notes from a traveling minister

Monday June 1, 2009

Friends Southwest Center, McNeal AZ –

These are Isaiah’s stars, I think, and I sip my cup of water in the dark, sitting on the bench by the meeting house, and I let that sink in, and look back up. The milky way is a distinct feature again tonight, cloudy but not clouds, a swath, an arc from northeast to southwest. Not smoke, not mist: suns, like our sun. Isaiah’s stars, and I start imagining him on the temple mount looking south, like I am this still early early morning. A car dopplers by on the state hwy from Douglas and Agua Prieta, back up the road to McNeal, Elfrida, Wilcox; it’s headlights and fading sound marking a total stillness in the night, a stillness so acute I’m aware of a slight tinnitus for the first time, something I didn’t know I had. Isaiah would have stood on the temple mount and seen what I see. Behind him there might have been torches, the night shift at the temple of God Almighty, but at 2:30 in the morning in 800 BC I can’t imagine too much light coming from the sleeping City of David. And it is arid, like here, little water vapor in the air to obscure these spangles and sparklers. Who knows what sent him from his bed to walk the parapet, and pull his cloak closer against the night, and look up?

Ahhh… coyotes. First one long sweet howl, and now the whole wild crew join in. They have something to say. It sounds so good humored. There were jackals in Isaiah’s Judah: did they talk at night? Did he cock his head and listen to them?

This country frightened me at first. Left Tucson and headed south here to explore the offer of hospitality from Bill Schoder-Ehri and folks here at the Friends Southwest Center, I drove first into drier thornier country than I thought I had seen yet even around Tucson. And cousins Bruce and Mary Sue aside, Tucson mostly impressed me with angry feeling aggressive traffic and otherwise unfriendly people. It felt like a giant truck-stop in the middle of the desert, and a bleak desert it was driving south: pink and beige gravel, thorny black mesquite, prickly pear and barrel and saguaro cactus, wind, dust, cars cars cars. Ridiculous baking hot little half-built subdivisions out in the tumbleweeds with desperate-seeming for sale signs. Driving south into the water mirages on the freeway I wondered what I was getting myself into. Tombstone, for one thing. Another desperate place, faux Old West, and packed with silly people, with the real west old and new scraping out a living off of a spectacularly bloody episode over and done with 100 years ago, where is that at for heaven’s sake.

But then was the miracle of St. David, AZ, suddenly water come to the surface, and heavy irrigation, even standing water, field after field of bright green alfalfa. Little old houses with big green yards, fat ponies snoozing in the shade on small acreages. To a boy from Oregon it was a relief to my eye, and to nerves jittery from desert, sun, weird tourist junk. Finally the Sulphur Springs Valley, and back in desert, but not so spiky as Tucson. Flat valley floor, wiry blond grasses, yucca, dry desert mountains on either side, Hwy 80 straight down to Mexico closing fast. Outside Tombstone I had passed an immigration checkpoint, and it reminded me of the occupied West Bank, and the checkpoints and tensions there. I felt like I was driving into danger into a military zone. I reminded myself where my car docs were, and that I had my valid passport. US passport.

Here is 21 miles from Mexico, and I have been here now a week and a day, and the country does not frighten me now, not so much. I understand better about how mornings and early evenings are the time to be outside and busy, and that it is work to exert yourself much in the heat of the day. The ants like it fine, though. This is great ant country, and when you see their great colonies spread out, cities five feet across you get it that they have roots here too. Ants, and many birds; a yellow breasted one, a rare one with rusty red underneath and a topknot, the magpies, ravens – not crows, ravens – great kite-like vultures, hawks, sparrows, many doves; all talking their own languages.

Every morning when I have sat on the bench outside of the meeting house to drink my coffee I have had the same two visitors: a magpie, who comes to perch in the mesquite and make his little scrap call, and also a jackrabbit who comes to say hello, and shyly nibble the new grass. They are the same two, and they are both curious and like to see what I’m up to. The jackrabbit – she, I think – comes to ten feet or so, looks at me, ambles to another tuft of grass and nibbles, looks at me. She is tan and brown with white points and darker points and lovely big mobile ears and almost black eyes. The magpie is smaller than our Washington state magpies were, with more grey than their stark black and white, but he flies like them and talks like them, and his coloring is the same family. Really; I step outside and they both announce themselves; her quietly, and him with a swoop and a squawk.

I think: this is not a barren place, there are many people here, some on two legs, some on four, (six, eight), some rooted, like the mesquite and yucca. Some are rooted like Eve and Mariah. Eve Rosenberg has lived here at the Friends Southwest Center for fifteen years, and Mariah Irons for seven. They have made gardens for one another in their hearts, but they have made gardens for plants too, outside the neat adobe Eve built herself. Eve has that nice Saxon gap in her teeth, and has a way of looking at you straight and smiling at the same time that makes me trust her. They invite me to dinner and serve me an omelet and kale they grew, and nopalitos, which are prickly pear. They invite me to yoga, and I go, for the first time in my life. They invite me to come tour their community garden, and I go. It is full of plants and trees and hope; set up so anyone – seniors in wheelchairs – can garden, and can sit in the shade by a pond. It’s by the library, and the health clinic. In the middle of nowhere, where we all live.

LIFE IN THE HIGH DESERT

OK, so it takes a year to catch up.

WOW-- things are going well for us at Friends SW Center.
Our community has grown a bit, with new potential sojourners. We have hosted numerous traveling Friends, our houses are in better shape, our trees are getting pruned and several shared gardens are planted and producing. We are in the midst of some creative growth!
What blessings abound.

Here are a couple of photos. One shows the property that is being reclaimed from entropy and is being resurrected as a center for honoring and welcoming involvement with the natural world around us here in the high desert. The second photo is of most of the community at a visioning event for our project.
More details to come!