stone. (Those boulders are covered with about 8 feet of dirt and grass above.) Even after over 5,000 years, the structure is totally waterproof.

If that isn’t enough to impress you, here’s one more thing: the passage into Newgrange is aligned perfectly with the sun’s rays each year on the winter solstice.  We weren’t there for it, but the tour guide, using lights, showed us how on the first day of winter each year, the sun shines, for about eight minutes, in a perfect line through a small window above the passage opening, down the narrow corridor and directly into the center of the mound.  It’s amazing.  It’s astounding to think that people so long ago could build something with such precision that it would gather the sun into itself on that exact day, and that the whole thing is standing still today.

As we stood inside gawking, the tour guide said something that has made me think.  He was talking about the Druids, admitting we know nearly nothing about them. Then he said that all religions of the world were in one way or another an attempt by man to reach out and grasp some kind of understanding of how we got here and what happens beyond this life.  He went on to observe that clearly the druids saw some significance in the sun.  That statement made me remember the Bible verse, (I’ve blogged about it before,) Romans 1:20. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  The druids built Newgrange 3,000 years before Jesus walked this earth.  They lived far from the middle east and in all likelihood never heard about the Israelites or the Bible stories we know.  Yet, they had the opportunity to know God.  They had His sun. 

As Karl and I walked around the grounds at Newgrange, I noticed a place that looked like a meeting spot defined by standing stones and pavers, in the shape of a cross.  Hmmm. 

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Ireland, part one

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Donna Coulson

Now that I’m back in my own bed and the jet lag is history, I can relive our Ireland trip with the hundreds of pictures I took and the memories we made.  We saw remarkable things and experienced so much it is impossible to talk about it all.  I think over the next few days, I’ll share little bits of our trip so you can see what I mean.

We booked a tour to the Cliffs of Moher, a stunning place on the west coast of Ireland. Getting there meant driving in a cushy bus all the way from Dublin (which is on the east coast) across the middle of Ireland to the west coast.  It was about a three hour drive each way, but definitely worth it just for the joy of watching the countryside roll by. I loved how beautiful country estates – modern and impeccable – stood next to ruins of castles, towers, churches and estates hundreds of years old.  It’s such a cliché to talk about how green it is in Ireland, but, in fact, it is.  The hue of the grass of the Irish country side is a deep, nearly neon green that defies description.

The Cliffs didn’t disappoint, either.  Over a thousand feet high, standing not-so-close to the edge and looking out made my heart pound. The surf below endlessly pounds and swirls.  Sometimes we could hear something almost like thunder echo as waves collided with the rocks far below.  In some places, the wind captured the sea spray before racing up the face of the cliffs and splashing it in a fine mist on us far above. At first we though it was rain, but the saltiness on my lips convinced me otherwise. 

Standing in awe, I was once again astounded by God’s vivid creativity.  If you look really hard at one of my pictures, you can see people standing atop the cliff.  Tiny, tiny humans in contrast to the tall, imposing cliffs that are, in fact, only a weak monument of the strength and power of our God.  I’m humbled as I picture God’s hand forming these precipices carefully and intentionally, and I’m reassured that His care for the scenery of this world speaks so clearly about the depth of His love for the people He placed here and called His.

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Faith

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Donna Coulson

I’m not going to bed tonight.  Nope.  Tonight Karl and I will be sitting in relatively uncomfortable seats, accompanied by strangers, all trying to sleep sitting up while we hurl through the atmosphere a little above the ocean and a little below space.  And we are excited about it!  We are on our way to Ireland to spend a week with our daughter, son-in-law, two grandsons, their other set of grandparents, and an uncle.  We’ll be in Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, and maintaining my total history geekdom, I have been furiously researching Irish history.  Wow.  Lots to learn and enjoy. I’m a control freak, as we all know, and in preparation for the trip, I’ve made lists and tables of places to see, scheduled tours to take, printed maps of how to get there.  I’ve researched euros and uber, the potato famine and Dublin’s bus system.  I’m ready. 

