January Days with Cranes, Thursday, January 27

 As I write, Bill and I are sitting in a hotel room in Decatur, Alabama, waiting for it to warm enough to go back out to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (about 5 miles down the road) to see what we can see.  We drove down yesterday and spent about an hour at the viewing area.  We observed thousands of Sandhill Cranes and ONE Whooping Crane.  The Sandhills are magnificent to watch and their yodeling call is beautiful to hear.  We were blessed and privileged to see the rare Whooping Crane, even at a far distance.  He/she was the star of the show!  There are at least twelve somewhere on the refuge.

It has been almost 2 weeks since I picked up my journal to write and 3 weeks since I posted anything.  These have been ordinary winter days with ordinary winter activities with a few highlights.  I will back-fill those days as I am able.  

Last week, I was elected to serve again on the Board of Directors of the Good Samaritan Center.  I am glad to return to a more active roll there.  We have not been able to have church services for three weeks because of COVID cases and exposures.

This week, Pastor Linda invited our small group to view the Rob Bell  video, "Everything is Spiritual." (https://youtu.be/i2rklwkm_dQ). This version was published 9 years ago.  I was excellent, providing a bridge or scaffolding between the "traditional, conservative" understanding of God and a more nuanced and expansive understanding that identifies a creative energy of the universe which we may call God.  When I got home, I shared with Bill my excitement about the video.  On the drive down, we listened, but I picked a newer version, thinking that it would be the same with some updates.  It was not.  (https://youtu.be/JT09JbaEh_I) It was on the same theme and part of the content overlapped, but not all.  We listened with interest for 2 hours and that lead to some interesting discussion 

We got to Decatur eventually and checked into our hotel before making our way to the refuge.  The pictures below tell that story!  For supper we were directed to a local restaurant, Libby's Catfish Diner, where we got two take-out orders of the the best fried catfish, maybe ever!

Later Thursday

We spent about an hour again this morning watching and listening to the Sandhills.  This link is to a one-minute AV that I call Sandhill Meditation (https://youtu.be/T2jllRu048o). The solitary Whooping Crane made its appearance in about the same place as yesterday.  The time came to say good-bye and we made our way back home a 4 hour drive.