Deluge

We don't know if you can see me very well, but I am making a dash for underneath the deck in the rain. Below, you will see Alice who was much more willing to get her dainty paws wet chasing birds in the rain.

The keeper drove her car all over today in the rain. It smelled like lots of places that we had never been. We are very happy that she is going to be on a retreat for a few days so that she can find some clarity about what she needs to do next with her life. She says it's a big decision. We don't want to move any place. That's our only request. We like our home and we have established our territory here. But we will honor her time to eat, pray, and be. We will not ask her to post our mundane comments. Maybe she will post some of her own.

Tonight she did leave us to go to the Taize service to pray for the people Haiti, living and dead. She came back and told us that she was happy she had gone because she found some peace in the chanting and the singing and the power of a community of beseechers gatherd. She said that she heard the consoling words of the prophet Isaiah 54 in a whole new searing light:

A Song for the People of Haiti

For the mountains may depart, and the hills be shaken,

but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken. . .

O afflicted one, storm-battered and unconsoled,

I lay your pavements in carnelians, and your foundations in sapphires,

I will make your battlements of rubies,

your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones. . . .

In justice shall you be established,

far from the fear of oppression, where destruction cannot come near you.

Isaiah 54

On a more mundane note, below is a photo of Alice chasing the birds.