Ref Barn Blue Sky Calm - Near Avon, Montana

“Calm and inner peace…Yes, calm and inner peace were undoubtedly important, but did you need to practise yoga to achieve such things? Or was it enough just to be here….to walk along one of those paths…with the sky above you so wide and so understanding of all it witnessed? …Surely there was enough calm amd peace in this land to bring quiet and healing to every heart that was open to it?? Surely.”

- - The Joy & Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 57

The Right Key - Missoula, Montana

“The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock.

Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.”

― C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), from The Problem of Pain

Super-Size Me - Missoula, Montana

"Last month at church, she had embarrassed herself half to death. 
The correct quote was, "I am a vessel for God's love, " but she had read out loud in front of the entire congregation, " I am a weasel for God's love." 
Earle had said that no one had noticed, but of course, they had." 

- Fannie Flagg, in The All-Girl's Filling Station's Last Reunion

 

Truth be told, I've been hoarding this quote for about a year, awaiting just the right "vessel" photo pairing.  Finally, I decided these tanker cars are a fitting match; not just because I'm tired of waiting and I love the train lines from this overpass view, but also because it's entirely fitting to aspire to be an industrial-sized transporter of God's love.(Right?!)

Perhaps a little stretch - "I'm a tanker car for Jesus" evokes a slightly different charm than "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam"... but it works - particularly for Thomas the Train fans!  
Just keep it on the rails and away from incendiary situations.

Rest and Motion - Missoula, Montana

"When by the discipline of His Divine guidance,
 we know Him,
 and He going with us
 gives us Rest,
 then Time and Eternity are merged
 and lost
 in that amazing vital relationship. 

The union is one not of mystic contemplation,
 but of intense perfection of activity,
 not the Rest of the placid peace of stagnation,
 but the Rest of perfect motion..."

- Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), from Christian Disciplines

When Trains Were Magic - Missoula, Montana

"...Oh, for the days when trains were magic:

iron dragons breathing smoke and fire, 

lashing long tails through the valleys 

with monstrous strength that never tired..."

- from Memory Rides The Rails - Poem Time Forgot by Faye Gibson 

Detritus - Missoula, Montana

"Trains cross the continent in a swirl of dust and thunder, the leaves fly down the tracks behind them: the great trains cleave through gulch and gully, they rumble with spoked thunder on the bridges over the brown wash of mighty rivers, they toil through hills, they skirt the rough brown stubble of shorn fields, they whip past the empty stations in the little towns and their great stride pounds its even pulse across America." - Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)

Still Life Found on the Rails, Missoula, Montana

When we were kids, we'd visit our grandparents in Red Deer, Alberta, and when the house became too small for our boisterousness, we'd get kicked outside, where we'd often end up taking a walk along the railroad lines - prob'ly something the adults never knew.  I remember hopping from tie to tie - heaven forbid you fall off because crocodiles were waiting! - and listening wide-eyed to talk about a penny on the tracks potentially causing a catastrophic wreck.

Well Worn Rail Crossing, Lolo, Montana

The flotsam & jetsam & well-worn nails are an interesting bug's-view landscape.

Heading Home for Christmas

Yes, the title's a little nostalgic, & you're prob'ly humming along with Bing Crosby by now.... railroad tracks heading off to whatever waits around the bend have been known to bring on a fit of wistfulness.