Cheryl Grey Bostrom's Blog, page 17
November 7, 2020
Through A Glass, Darkly
Quite a week, right? Quite a year.
People in factions, divided, thronging, railing against each other.
People demanding, hopeful, hateful, joyous, resigned, controlling, proud, controlled, judging, glad, corrupted, censored, used, relieved, propagandized, unsettled, afraid, deceitful, vindictive, certain, confused.
People of every color and creed, with emotions swirling like the leaves in a November tree-stripping gale.
Like the storm outside my windows this very minute, already blowing itself out.
Because tempests pass, you know. This one will, too.
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Regardless of how this election storm unwinds, you and I can trust that God’s allowing it.
Can trust that he works all things—all things—together for our good. For good—for us who love him and say yes to his call. (Romans 8:28)
I expect it will last awhile, this hurricane,
and we may not understand it until later.
In the meantime, friends, there are things we can do. Things that will make a difference when nothing else can.
WE CAN DO THINGS LIKE THIS:
Search our hearts.
Learn the Word like we never have before.
Reach for our God in ways we haven’t taken seriously for years.
IN WAYS LIKE THIS:
Confess. (Whatever your heart search uncovers.)
Repent. (Turn from it.)
Forgive. (You know who. God’s got this.)
Worship. (With relief. Celebration. Joy. Wonder. Awe.)
Pray. (Instead of worry.)
Love. (Always. Always.)
And keep Someday in mind.
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“There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
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Dirt Storm.
(Blowing soil in Whitman County, WA.)
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
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And in an eggshell, online posts from earlier this week:
When Heaven Votes.
“Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they marveled at him.”
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When The Wind Shifts.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
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Mudslinging.
“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
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Drink Deep.
(Mid-bridge at Vantage, Columbia River).
“I will make … rivers in the desert.”
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And the 20 year celebration continues! This week’s WINNER of THE VIEW FROM GOOSE RIDGE, is Blaine Stigen! Congratulations, Blaine:). Please send me your mailing address and I’ll get a copy right off to you.
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Welcome friends, I’m glad you’re here.
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks.
October 31, 2020
Rodeo
We’ve been away this past week. Out of cell range, mostly. Only satellite radio, heard under the stars, tells us the latest. We’ve crossed miles and miles and miles on foot, distanced from the hubbub, out in open country, where I
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can think about things.
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Dodge the rodeo back home.
You know, all that political mutton-busting:
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those foisted ideas,
bred in captivity,
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riding heavy on my wooly brain.
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So I slip the gate and
cross to broad lands,
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Where I remember to
hear my heart,
speak my mind,
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choose Truth,
fear not.
Still captive, but
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Only to freedom.
Only for Love.
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The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for . . . fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.
—2 Corinthians 10:3-6 excerpts MSG
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And shifting gears . . .The WINNER of this week’s GIVEAWAY, celebrating 20 years of THE VIEW FROM GOOSE RIDGE, is NONA BOUDREAUX! Congratulations, Nona! Please send me your mailing address and I’ll get a copy right off to you.
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Welcome friends, I’m glad you’re here.
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
October 24, 2020
Rodent Years
Sweet potatoes. Pacific Northwest.
Gardeners in NW Washington State rarely link the two.
Unless one of those gardeners happens to find a mail-order variety touted to produce in northern states.
And unless that gardener ignores the fact that Whatcom County has fewer growing season thermal units than pretty much anywhere in the continental United States.
I know such a gardener. I live in her skin. So I know that she planted slips in May, nursed vines through a rainy, cool summer, and counted the days until harvest. I know that she pulled the vines last week, retrieved her potato fork from the shed and then, from a twenty-by-three-foot sweet potato bed, dug these:
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One semi-edible bowlful.
And found these:
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A year’s crop, growing in tough conditions, then consumed by rodents, burrowing unseen.
A lot like 2020.
I also know that the gardener believes this, from Joel 2:25:
“I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten . . .”
Because He does.
Even when locusts are rats.
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And IN AN EGGSHELL, SM posts from earlier this week:
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Rural Relief.
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October 17, 2020
A poem about Purpose
What if hay had a choice? Would it choose the mower, rake, and baler for the sake of nourishing others? If I were hay, would I? Do I?