What I’m thinking about right now, though, is the trip.  When we board our flight from Miami to Heath Row (and really, any other flight we ever take or have taken), I am highly aware that I have purchased a ticket that requires me to relinquish every bit of control.  We have chosen our seats, but I have no say about who sits beside me. I can’t choose if or what food will be offered or the temperature in the cabin. I have no input about the crew flying the plane, I don’t know about their skills or experience.  I can’t watch over shoulders and give my two cents about routes or altitudes.  When I board, I am agreeing to total acceptance.

Hmm.  Just to be clear, all night tonight, I will willingly demonstrate my complete faith in total, unseen strangers.  Yet, there are lots of times that I withhold my trust or doubt the reliability of my God even though I know Him intimately and have experienced example after example of His power and might and good purpose for my life. Just the thought of this irony makes me wince.  The Creator of the sea below and space above, the Hand that engineered the sciences man taps into in order to be able to fly – often receives much less of my faith that the flight crew tonight will.

 I’m quite certain, based on past experience, that I won’t sleep much tonight.  I’m resolving right now to spent at least some of tonight’s long night rerouting my faith – since it really isn’t the crew or the fuselage that will safely convey us to Ireland – and pondering the Hand that is holding me up.

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The Spices of Life

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Donna Coulson

I don’t consider myself regimented, or severe, or a stickler for perfection.  Certainly, I work hard to do things as best as I can, but I’d like to think I am willing to let things go and embrace imperfection as well, up to a point. 

But then there’s this:  The spice rack in my pantry holds all those little jars in alphabetical order.  While sometimes I struggle (does Cream of Tarter go by the “C” for cream or “T” for tarter? “R” or “P” for red pepper?), the organization pleases me (and Karl!).  Going to the grocery store here, then causes me a kind of frustration so deep and disturbing that it is hard to verbalize. An entire aisle in my local grocery is dedicated to spices – none of which are in any kind of order.  Chocolate sprinkles are next to the allspice, then may come the turmeric, then the cinnamon. No rhyme, no reason, and it changes every time I’m there. When Karl writes a spice down on the weekly shopping list, he always also writes an apology in the margin. He understands the effect this chaos has on my mental well-being.  This lack of civilized organization rankles me.  I grit my teeth.  I inwardly rage.

Thankfully we have a God who understand the lack of organization.  I mean, God is perfect and He desires perfection – holiness – from and for us.  I imagine that everything is ordered and organized in heaven.  If there’s a spice shelf, the jars are alphabetized. But, God’s also realistic, and He knows that our humanity is a real stumbling block.  That’s why Jesus came. He came to save us and suffer in our place.  He also came to offer us a glimpse at what is possible. Jesus’ death gave us eternity, and His life gives us a goal for living this life. But notice, we have no idea if He kept his closet tidy (oh yeah, during the time of his ministry He had no closet), we don’t know if He’d have rolled His eyes at jumbled grocery shelves. (No doubt He would have noticed, He spoke a lot about salt.)   What we do know is that He was single minded about loving and not ‘sweating the small stuff’.  I’m going to remember that.  When I am searching for cumin, I’m going to (try) to smile and say a prayer for the shelf stockers, and I’m going to remind myself about love and not getting caught up with the unimportant.

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Drink of the Day

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Donna Coulson
Drink of the day in the Monks’ Baths on St. Croix, USVI

If you are friends with me on Facebook, then you’ll know that the reason I didn’t blog last week was because we had dear friends visiting us.  You’ll also have seen daily posts of something called, “the drink of the day”.  Those postings are a tradition for our friends, Liz and Greg, when they travel, not just to St. Croix and with Karl and me, but wherever they go and sometimes when they are home and enjoying friends.

Liz and Greg and Karl and I have been friends for thirty-three years. That’s a long time to share ups and downs, births and deaths, laughs and tears. They love the Lord, they are generous and compassionate and quick to see the bright side. Liz has shared recipes and cooking tips with Karl, a shoulder and wise advice with me. Greg never hesitated to come help Karl put on our new roof, and he was patient trying to teach me how to play the guitar.  They are precious to us in so many ways, and we all are better and richer people as a result of our friendship.

