In between 8th and 9th grade I went on a long trip to Alaska. Our first stop was Manatou Springs Colorado.  That was a few decades ago, many many RonnieDs ago but I remember it like it was yesterday.  That cool little hippy town that I was experiencing then in the early 70’s took my breath away.  It just caught my attention somehow and I think I have been trying to get back to that kind of place ever since.

There are many marker stone experiences in our lives together in regards to the mountains including dating on a Tandem training for a ride through the Canadian Rockies where I fell in love with Leisha.  Then there was our Colorado trip on our honeymoon.  Countless trips through the American Rockies from New Mexico all the way to the Canadian border… but like I said I have been trying to get back to something they the mountains represented to me, some un-knowable thing, deep inside for decades. It seems it was to complete some image I carried of who I am, what I am about.

Now much later in life this longing is reshaping itself from a journey to a completed me into trying to gain clarity of what the last 1/4 of my life will look like and then a different completed me.  Yeah I only expect, I hope to live to 80.  In other words, yes Ronnied “Follow that dang Cloud”. So,  alas I had to chose off of Colorado yet one more time.

The way it happened was significant.  Seemingly closer than ever to a choice towards moving there, sitting on our back porch Leisha, being an introvert recently said this to me. You know Ronnie, all I need is my people and I have that here.  Before we started to go-to Church I had a few very good friends and that was enough.  Now that we are going to church I have so many more meaningful relationships, I didn’t know that could happen.  But I am now seeing there is another kind of person, one that needs something big to do too, you are that kind.  I  don’t need that,  I am very happy for you to have that, but I do wish you had your people too, I am praying about that for you.

That stuck with me and over the next few weeks I began to wake up early and meditate on those points.  It began to churn through my mind as I went about the day.  Then new things began to show up on the landscape of my thoughts.  Difficult things in regards to relationships. It’s not like I never had friends, I’ve had them in spades but more often than not in hind-site they were closer to “Acquaintances”.  They didn’t show up when I was down, they didn’t stop by or invite me, there were a few difficult ones and then there was this habit of moving onto the next big thing before they could even get to the good part with me.  As I processed those points I began to take inventory of the relationships I do in fact now have that are much different due to this Kingdom experience.  I had to ask myself why would I not honor these people by staying here, moving on would cause me to take another 5 years to get there where I am here with some relationships.  As I saw more and more value in the kingdom relationships I have here I also realized God was doing something in my life far more important than escaping into a dream.  He was in a way asking me to stay here, go deeper and follow more through with what was started here and… he revealed to me I can’t have a relationship with a mountain.  No matter how big and beautiful it was, there was nothing there to have a relationship with.

Another way to put the dream I was chasing was fundamentally worshiping the creation more than the creator.

Now know this, another layer of understanding comes from very complicated serious counseling where Leisha and I were told, due to some certain other histories in my past, deeper than surface relationships to me are akin to a man bitten hard by dogs, many of them over many years.  The very thing I crave even with her, deep relationship was like asking me to pet dogs…  There is something golden behind following this kind of difficult rainbow, I could see that, I was ok with the decision, the duty of it felt good.  I told a few very close friends and a pastor but I didn’t tell her.

Later on, on our back porch, I described what had transpired from her original comment on My People and she began to immediately cry, it was a spontaneous visceral reaction.  The kind where you see the person in front of you have more than just an emotional reaction, that immediacy, it tells you a lot. I saw it as connection to the Holy Spirit stirring inside of her and I knew it.  You see that is at the heart of Gnostiscm, Paganism, escape away from the difficulties of this earth rather than find freedom in the midst of your own personal troubles and I was basically raised in that in my adult years, paganism, that is for many other post, AND… Manatou is very pagan, gnosticish.  But here it was, go away to find personal, emotional, internal Freedom.  Everything is spiritual, you just need to find your own way, spirit is even in the rocks, the mountains.  I don’t actually believe that from what I can see, but at some level… it seems I did.

That kind of thinking is all over the Gospel of Judas. Its all over the Nag Hammadi.  It began to leak into our American culture much earlier than the 60’s but something big happened then and the onslaught has continued ever since, merging itself into all sorts of perspectives especially Christian ones.  You see, she already knew of the things I was describing, had been quietly praying for a long time I would see differently about them so I would make the right choice for me, for us, for her. She didn’t see it in the terms I am describing, paganism, Gnosticism but she saw it wasn’t the right choice, she some how knew there was something not exactly right about it and the why go for me.  She has been tenderly speaking against that choice for 24 years… stop and think about that, 24 &*9%6h years.  She knew this !!!  So when I described this to her, the Spirit inside of her jumped, her seeing into a moment of very necessary realization on my part came out of her in the form of wet eyes, human water running down her cheeks.  She knew deeply this was very important.

I knew I had to stay, those wet eyes and that resonance between us from a woman who has seen into things and me in the deepest ways made the very final decision to stay.  Now It felt really good but…

A week later we are in my studio, her sitting there crocheting like a ninja, me working on an un-named song, I had some basic things laid out and was looking for a nice lead type layer, found something cool.  As I worked through discovering the lead I began to tear up and cry.  Something hurt, it hurt a lot,  a pain I was not EVEN aware of but I knew and it came out in the lead.  The lead in this song really is the cry deep in my soul, how it sounds to me now that I see it.  I saved the song down as “Losing Colorado” and I began to grieve deeply AND go into a discussion with my good good Father as to the why.

It was painful because I had to now trust a different kind of dream, not my escaping dream and trusting in dreams that involve people to the extent I am describing are massively difficult for me.  I had to go deeper into this changing world view thing, I had to let the Holy Spirit reveal more of what were deeper recess’s of thinking I had, where that came from.  A certain kind of view that has been building in the West for over a hundred years but broke out in the 60’s.  Not really my decade but yet it was.  It was also painful because I didn’t see this inside of me.  How could I trust anything that I believe ???  How can I ever know enough ???  A certain kind of world view had to be deconstructed inside of me.  Just like the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century church had to fight off Gnosticism I had to make some new decisions on parts my world view, I had to fight those off too.  But I had to also grieve all of this… Thus this song, even though I understand the why’s, even though I tell myself and other people “I Will Follow”… this ask hurt, but then maybe all dying to self does !!!

And this my friend is how Following the Cloud can look.

For the next step in the journey see this…