Musings on Clouds and Familiarity Desert diary from Saturday, October 30, 2004 Looking out my window, it’s a gorgeous cloud covered morning as I sip my Honeyed-Bushman tea; enjoying both drink and beauty. Yesterday in the busy streets in El Paso in almost rush-hour traffic, Ernie and I spotted David Morrison as we waited at a red. As he drove through the very intersection we were waiting at it took two honks of our horn before he turned our way with a surprised, happy look on his face and a thumbs-up to us. And in that thumbs-up-flash-of-a-moment, as we all three recognized familiar eyes and face, there was an inner connectedness. A sense of being known in the midst of thousands of unknown people familiar only by their predominantly brown faces in these parts, but unfamiliar, unknown in heart. I love seeing, sensing, expecting the familiar in unfamiliar circumstances because it brings solace, peace, well-being, love. In the same vein I am most familiar with the blue of this Southwest sky…an I-can’t-describe-what-hue-of-blue-blue…just a Wonderful Blue. But if I tried it would be Southwest Blue; Open Blue; Stretching From Horizon To Horizon Blue: Hot Blue; I Love You Blue; Familiar Blue. In the heat of the sweating summer I asked the Lord for an early autumn this year. It wasn’t just for reprieve from the heat that I asked. It was mostly as a sign of a spiritual outpouring. A couple of months after that, a word was given at church service that we would have an early winter as a sign of spiritual preparation for spiritual outpouring. In the dead of winter we will be approached by the Approachable to give up our drying, dying leaves and never matured or rotting fruit to Him. So be it, Lord. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and blessed be His Holy name. Take what You want to make of me whom You will. Since those two words to and from the Father there has been, for this dry region, abundant rains. We are, I believe, four inches above our normal rainfall of six. The first day of even a hint of a cool autumn day doesn’t even arrive until October 31st on Halloween. And winter, really cold wind blowing winter doesn’t blow in until sometime in January. Christmas is almost always a mildly warm day here. I remember one year when our sons were little that in snowed on Christmas Day, enough to make a real snowman. But the snow has been nothing familiar in these ensuing years. But, as I look out at these early morning clouds covering up that I-Love-You-Blue sky…I am becoming quite familiar with thick cloud coverage over this Open-Blue desert sky. The kind of familiarity that says, “I know you…I really know you…you are sent from the Cloud-Maker Himself to my very backdoor and I know you ‘cause I “saw” you before I saw you.” But more,…you are “fum blanc”. You are a Holy Covering speaking prophetic truths over this land. You are signs and wonders that we pray for, long for every familiar day of our familiar lives. And you too are now my familiar friends. I belong to you and you to me. Cloud Friends, come to bring the rains. Bring the outpour. How I love you my familiar ones. Thank You, God…and thanks for the heat reprieve as well. Sister Linda