Samson ... waiting for me to come back outside ... ran in for my camera, cause needed a picture of how beautiful the sky was today, and where the trees are at in their blooming ... this is a great, great big dog.

The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O'Brien ... I'm reading it now.  I didn't realize it was going to be about Vietnam.  I have been avoiding stories about Vietnam ... not exactly on purpose, just so many other things to read about.  Vietnam sucked.  I sat the overnight shift on a crisis hot line in the 80's and heard more of the horrors of Vietnam ... dark words in the dark night, different words wrapped around the very same story ... mindbendingly senseless horrors and then they came home and nothing made sense not there and now not here. Their stories never made sense to me ... the stories spilled out of their souls and piled up words that were too dark to untangle.  This book is  real treat though. Maybe because I hear the stories in my own voice as I read silently along.  I've heard worse.  I really dreaded those calls ... so hard to hear words that would come out only in the dark.  These stories barely make it in to my head ... certainly they don't make me run for the bathroom.  These stories are sanitized ... I can see the writing  ... so far I am not there seeing it through this guys baby blues ... this is a story only ... maybe just freshly invented.  I can read it because I can't feel it.  The style of writing is interesting ... he pings the reader back and forth through time and that's the way of stories ... a remembered story transports you back and I think forward in time as well.  Maybe I should be writing the stories I want to experience in a few years.  That is what we do ... just not consciously.  We do choose our joys and sorrows ... long before we come upon them.  To intentionally choose seems like a plan.

Different topic.  Today in church a video of this horse training guy who visits "Cowboy Churches" was shown.  He uses his knowledge of horses, working with an unbroken horse, he demonstrates the story of his faith ... yeah, in God.  I was pretty interested.  I like the telling or seeing of a bigger story packaged in a small story.  And, that is exactly what Mr. O'Brien does in his book.  It is a story ... our stories really ... set in his life in that war, and because of that war.
I've been thinking about this verse ... the meaning of the information provided by this verse:

Hebrews 4:15

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

... trying to imagine how in the world Christ really could have been tempted in every way.  I'm not saying I don't believe it,  I'm saying how did that all fit?  And, I guess I am thinking about that cowboy, and that soldier, and how we all deal with basically the same issues ... we have stories.  And the core of our stories are ... similar.  This probably isn't making any sense.  I am trying to figure out how to write stories, and I have only my own self to write them from ... how do I tell stories without being the kind of vulnerable that telling my own story would make me?  How do I tell a story wrapped in other symbols.  Cause I read those stories all the time.  This guy O'Brien is genius at it.  And I'm going to go see that Cowboy and some one's little wild pony and ... I'm going to see the story of salvation through his eyes.   I would like to learn how to tell specific stories wrapped up in made up words ... not the words that tell my story, rather the story that I'm sure we hold in common ... those stories.  I think, I bet someone has identified those stories.  I know I read the same stories over and over again told and re-told in different lives.  

Well, that's what I'm thinking about.

And, I'm thinking about exactly what I think of Mumford and Sons ... and of Goyte also.

this great day ... sitting in the back yard reading THE THINGS YOU CARRIED