Sun-Moon Trip 2025

Meridian and John explore my camper. I had planned to spend a night in Birmingham, Alabama with the daughter of my long-time friends Scott and Grace Buchanan. I enjoyed getting to know their kids. Unfortunately I had managed to get a bit of food poisoning and spent the first night of my stay with them shuttling to the bathroom to deal with diarrhea that Imodium did not touch. Pepto Bismol, which I have previously shunned did the trick along with a day in bed and a day of a BRAT diet. I’m fine now and proceeded with my schedule a day late.

Days 16-18 I visited a woman who was a huge part of my childhood. When I became a Christian that was part of what made us lose touch among other things. But about a year ago I learned that she had become a deacon in the Episcopalian Church and we have been having weekly Zoom calls since. Our friendship is back and we have quite a bit in common. Corinne had surgery not long ago and so we didn’t do much sight seeing but we did lots of talking. Corinne’s dog Marta and cat Ducky. On Friday we visited Corinne’s church and went to a wonderful Good Friday service conducted both in Spanish and English.

Let me start with a brief anecdote about yesterday. As I was sitting in the shade and bemoaning my failure to bring a bathing suit, a tiny flock of birds swooped in. I didn’t recognize them but they were brown birds between sparrow and robin size and they had distinctive stripes on their head and neck. They strutted around rather officiously and one came right under my legs. Alas I didn’t recognize not manage to get a picture before they all took off, but I’m grateful. It was a special moment. i woke up with a new song in my mind and heart which was lovely. Lovely for me to have a song. Others will have to decide on its merit or lack thereof later. But it is always special for me to have a song growing. A gift from God. I’ll share it when i have time on the internet which will probably be tomorrow. Texas is BIG. Not that any of you didn’t know that. I was driving through southern Texas on Rte 10. A lot of it was very barren looking land. I was glad to see some very large windmill insta...

This is what I woke up to on the morning. I slept myself out which felt very luxurious. At a Texas rest area I found both a very luxurious succulent of some sort and these signs. (But saw no snakes). I am at Balmorrhea State Park in Texas where they have built a huge swimming pool around natural springs. Only a fool like me would forget to bring a bathing suit to this place. The campground was pretty bleak but the shady area near the pool was nice. And I’ve had some lovely conversations today, one with a Messianic Jew and one with some folks thinking about building a sweat lodge (but not very conversant with the prayers in a lodge) im tired and peaceful after the dance. Woke up with a melody but not a fully formed song in my heart. love and blessings to all.

I made it. So did everybody else. It was an incredibly hot dance, and they gave us time to rest in a cool place, and “medicinal treats” from the chief—glasses of liquid to drink. I won’t share much, because the spiritual stuff needs time to ripen, and the trivial things “waste the energy of the dance”. Thanks for your prayers. Thanks for those who drank water. It was much appreciated. And now I am sitting in a traffic jam hoping it won’t end up delaying me more than 2 hours. I did a lousy job of taking photos. So here is one of me after the dance stuck in traffic Very shortly after I published this post the jam broke. Judging from the wreckage it really was a terrible accident. But I got where I was going 1/2 hour before their restaurant closed. And was able to sort things out so that I got things that needed to be in the camper on and things that didn’t need to be there out.

It’s really early in the morning as I write this. This is the first day of the dance itself. We won’t start the dance proper, and the fast itself until sometime late this afternoon. We will be arriving onsite between 9 and 10 this morning and we will be busy all day getting ready, preparing the site and people for what is coming. I hope to arrive onsite the early side of that Greeting old friends, meeting new ones. I’ll try to take some photos but probably won’t manage to post them until after the dance There is a lot to do today Among other things and all the preparation onsite, John and I have to get the camper prepared for him to stay in during the dance Right now it is chockablock full of my gear because we had to empty the car for the luggage of folks we were picking up at the airport The weather is going to be really hot. Predictions for highs are today 96, Friday 100, Saturday 99, Sunday 91. Pray for cooling breezes, and maybe that the predictions will not quite be met. ...

This is the day before the dance. It’s really close now. I left New Mexico at about 6 am. It’s only a little over a three hour drive but I stopped on the way to get most of my luggage out of my car and make it good for passengers. Then I picked up my sister Elizabeth at the airport with her support person Mandy. We headed for the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum which is sort of a cross between a zoo and an arboretum. Right now they are hosting a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs as well as the natural animals. Mandy and Liz. Liz trying on bat ears. Besides ocotillo most of the desert plants are not yet in bloom though many were at the museum Ocatillo plant. Dinner with my sister Liz, my son John, my sister’s support person Mandy.