So what does this have to do with “the drink of the day”? I’ve learned many things from our friends, but maybe the most important one stems from the drink of the day.    On the surface, this tradition seems to be the celebration of libation.  But don’t be fooled. The truth is, the drink has very little to do with alcohol.  No, the real value and meaning in the ritual is the mindful and intentional celebration of ‘this moment’. It took me a while to recognize this, but it’s true.  The gentle clink of two glasses and the snap of a camera shutter don’t work together to glorify the liquid at hand, instead they make us stop and consider and then have a chance to remember later, a wonderful moment spent together.  Life is fragile, and we have no guarantees.  I hope that Liz and Greg have hundreds more drinks of the day and that a great many of those are shared with Karl and me, but it would be contrary to the spirit of the drink of the day to worry about it.  Instead, I will look for the blessings that each day offer – in a smile, or a sunset, or a new challenge, or even in a glass of rum and I will drink in the day.

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Step into my parlor said the spider to me…

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Donna Coulson

We took a hike a couple of weeks ago in the rainforest. Now St. Croix’s rain forest is relatively small, but it offers pretty much everything you’d expect in a rain forest (except large, colorful birds and monkeys. I think it needs flamboyant parrots and macaws and howling, swinging monkeys, but alas, there are neither here.) Anyway, we hiked up a watercourse – which is called a gut here. I took my camera and had a field day snapping the interesting and the beautiful.

Beauty in the details
Part of a tree called “Monkey No Climb”. Can you tell where its name came from?
Dried flower on the vine.

There is a downside to such an outing, I truly hate walking through a spider web.  I have instant fear of being covered with spiders when I do.  Yuck.  Remember the scene in Madagascar when the lion walks through the web?  That’s me – dancing and brushing myself off.  The end of that scene when the lion realizes he has a huge arachnid on his back haunts me, and after I walk through a web, I thoroughly expect for some multi-eyed and eight-legged hitchhiker to greet me with a resounding “Well Hidee do!”

Just hanging out.

*shivering*  Anyway.  Thankfully I did not walk through one particularly wide web, inhabited by a seriously large but beautiful spider.  Instead, I was able to watch and snap some pictures of her.  She was, however, unimpressed with me and as I watched her, another, smaller spider joined her in the net. Before I realized exactly what she was doing, she wrapped him up in webbing, presumably to save for a snack later.  *again shivering*. 

Meeting her new friend.
That about wraps him up.

I’ve thought a lot about that spider.  I’ve considered how happy I am that I didn’t walk through her web.  I’ve also thought about how beautiful and intricate the markings on her body were.  I’ve considered her actions of eating her guests.  Mostly, I’ve thought about how the details and intricacies of spiders speak so much about the Creator of those spiders. I can’t explain a whole lot about our world, but watching a spider dance on her web, or encountering dolphins like I did last week, or watching the light dazzle through the clouds as it sets – all these wonders of nature reinforce to me that we are here by Design not accident.  And that reassurance comforts and encourages me.  God is good all the time.

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Dolphin Encounter

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Donna Coulson

While we should count every day as a privilege we’ve been granted, there’s no doubt that some days just end up being more special than others.  Yesterday pretty much pegged the amazing meter for me. About a mile and a half north of the island of St. Croix is another, much smaller place called Buck Island.  It’s actually called Buck Island Reef National Monument, and it includes the sea around the island with a reef filled with amazing coral and fish.  Karl and I have been there two other times, and it’s always worth the trip. (A little commercial here- we always take a tour with a company called Big Beard’s and they rock!  If you ever get to go to Buck Island – this is the best way to go.) Yesterday we went with friends from Wyoming, Katie and Henry and Diego.

For the first stop on the all-day trip, the tour takes you to Turtle Beach – a beautiful stretch of white, powdery sand.  This is the spot to test your equipment and get your snorkeling perfected before moving around the island to the stunning coral reefs and the unbelievable fish there. 

