COL.0423.Canda Chronicles. High heels and mud.500
Spring is in the air, and several events this past weekend confirmed what we are hearing in the song of the first meadowlarks and watching, as fresh, lively red calves begin to dot the newly greened meadows.
Our first clue to an exciting change of season was the rumor of a weekend snowstorm on the horizon which would bring feet, not just inches of the white stuff. Phone trees went to work: The prom was on, the after prom party was snowed out; baseball and track were postponed; the county fair small livestock weigh-in was on. We were busy just keeping track!
One of our favorite spring rituals is the school prom. I am always impressed how girls can find pretty dresses and fancy shoes no matter where they live.
Our local ladies seem to instinctively know how to find that certain color to bring out the sparkle in their eyes and the dress style to bring out the sparkle in their dates’ eyes.
This year, the junior-senior prom took place at the new Club at Pizza Madness. It was attractive and sophisticated, made more so by the tasteful decorations the committee chose to use in “Night Behind the Mask.”
Bill and I sneaked in during the promenade, when parents and friends are encouraged to come see the clothes and decorations. As we entered the darkened room, we heard strains from “Phantom of the Opera.” We were pleased to see the youth’s nice manners toward each other.
Even our school’s cowboys, who often eschew formal wear, knowing they look dashing no matter what, decided to dress up, respecting the feelings of their beautifully coiffed and coutured dates.
When Sunday arrived after only a few hours of sleep, our hardy youth noticed another welcome sign of spring—mud!
At our house, Bill and Mark loaded up our youngest son’s FFA pigs wondering if the stock trailer would get stuck as it backed up to the animal pens. Luckily, we didn’t even get stuck at the other end, Custer County fairground, which was even sloppier, if possible.
It tickled me so much to see the same lovely young girls, again appropriately attired, this time in Carhartt farm jackets and knee high rubber boots. They looked just as beautiful to me, and I felt so happy because our lovely princesses and their handsome princes are not too fancy to appreciate their ranching heritage and get a little muddy doing so.
Within 24 hours, these kids had managed to get themselves to a formal party despite a couple of feet of snow, then brave excessive mud and little sleep to further their agricultural projects and dreams.
Ahh spring! When a young person’s fancy turns to romance and visions of profit at the county fair, which is a mere 80 days or so away!
We are lucky to have such spunky kids in our midst, and they are lucky to be growing up in our beautiful Valley!
Joanne Ca

Wednesday before Easter

Only a few days are left before Easter, and our hearts and minds turn to the Atonement, the bloody sacrifice God made for us of himself offered for mankind past, present and future.
While this is the doctrine that sets our religion apart. it is the most difficult thing in the world to comprehend.
Our 20th century prophet to the people, C. S. Lewis, claimed to have trouble understanding it. His depiction of the death and resurrection of Aslan sort of makes the top layer of the Atonement understandable, but in the end, Lewis can only explain it to us as "deeper magic."
"Greater love hath no man than to give up his life for his friends. Ye are my friends." Perhaps Christ's explanation is the closest thing to understandable to me.
Christ is a mortal representationof the immortal Lord of Life. His birth and death sancitify all our lives--that he is willing to become one of us makes our form holy--even I can understand that part.
Jesus's sinless sacrifice isn't just the death of a mortal man, but a bloody sacrifice of the most powerful force and mass in the universe. If you can fully comprehend this in all its meanings, quantum physics should be a snap for you.
I think one of the points of the Atonement IS that its entirety is unknowable to us at this time. When we are with Christ is heaven, we will understand all sorts of things we see darlky through a glass now.
In the meantime, all we know is that it is our job to love God and to love our neighbors. This is our commandment. Only through the atonement can we do it. Let us turn our lives toward accomplishing those things Christ asked of us until the veil is parted and we understand how, really, God has honored us with his sacrifice.
Happy Easter everyone!

This morning is Palm Sunday. For the first time ever, I regret Lent is not longer. Oh yes, part of it is because I did not give up coffee this year. It also has to do with the spirit God has generously poured out with my commitment to the morning and evening prayer offices.
Since my conversion in 1974, I have loved morning and evening prayer. Intermittantly through the years I have been faithful to one or the other. This is the first time I have committed to do both.
I wish we as the Church Militant, the church here on earth at this time, would all commit to these beautiful offices.
I know all my friends pray through the day, and that all their prayers are good--prayers of praise, prayers of repentence, intercessory prayer and prayers of thanksgiving. How much more powerful would our church be if we prayed the same words--the same words prayed by the saints who came before us and now join us in the Church Universal.
I believe this is why my spirit has soared through this Lent, even as my body has been used by Satan to try to bring me down.
Morning and Evening prayer--prayed together through all the time zones across the world, together as one church--it would be a very big earthquake as God would be able to work through us all.
Please try it! I will find you a prayer book if you will~ I love you with God's Love~may your Holy Week honor God and strengthen His church on earth