Mark Scandrette

We are up in Seattle visiting my sister and her family for Christmas ( Jen and Dave Laird). We are having a great time seeing different neighborhoods and relaxing. I had breakfast this morning with Dwight Friesen from Mars Hill Graduate School. Dwight is a fascinating guy– and the more we talk the more similarities we find between our life stories. Dwight is a gifted teacher, writer, guide and facilitator with a particular passion for reconciliation.

1. Listening to the kids learning to create music in our house.
2. Teaching a homeschool poetry class.
3. Watching our kids develop into the people that God created them to be. They are great gifts to me.
4. Spending time developing relationships within SEVEN and the Jesus Dojo.
5. Continuing to expand my creative pursuits in various fiber arts.
6. Weekly dates walking and talking with Mark, who is still my best friend.
7. Enjoying a rich web of friendships!
8. Relaxing in Palm Springs as a family and exploring together.
9. Discovering the wonders of cave exploration at Lava Beds Nat’l Monument.
10. A wonderful visit from my mom this fall. I admire her for trying new things still and braving the flight alone to come and see us. I love showing her where we live.
(Can I do 11?) I am so thankful for the way that God so richly gives to our family—in terms of relationships, contentment, opportunities and all things that we need. We have certainly been made wealthy!

1. I started Nature Studies this year & enjoy being outside with my friends there, learning about nature.
2. I played in my first violin recital. I was nervous, but my family says I did a good job. I like my violin.
3. I turned a double digit (10!) and celebrated by playing lots of tag with my friends.
4. Building a tree house at a fri
end’s birthday sleepover.
5. Spelunking (a fun word for exploring caves) at Lava Beds & finding cool patterns in the lava flow.
6. Swimming in the hotel pool in Palm Springs.
7. Watching antlions & splashing in a creek at an oasis in Palm Springs.
8. Going to the dollar theater in Palm Springs to see “RV” and “Over the Hedge”. I laughed so hard that my family was laughing because I was!
9. Enjoying my comics—“Calvin and Hobbes”, “Garfield” & “Astro Boy”—as well as drawing and writing some of my own.
10. Cutting down our Christmas tree and decorating it! I love having a Christmas tree in the house!

1. I started learning to play the cello in January and really enjoy it.
2. I went on my first camping trip away from my family to a Wilderness Area with Riekes Center & jumped off a 35 foot cliff into a river!
3. Waiting for and receiving a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot. I earned the money pet sitting and refinishing our deck.
4. Adventuring through Catacombs cave at Lava Beds National Monument.
5. Sleepovers with Jonah, Ada and Mattea.
6. I’m thankful for my reading glasses and reading good books.
7. Nature Studies—being a barefoot barbarian, learning to throw an atlatl (an primitive spear) and succeeding at my first bowdrill fire.
8. Seeing a desert bighorn sheep up close and personal while hiking at Joshua Tree National Park.
9. Watching antlions attack their prey at an oasis in Palm Springs.
10. Celebrating my eleventh birthday with a Pirate party on China Beach, complete with swashbuckling, & digging for treasure.

1. Nature Studies: making new friends, camping trips, eating huckleberries and lighting my first bow-drill fire (think fancy way to rub two sticks together).
2. Belly crawling in the dark through Catacombs cave at Lava Beds National Monument.
3. Spending time with my older friends in SEVEN.
4. Having sleepovers, laughing and hanging out with my friends.
5. Singing and playing the guitar.
6. Turning up the music for dance parties with my friends.
7. Learning Spanish.
8. Seeing “Eyes of a Child” at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and seeing the friends I worked with on that movie.
9. Earning my Girl Scout Bronze Award. (This involved a major service project and LOTS of work!)
10. Having an entire pirate filled day dressing up, visiting friends and watching “Pirates of the Carribbean” on my birthday.

My world is small–
An old house in a city made of mold
A woman I have known since childhood
who is as much a sister as my lover
Three children now almost the age we were
who only know me as their father.
Dirty streets and buildings sinking
into the ground–
minerals returning
to the place where they
once lay buried.

In my body I read the signs decay:
The gray of beard stubble
creases on my face
and even plumbing problems
like an old house with broken clay pipes
underneath a weakened foundation.

I’m getting older– am I any wiser?
Or will I die the old fool,
surrounded by the skeletons
of past achievements
propped up in a chair
watching the food channel
with someone wiping the drool
from my silent mouth and vacant mind?

How much of what I’ve done
will matter anymore?
Maybe all that really matters
is this one single moment.

The coastal fog seeps
into the river valley
and clings to the fir trees and winter grasses
making dry scorched earth a wonderland.
The frozen mist makes the ordinary spectacular.
Ditches, abandon cars and shanty houses
covered in crystal white frost
belong together
a fleeting post card picture of order and beauty
made visible by the Oregon solstice wet chill.

I see you in the smallest details of our stories– brief glimpses of hope amidst the pain and confusion of being timebound.

We could spend less of our time comparing ourselves– or regretting where we are because of the choices we’ve made.

We can spend more of our energy discerning the next immediate step
into the light of love– instead of beating ourselves up because we fail to live up to our own ideals.

Could we evaluate success in terms of our ability to stay present to the voice of love that persists in the messiness of life in the here and now?

From the Hacienda we walked
through the village of cotton wood trees
and up the hill past the church
where a few faithful gathered
under a thunderstorm New Mexico sky.

In the cemetary
we read off the names on the headstones:
Anaya. Chavez. Sandoval.
For two hundred years
These families have buried their dead
in view of the Galisteo Basin
and the Sangre De Christo mountains
Their bodies lie under ground
covered by high desert grasses,
or small fenced plots
adorned with white rocks and astro turf
and tattered bouquets of plastic flowers.

The names cut into marble
in faded script worn by the wind
or speckled with lichen
are now barely legible.
The poorer Anaya, Chavez and Sandovals
buried their people under homemade crosses
with the name of the beloved
etched in broken script
in poured wet cement.

We look up to see
the last car leave Sunday morning Mass
A new white pick up
carrying a young couple and their child
They drive past the cemetary
towards the cluster of shanty houses
with satalite TV dishes
A stray dog wanders past
and it begins to rain.