Sunrise in Taos. I left after sharing my teaching on the Topsy Turvy Coronation with the women in Yvonne Eason’s Bible study. I left by about 9:30. Smooth driving to Deming in the south of New Mexico. Rio Grande observation point Pictures of the vistas are very unsatisfactory. My eyes see so much more than my camera can. For the night I am camped at a spot called Adobe Deli. It’s a restaurant with wonderful food (WAY too much for me, alas.). Unique decor. Very dark with a wall sized tv showing rodeo scenes. Lots of stuffed animals displayed helter-shelter. “I got another deer. Where is there room to tuck it in?” Baseball caps and service badges and first dollar bills. “I got this wonderful deal on old road signs. And look—old style parking meters. They’ll be cute in the ladies room”. I’ll try to take some pictures when I come back next Sunday. Tomorrow I’m only 3 1/2 hours from my destination and I gain an hour because Arizona doesn’t do daylight saving. I’ll be picking one of my siste...

I am asking God for new songs and a couple seem to be growing slowly. But one I wrote a while back on a trip like this keeps on repeating in my spirit. I am particularly thinking of the lines about seeing God though the people that I meet.  I've met some lovely people traveling around and talking to folks in stores or who want to investigate my camper.

Today I proved my stubbornness. I went and bought some tiny gifts so I had something to give to everyone on site. I wanted to give them in little red bags. When I could not get Marge’s sewing machine to work I went out and bought an inexpensive new one. Anyone need a sewing machine? I’m confident it will become a blessing for someone 25 of these little gifts will go into a grab bag with little notes explaining a possible symbolism of the gift as a blessing. I walked by a yarn store that had yarn like this outside possibly from multiple dye baths. Pretty anyway. Tomorrow I will teach a Bible study and then head south to Deming NM

What looked like low hanging clouds in this photo and the night before was clearly the Rockies in the morning to the naked eye. It was really cold. At six I had decided to sit in the car with the heat on. I was only about an hour away from my next stop for breakfast with friends, and I regretted having suggested 8 as the hour to meet. i had a wonderful breakfast with Anthony Jacomb-Hood and his wife Lisa and totally forgot to take a picture. left them about 10:30 and drove to my step-mom’s house near Taos New Mexico. In the past I’ve seen wild horses on that drive but not this time. Pretty mountains, but I can’t take pictures and drive at the same time. Arriving in Taos I was greeted by my step-mom Marge and her dog Rusty This is part of the view from my step moms house

Part of preparing to dance the Sun Moon Dance is making prayer ties. Before the dance, the chief of the dance lets the Dancers know how many they should make. It’s usually a number in the hundreds. One dance chief told me that the first time she danced she was told to make 1,000 ties. I’ve never done that many, but it takes a while and I often start several months before the dance. This year the call was for “at least 12” so I haven’t felt much pressure and I was doing a bunch of other things too get ready for the dance. But what is a prayer tie? It is a physical representation of prayer, a little like rosary beads except that you are making them as you go rather than just counting them with your fingers. You make a little string of pouches. I think of them as little poppets because the look like little dancing dolls in my mind. We use them to decorate the place where we will be sleeping during the dance. They sometimes feel to me like little angels watching over me. I was originally t...

I left at five in the morning and got to Sonflower Ranch by about 4 pm. That’s partly because I needed some naps and also have to stop for gas pretty frequently Took note of this itty bitty wildflower. How often do we ignore tiny bits of beauty around us? My stop tonight is at Sonflower Ranch. They have all kinds of animals here. They board horses and do school and camp tours and birthday parties for kids. Dogs and cats and peacocks and guinea fowl and turkeys are wandering all over the place. Laying chickens and turkeys are caged in as are gorgeous ring tailed pheasants. They have donkeys and llamas and emus and a flock of goats. It’s a fairly noisy place but I imagine I can handle that. A portapotty is a luxury since I’m generally required to use my on-board bedpan.

I had a long, fairly uneventful drive today across Illinois and most of Iowa. Towards the end I had some rain, but nothing that was scary. in the morning I somehow managed to drive off without shutting the hatchback. Tim ran across a field gesticulating wildly and managed to let me know. Phew! Grace of God! I did get tired midday and stopped for a nap. One advantage to having the camper. I drove past a number of large windmill farms. They are so beautiful and it is so encouraging to see energy being produced that way. The last time I drove through here there were a lot of trucks carrying the huge windmill vanes. I didn’t see any of those today. Also, most of the windmills I saw seemed to be working which was encouraging. Iowa has thought a lot about art at its rest stops and it has some lovely stuff. I regret not photographing more of it This was a floor at one stop i find my heart is getting still-er i am enjoying the quiet

I'm at my daughter's house in Highwood, IL.  That's about an hour from my mother and sister who are up in Milwaukee, so I headed out to visit them.  On the way I stopped to buy slippers and socks.  I had forgotten to pack socks.  Oops! Kids leaving for school this morning, with their Dad.  Me with Mom and with sister Ann. We had a good visit, and a lovely lunch together. I got a lot of steps in supervising both girls as they rode up and down the street. My next host has reached out to me with pictures of his farm at sunset, and encouragement to get there in time to see it.  Also, step by step instructions and encouragements to stay safe on the road. Windmill Acres in Neola, Iowa.  My next stop.