April 3rd or the Day JAMES C. CAME

James Comfort came today...Unfortunately Meg couldn't make it.

Yesterday was the first time that I really felt peeved about the sleeping situation...We came into Davenport after taking a bus out of Santa Cruz and it was freaking dark and there was PosionOak on the ground ( A lot of P.O. on this coast and I hate the plant!)

OK OK

'

I can get a little rabid about the whole Poison Oak thing but the stuff is painful and takes me months to get over and that is with access to a shower and a washing machine...

I don't have either here

But I do feel like God is helping me put stuff like that in perspective...P.O. is like sin//don't wanna underestimate it but you don't want to go around hating plants because some of them are poisonous...like at the time of writing this I am actually in Pacifica and I had gone on a beautiful hike before the rain started//everywhere gorgeous plants and yes some of them P.O. but I can't miss out on the good out of fear of the bad

So...Poison Oak is a good metaphor for sin

Better to err on the side of caution

but don't get paranoid either

So back to remembering and back to the original journal notes///

I woke up in this new beautiful spot in Davenport (having felt freaked and having explained to Nick and James in detail why I felt freaked) and I thought

I am having breakfast by a beautiful beach

I do not have to drive somewhere beautiful

I am here in somewhere beautiful

I miss a few of the routines at my parents home and I certainly miss my parents.

//also talked metaphysics on the phone about morality or the metaphysics of morality

Here morality consists of:

Helping your teammate pack his tent or pick up his bag

Sharing food

Being patient with each other

Morality is a do here

and not an idea

Incredible to be here///swim bathe in this ocean

feel like the salt is purifying me

and the cold of it is small payment for being part of its largeness

and its power.

I spent the morning doing doing and doing

I have to get my Ya Ya's out in order to be content to sit here, content to reflect.

Writing seems boring now.

I think I want to build a sand sculpture

Had a great talk with the guys last night...communion (pineapple juice and corn tortillas) in the tent with candles.

Realizing how much time it takes to get things done...when one doesn't have a car.

Puts life on a more human scale

James C is an awesome person...We walked up the road (long and uphill to find a beach with huge scary waves). He packed way too much stuff///his bag was bigger than me. Came within 10 feet of the tent at 2 in the morning...don't think I've been that freaked in a long time. I like the ocean when I go to it but I shudder when it comes to me. Am I that way with God? Nah. I like it when God comes to me. He doesn't overwhelm me with a 20 ft wave. He has all kinds of water in this world...Gentle pools for toddlers and these waves for the terminally insane.

May I be one of those terminally insane.

April 2, 2010

Yesterday was April Fool's day and I played a prank that (in retrospect) really made me re-consider the tradition of fooling one's friends. It may be overrated.

We walked thru Santa Cruz with our packs looking for a good place to cook lunch and the sell the jewelry we had made. Unfortunately just as we were about to get settled on the board walk we saw a ill humored police officer giving a woman a ticket for selling beautiful necklaces (gorgeous cords with huge purple and green teardrop stones)...

So much for that idea. And with that and with all the signs saying things like:

No littering

No Loitering

No camping

Violators will be arrested

So much for easy breezy hippie town

I would think that selling what you have (if you cannot afford rent, overhead and all ) would be a way for people out of work to doing something enriching and keep them from needing to panhandle...one could even work one's way up.

But obviously the powers of commerce do not lay in the hands of ordinary people.

WHY?

People come to places like Santa Cruz to experience alternate cultures. Buying cool stuff from hippies with dreadlocks is one of the fun things to do here. If I want delightfully amateurish jewelry, I'll buy from them...If I want high end stuff, I'll go to a store...don't see how the two venues have to compete...now if the stores want to sell stuff that is mass produced but seems like it might have been made by an artisy hippie that is another story...I don't understand the conflict

Whoa...

We also had a scary moment in which James was threaten by a 4ft10in guy with too much vodka in him...Guy kept bragging about his baseball bats (arms) and how he was going to slug them into James. I stood up with my walking stick, put my pepper spray in my pocket...but James did a great job at diffusing the situation and the guy finally walked away once he saw none of us were going to take the bait.

It felt good to know that I had a plan in my head and wasn't afraid at all.

We also lost the wonderful peas that James had cooked but the walk back to Natural Bridges was so beautiful that we quickly forgot about the beans and the crazy midget

Susanne

March 31st, 2001

God thank you for such a great night. I really enjoyed having:

_ A dry tent

_Warm clean sleeping bag

_ Peace in my heart

Thank you

I got a chance to wake up and read your beautiful scriptures.

It really excited me to read how the wise men saw _Your_ star in the east.

They came from another place and were not Israelites...I think of all the people in the Bible other than you Jesus, I would like to meet these men.

Laying here in this tent, I feel a kinship to these travelers, these nomads...

...maybe meeting them would make me keenly aware of how much we do not share in common

But I think that there is (in common) that sense of awe of the sacred.

So many good people in the scriptures.

Your words Christ are beautiful.

Thank you for the time to reflect.

Help me

Open my eyes, ears & heart to the needs of others....

Let me be so satisfied in your love for me that I have no fear of rejection from people.

open

Open

Open

and More Open

Singing with Nick (We sang a spiritual) and it was beautiful to hear our very different voices singing the same words of faith.