Would you? Do you?
Purpose recently appeared in the Fall 2020 edition of God and Nature Magazine—a publication of the American Scientific Affiliation—where Christ-following scientists grapple with the intersect of the seen and unseen, the common and the holy.
With that which can be proven and that which cannot.
How often does one illustrate the other? How often are they one and the same?
I welcome you to settle back and chew on the perspectives of these fine thinkers. Consider. Stretch. Question. Discuss.
Enjoy.
You can find the entire issue in the link above and here.
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PURPOSE
by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
If blades of timothy and rye
Were made of flesh and bone,
And orchard grass and clover green
Were my own form, full grown,
Would I dare cheer the mower sharp
As round the field it came
To drop me groundward at my knees,
My willfulness to tame?
And would I welcome ted and rake
To cure me in the heat,
Before the baler packed me tight
And bound me, winter’s feed?
Or would I resist sacrifice,
Ignore the hungry, poor,
To wave in autumn’s windy chill,
Then shrink to soil’s store?
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“The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone–
as though we had never been here.
But the love of the LORD remains forever
with those who fear him.”
—Psalm 103:13-17
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This singing sky . . .. 
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Sharpei.
(Snake River breaks at dusk).
“And thou hast filled me with wrinkles . . . “
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Engineers.
“. . . think on these things.”
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From here to there.
.”Jesus said to them, `Come away with me.'”
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October 10, 2020
A POEM FOR SMOKY TIMES
SMOKY TIMES
Caw, cawing. Raucous,
a murder of crowers, flap
on air of blame, on waves of . . . of
cacophony, caw cough phony.
Not one unflappable.
Invite them inside, will you?
Where it’s warm?
Offer suet, seed, a talon trim.
Might take awhile, for
when have they known
a place like this,
with no door on the cage?
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And IN AN EGGSHELL, here are SM posts from earlier this week:
Rib knit.
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'”
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Stopping by the woods on an autumn morning . . .
and I almost tripped when this beautiful barnie surprised me—in bright daylight. Sorry to have disturbed her, but so thrilled to see her.
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Female, I think, because of her larger size, the barring on her wings, and her darker legs and more heavily spotted underbelly. Your thoughts?
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Wonder how far she’ll go before she sleeps?
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Groundswell.
“‘Let us start rebuilding,’ they replied, and they set their hands to this good work.”
Rebuilding things like trust, hope, unity, faith, self-discipline, community, love, integrity . . . lives . . .
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Stems and leaves.
“Be imitators of God . . .”
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Uh-oh.
Amazon deleted old reviews for THE VIEW FROM GOOSE RIDGE. I’ve contacted their team about restoring them, but without success.
If you’ve read this book, would you be willing to help bring it to a new generation of readers by leaving a review? Even a line or two would be great—and would prompt that crazy Amazon algorithm to notice it. To leave a review, click here: https://www.amazon.com/…/078526…/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0…
If you’re a GoodReads person, would you also be willing to comment here? (Amazon owns GoodReads.) Feel free to copy and paste your Amazon review. https://www.goodreads.com/…/2705211-the-view-from-goose…
Thanks a million! 
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Meanwhile, to celebrate THE VIEW FROM GOOSE RIDGE’s 20th anniversary, I held the hat (a real hat this time) in front of Blake, and he drew another weekly book winner. If you’d like to add your name for drawings through Dec 18, just send me a note on the contact page or leave a note in the comments below.
THE WINNER OF THIS WEEK’S DRAWING for a copy of THE VIEW FROM GOOSE RIDGE is . . . Angie Collins!
CONGRATULATIONS, Angie!
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Blessings, friends. I’m glad you’re here
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks.
October 3, 2020
Back at the Barn
I’m rarely happier than when my nose is buried in a horse’s neck, inhaling, or when my hands stroke a velvety muzzle, or when I stretch my legs deep into stirrups or . . . well . . . anything to do with horses, actually. I even like mucking stalls.
So when I returned to the dressage barn this morning after six Covid months away, you know how I was feeling.
Reminded me of an early piece I wrote for this blog—long before most of you were following these posts. So for old time’s and new subscribers’ sake, here it is once again.
