Scott's Spot

Day 4 (Thursday, October 23) Two of the reasons for taking this long road trip were to seize the opportunity to see parts of the country I'd never seen before, and to experience the changes in scenery in a way that one cannot fully appreciate from an airplane.  Our drive today helped to fulfill both expectations for me. We arose early, packed up, and headed on on Texas 118 from Alpine to I-10, via Fort Davis and the Davis Mountains.  I had driven on that route as far as the McDonald Observatory on a prior trip.  This morning, a fog had settled in over the region.  Once we got into the mountains outside of Alpine, the drive to Fort Davis was wet and slow; however, a few miles past the Indian Lodge State Park, before reaching McDonald, the fog lifted and we had a beautiful drive through the switchbacks in the mountains.  We stopped at a roadside overlook just before the turnoff to the Observatory and took a few photos. Looking back to the east, we cou...

Day 3 (Wednesday, October 22) Today was restful.  After a good workout in the hotel and a light breakfast, we took off to enjoy Alpine.  We especially liked the Kiowa Gallery, where there were some very cool Loteria-inspired paintings and an entire collection of Dia de los Muertos art. We drove around the Sul Ross University Campus.  The campus sits atop a hillside east of town, overlooking Alpine and the surrounding plains leading to the mountains.  It is a beautiful campus, with uniformity in architectural style.  Driving around the town, we saw examples of well-maintained, desert landscaping and adobe construction. And then, lunch.  There aren't lots of dining options in Alpine, and the best-reviewed casual eatery (Magoo's) was closed for lunch today.  We didn't want to eat anything heavy, so we stopped at a clean-looking restaurant called Little Mexico.  Without dwelling on the negative, we agreed last night that it was the absolute wors...

Days 1 and 2 (October 20 and 21, 2014)--San Antonio and Alpine It took forever to pack, and the back of the SUV was completely loaded down, but we did, indeed make it out of Corpus Christi on time on October 20, after stopping to participate in early voting for the November election.  The difficulty in packing for 7 weeks on the road came in planning for temperatures from the 30s in Vail to the 90s in Palm Springs...so we pretty much emptied our our closets!  That first time we actually had to get into the bins to get something quickly led to some testy exchanges and frustrated looks...but I do believe this trip can be saved! Just out of Corpus Christi, we ran into a strong thunderstorm--the type for which a driver should pull over.  We did, especially after the driver in front of us hydroplaned and spun out on the road, directly in front of us, and then bogged down in the saturated median between the highway and the frontage road!  What a way to start o...

From Scott.... Incarnation.   And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… (John 1:4)   Recently, I attended a wedding in San Antonio, Texas.   The reception was at a museum near the University of the Incarnate Word, and a cousin asked me what my understanding of “incarnate word” was.   I told him that Incarnate Word referred to the religious order who founded the school, but that the term had a deeper meaning.   “Literally,” I told him, “this is the University of the Word Made Flesh ; in other words, the University of Jesus .”   As humans, we have tremendous capacity for abstract thought, unlike any other beings on the planet.   We can recall the past with detail and imagine the future with hope.   We make sense of symbols and ideas, and use the creative gifts of art and music to express ourselves and inspire others.   We are unique among all living things in our ability to do so.   Yet, despite our capac...

I, along wll of you, am struggling to make sense of what happened in Newtown, CT this week.  Our hearts are broken for the children, teachers, school leaders, and their families and friends. As I've attempted to write an entry for to share this week, I'm finding myself blocked.  I will continue to pray for the right words to write. In the meantime, thank you for your patience as I take a day or two extra to complete the Advent Week 3 post.  And, let's continue to pray for Newtown and an end to the senseless violence we are seeing over and over again. Peace, Scott

From Scott..... Mystery. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (I John 4:8) When I was a young boy, my brothers and I had a vintage collection of Hardy Boys mystery books.   I was a big fan, and I suppose I took to Frank and Joe Hardy’s adventures because I imagined that they were just regular kids like my brothers and I and all the other kids on our block back in the 50s and 60s, except for the fact they were always in some sort of thrilling situation that required their skillful sleuthing. With titles such as “The Clock Ticked,” “The Mystery of Cabin Island,” and “The Clue of the Broken Blade,” Hardy Boys mysteries were pretty formulaic.   Each chapter finished with a little cliffhanger that made you want to read the next, building to a somewhat surprising resolution tied up neatly by all the clues the boys had discovered and deciphered, followed by a happy ending that made you want to rea...

2012 Advent Reflections, Week 1 For many years, my good friend, Kathy Hayes, and I led an annual Advent Reflection Series at First United Methodist Church in Corpus Christi.  We would share our thoughts on how we were preparing for the coming of the Christ-child with our stories and the songs of our friend, Debbie Sewell.  Kathy has sinced moved to Alabama, but she contacted me earlier this week and suggested we resurrect our Advent tradition through sharing in our individual blogs...a brilliant idea (as are all of Kathy's ideas!), so each week, I'll post two Advent reflections--one mine, and one Kathy's--for your reading. If you don't follow Kathy's regular writings on her blog, you are really missing something.  Become her "follower" at kathyhayes.blogspot.com .  And if you like what you read here, share with others who might be interested in taking this Advent journey with us. DSE ________________________________________________________________...