Went this morning to walk/jog

Wilder State Park

This park really impressed me...Love seeing dunes covered with every sort of mossy/textured/flowered growing thing...realized that the oft barren dunes I have experienced before was the result of too many people walking...not intending harm but too many of them...here signs prohibit any path but the trail and as a result the dunes are not barren but luxurious in all their flora...Animals too (rabbits and birds of kinds I have never seen) WOW! Many of them are endangered and it is an honor to get so close.

Awe of Waves also

I Am talking sheer cliffs with 20 foot waves

AWE

WOW WOWWow!

As a person who feels like an endangered species, as one educated but still unsure of how to make a living who feels different from others...and as a member of a group that is on the fringe, it feels right being here in this bird refugee.

I stand near a flock of birds not wanting to interfere with their space but desire to look again and be again overwelmed by these waves overcomes my shyness. I move closer and in groups of two or three the birds fly off with every step I take towards them, until the boldest remain. Ultimately all of them are gone and I stand alone at the edge of the cliff mildly ashamed to have frightened the birds.

poetry: Ann Lauterbach from _Or to Begin Again_

The great stalks are alert, their

shambles piled: maybe another parade

An evident gray, a slow march

and legions rudderless; an ordinary flow

These none of them quite real, none present,

like mischief in a dream: the blue garment, the rusty blade

Came late or have you come late or are you, you are late

Then on into wakened sobriety's itch.

The great stalks move slightly, They press back

Waiting folds upward into a shape

To be seen later , or not seen, not now, not later

Take hold of this garment, this was said

The thrust of these instructions.

Take hold of this blade

(read at 4am in a tent with the rain and howling wind)

((read in utter awe and contentment))

March 29th

(transcribed)

It is almost two in the afternoon...Today I painted two small landscapes...on my backpack (view of Natural Bridges where God had saved me from drowning a few years ago...so good to be here and again and be thankful.

We could tell that it might rain today so we left the beach...

Thank you God for last night. It was special staying at a beach where you saved me from drowning.

food (camp food) Garbonzo Bean Stew with seaweed, mushroom (shitake) and assorted veggies

and /I am so proud/ corn dumplings stuffed with pepper jack cheese

It is important to have a good simple hot meal at the end of the day

Sitting here @Borders...

LOOKING through the Santa Cruz weeklies

trying to find events and so on. I am sad that Ellen left us. The first three days of anything are the hardest.

Again...yes

Yesterday was a blessing. I had prayed for ice tea and got to drink it twice. Amazing how being tired and out of one's everyday domain makes the simple pleasures (that often bore me) so fantastic. Comfort here is such that I could take a nap (haven't slept all that great these past few days).

Lots of things to think about.

Like each of us on the team have different gifts

Gotta jam...need to find a place before dark

Love you all...thank you for your prayers

xoxoxoxox Susanne

California Central Bay: Log 1But i am so

O3/28/2010 Transcribed from Travel Journal

Beautiful

Mustard Greens

Yellow and Bright

We are in a field of them...we see them, smell them and had some for dinner. Salinas River Wildlife Refuge

Yesterday I thought about burdens...

About how the pack is too heavy for me and then I realized I had packed it. Nobody had packed it for me.

As I reflect on this trip...this walking, getting closer to God and developing as both an artist and as a Christian I am tempted to over anaylize. I want this to be so significant but maybe I need to learn how to just be. All day long I am walking and seeing in the things that I see metaphors for life...and in my mind I try to articulate these things so that they will bless and help other people. But you know what in all this, I am a spectator of my own life instead of being in the moment.

I think of yesterday at the ocean with Ellen...It felt like God was playing with us in the water...The waves came from all directions...each step (and you cannot see the bottom) is different...high water

low water and...that too feels like a metaphor.

God is like the ocean

or...

rather the ocean is like God

Because he made the ocean.

A challenge for sure (both God and the ocean)

but also a joy

deep

shallow

deep

splashing

This morning I washed dishes with God.

It was joyful

(as if)

God was saying

"What do you need a faucet for?

I'll rinse for you"

And so God rinsed the dishes for me.

Thank you Jesus

Had a nice conversation with a man here...

He seemed excited about what we are doing...

He said:

"You'll be fine. What you are doing now you'll (remember? appreciate?)

more than any dumb job.

Feels like maybe...

a lot of people do things for work that they feel alienated from

...that strikes me as being a form of prostitution.

I want a job that I believe in...

Here I am laying down on the cement writing. It is the front of a coffee shop that just closed.

Sun feels good

&

I know that when the sun goes down

again...it will

not be warm anymore.

basic

simple

feels like being connected to the body again.

Jesus....

Thank you for my parents

thank you for their

support and love.

I really want to make them proud.

I have been exclaiming some form of

"LOOK it's BEAUTIFUL"

all day long

&I hope that my comrades are not overtaxed

It has been hard carrying a lot of weight. My feet hurt but I am glad that I am out here doing this.

Open my heart

Jesus so that I can hear you.

I love you.

UNTITLED POem

The other night

I was trying to finish

an application

that I had been working on all day long...

Was:

tired

screen weary

and sick

of being indoors

Then the phone rings

it is a man taking a poll

We accidentally disconnect

I decide (with some thought)

that I'd just as soon not

phone rings

the second call (I ignore)

phone rings

the third call (machine eats)

phone RINGS RINGS RINGS

i amsopissed

"YOUCAN"TDOTHISTOPEOPLE"

and then

the next day

i think

man

maybe hates his job

maybe took it

onlybecause there was n o t h ing else

and then i am sorry as i imagine

his hurt feelings

and his wounded manhood

wounded further by me