Enjoy!
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Wild Weed: When Trust Takes Time
“Our friend Bernie swung the door closed on his cow trailer and stood by me at the fence, where we watched a Shetland pony trot across the field. We had just hauled her home for my daughter.
“I know a great trainer,” he said. Your girl could take some lessons.”
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That’s all it took. I made the call and scheduled her first session the next week. Turns out that trainer had been a short-listed rider for the Canadian Olympic team. Overkill for a five-year-old, but Blake and I knew our sweet girl would be in good hands.
One thing led to another. Within a few months both daughter and her momma were taking riding lessons and I had a horse of my own—a green-broke Appaloosa who bucked me off within weeks.
Not so good, a green horse and a green rider. After I sold him to a girl with more experience, my trainer found Carlos, a retired 17-hand Appy with Grand Prix schooling. Carlos was what they call a schoolmaster. Now I could learn which mistakes were mine. Most of them were.
And so I began learning dressage—much like waltzing with a horse.
Fast forward years and years, many more lessons and, when Carlos grew too old, another horse. I learned a lot. Still, when Wild Weed came along, I wasn’t sure I was ready.
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My trainer and I studied him in a pasture he shared with a couple of sheep. An American Saddlebred (and trained in that discipline, which is quite different from dressage), Weedy looked a bit like a giraffe: long-legged and narrow, with an elegant, stretchy neck that made him seem even taller than his 16 hands.
Abandoned to his stall after an alcoholic owner grew negligent, he was high-strung and—I learned after I bought him—had bitten two girls. His owners’ teen daughter was scared of him.
But as we put him through his paces, his potential shone. The boy could move.
And so, purchase complete, we brought him back to the barn. Unfortunately, he wanted nothing to do with me. He turned away when I entered his stall. Cooly tolerated brushing. Clacked his teeth and swiped at me when I cinched his saddle.
I rode him four days a week for a month before I could press my legs against his sides without him startling as if he’d been shocked. Five months later, he still wouldn’t look at me.
“He just needs time,” my trainer assured me when I spoke my dismay. “Look at his progress.”
In spite of his crankiness and worry, I had to agree. His muscles were developing, and his upright, hollow posture was softening to the the light, round lift and balance of a dressage athlete.
And then his heart came along, too. On a chilly afternoon six months after I first saw him, Weedy nickered at me when I walked into the barn. His head stretched over the stall door and and he nuzzled my outstretched hand.
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I cried.
From then on the horse followed me across the pasture. Stood at the fence when I worked in the yard. Met me when I came to the barn. Looked after me on solo trail rides and worked hard in the arena. When I rode him, we were so in sync I could hardly tell where I left off and he began.
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“He finally said yes to all that love,” my husband said one day when I came in from the barn. “You chose him—and now he’s chosen you back.
His words resonated beyond my experience with the horse. I saw a parallel to my own life. Just as I had pursued abandoned, mistrustful Weedy, Jesus kept reaching for mistrustful, defensive me, even when I turned away a thousand times.
Until, one day, I didn’t. And life has never been the same.
Weedy died at age 30, and we buried him on the edge of our south woods. I still keep a lock from his tail curled on my desk.
And I remember how Love’s power transformed us both.
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“We love because he first loved us.”
—1 John 4:19
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And in an eggshell, SM posts from earlier this week:
This land.
(The Palouse, last week).
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
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When autumn reaches for your hand.
“Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
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Egg yolk, sizzling.
“Do not let the sun set upon your anger . . .”
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Post, dwarfed.
“When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places—what are human beings, that you think of them; mere mortals, that you care for them?”
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GIVEAWAY! 
September 26, 2020
Cover Reveal!
Deep in the Snake River Canyon. That’s where I’m preparing this post right now—offline, with no guarantee that cell service will return in the morning. So if you read this later than usual, you’ll know I sent it when we arrived in Colfax, en route back to Whatcom County.
Of all weeks for a delay, it’s this one, when I can hardly wait to share this with you: the cover for my debut novel, fresh from the award-winning design team at She Writes Press.
I love it, and hope you do, too.
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Sugar Birds, hatching this coming August 3, 2021–ten months and a handful of days from NOW.