We were winding down our time at Turtle Beach.  Karl had taken my snorkel gear back to the boat and Katie and I were looking for baby turtle tracks and walking the beach.  All of a sudden people were getting excited.  A pod of dolphins were playing about 40 yards off shore.  People in the water were heading out to them, and I was lamenting that I didn’t have my gear, when Karl came running down the sand with them.  We threw on the fins and snorkels and started kicking out.  Katie stayed on shore, and yelled at me once that the dolphins were moving to my right, so I changed direction and started kicking hard.  They were traveling away from us.

Close enough to touch

Then.  I could hear little clicks and snippets of an eerie melody coming through to me from the water, and then.  Karl and I were surrounded by five dolphins.  A mom and baby below us, two large ones close enough to touch.  They were near only a short time, but they acknowledged us, eye contact.  They greeted us, checked us out, and then leisurely swam past.

What an incredible gift.  Knowing that they were headed away from us then turned around to meet us, makes me wonder why.  Did they enjoy seeing us as much as we enjoyed seeing them?  I hope so.   

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Squeaky Wheels

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Donna Coulson

                I believe in the adage “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I’m an avid squeaky wheel.  Sometimes when I let someone else know how I feel or what is needed, I don’t get what I want. Other times I annoy the person I’ve encountered. Occasionally, I have even made things worse.   When I’m engaged in this activity, often it causes Karl and others around me a bit of embarrassment.  Mostly, I am not deterred though, since the rate of return on my squeaks remains high.

                Hurricane Hugo did a lot of damage in 1989 on St. Croix.  We weren’t here then, but we have lived with one remnant of Mr. Hugo since we bought our house. Our power pole lists at about a 60-degree angle. It looks as if it is reaching for the sea.  Besides looking kinda funny, it often worries Karl that it will fall down, especially since the pole is also very old and cracked. 

                After Maria, we’d hoped that when the power was restored we’d also get a new, straight pole.  This was not to be.  The guys were in a hurry and much more focused on getting the electricity back on as opposed to making our pole look good. After 77 days without current, we were anxious as well and thankful for the light, so I didn’t squeak beyond a perfunctory inquiry. 

But now.  There have been bucket trucks and burly workmen in our area for the past week.  They are replacing poles with new, taller specimens, and running new wire.  Twice, I mentioned to Karl how maybe we should stop and talk to them and see if they could replace our pole.  He scoffed.  He patiently explained that most certainly there was a master plan for the poles they are replacing, and that if we went through proper channels and called the power company to request a new pole, maybe they’d oblige us.  His answer made sense. I resolved to make the call on Monday morning. But my urge got the better of me yesterday, Sunday, as we were passing (it was a tight passage and our little pickup barely fit between the fence and the bucket truck on the road below our house), and I did some polite squeaking.  Karl just grinned and shook his head.  Squeaking once again gets results and we’ve been listened to, investigated and approved for a new pole!  It isn’t here yet, but we’ve been assured it will be installed within the next few days.  Yay!

I’ll happily update this blog with pictures when they come, but in the meantime, I ended the day feeling a little smug.

This morning while I was weeding it occurred to me that my prayer life resembles my physical life.  I’m often a squeaky wheel to God.  I ponder this, and wonder if I’m praying right or if God doesn’t get annoyed with me asking over and over for forgiveness for the same stupid things I do or for help. Honestly, I don’t think so.  I am intentional with my prayer – more so than I have ever been – striving to align my desires more and more with God’s plan for me.  There are enough places in the Bible telling us to pray fervently and without ceasing to encourage me in thinking that God is patient with me even when I’m nagging Him.  No doubt, there are times he shakes His head at my pettiness or shortsighted requests, and perhaps He even gets annoyed when He’s answered me and I still persist, but I have no doubt that He continues to listen and love me even when I’m shrill and obnoxious. I’m convinced that even if He doesn’t love the noise I make, He loves this squeaky wheel. That’s just one more beautiful thing about the God we serve!   

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