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And in an eggshell, here are SM posts from earlier this week:
Why the surprise?
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“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:9
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The Queen.
(Columbia River)
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And the king said to her, “What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given you, even to the half of my kingdom.”
—Esther 5:3
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Roadside weed . . . or royal garb?
(Queen Anne’s Lace)
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“God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”
—2 Timothy 1:7
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Favored.
.
“. . . because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors.”
—Genesis 37:3
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Welcome, friends. I’m glad you’re here.
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks.
September 19, 2020
Packing: A Short Science Poem
So, tree.
Does summer know you’re leaving?
De-leafing?
Leaving leaves to senescence?
You’ve shuttered your
first zones, I see.
Closed some taps.
I know your obedience.
your death to self.
Soon, she will too.
Those wrenching tears,
that hard abscission.
First ride blows into town and
you’ll send them packing.
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[image error]Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
September 12, 2020
For The Love Of . . .
For the love of forests . . .
Pray.
For the love of birds and insects and flightless creatures . . .
Pray.
For the love of fields and mountains and deserts . . .
Pray.
For the love of rivers and lakes and seas . . .
Pray.
For the love of plants and seeds and soil . . .
Pray.
For the love of homes . . .
Pray.
For the love of livelihoods and purpose . . .
Pray.
For the love of leadership . . .
Pray.
For the love of children . . .
Pray.
For the love of all people . . .
All people.
Pray.
For the love of God . . .
Pray.
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“Ask the Lord for rain . . .”
—Zechariah 10:1
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“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”
—Isaiah 44:3
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“Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees.
“Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked.
“There is nothing there,” he said.
Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.”
The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”
So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’ ”
—1 Kings 18:41-44
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Now, here in an eggshell, SM posts from earlier this week:
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Shadow self.
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“He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.”
—Daniel 2:22
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Snowmelt.
(Picture Lake, WA)
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“Streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me.”
—John 7:38
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September 5, 2020
Harvest Thoughts (And Book News!)
For her riveting novel Answer Creek, author Ashley Sweeney and her husband plotted the Donner Party’s route along the original Oregon Trail, then—as closely as intervening years and and land access allowed—they followed it.
From Lincoln, Nebraska to South Pass, Wyoming.
From the Hastings Cutoff across Utah and Nevada, where they reconnected with the original California Trail.
Through Elko, Nevada to Sacramento.
Ashley’s impeccable research went beyond the countless hours she spent at museums and historical sites along the way. As she travelled the Donner’s route, she absorbed the sights and smells of land and sky, felt both enmity and affection in the terrain and weather that imprisoned the ill-fated pioneers and pushed them beyond limits few could endure.
And then, welling from her sensory experience, facts, and a fertile imagination, Ashley let resilient 19-year-old Ada Weeks relive the story of that harrowing journey.
She held me spellbound through the final page.
I thought of Answer Creek last week when we arrived in the Palouse—the setting of my next novel. Thought of how Ashley’s research process has inspired me to bring the Palouse to life on my pages. Years after we moved away from there, the people and land still thrum in me, nourish me. During every visit since, I’ve been memorizing them. And now I’ll write about it.
That’s why, this year, I rode a combine.
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“Wait, wait, wait,” you say. “What about your other book? The one we’ve been hearing about for a while now?”
Oh yeah : ). I’m delighted to say that Sugar Birds, born from the award-winning manuscript I first told you about two years ago, will launch next summer—on August 3, 2021— through She Writes Press, 2019 Indie Publisher of the Year.
I’m thrilled.
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And in an eggshell, here are posts from earlier this week:
Almota, Snake River. (The grain barge behind the pickup will haul grain downriver.)
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“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
—Malachi 3:10
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Standing wheat . . . up in smoke.
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“But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.”
—1 Corinthians 3:15
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Reason #83 in the series “Why I love this man”:
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Hikes with dogs.
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Smoky southern Idaho.
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“His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles.”
—Psalm 97:4
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Breathe . . .
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Sunset at our eastern Oregon campsite.
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At a rest stop in Eastern Washington, these:
3 little boys
6 hound puppies
2 patient parents
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Blessings, friends. I’m glad you’re here.
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
