A few weeks ago I talked about the passing of acclaimed rock climber Dean Potter.  If you recall, he died while attempting a BASE (building, antenna, span, earth) jump from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park in California.  In every way, it's tragic.  He had done the jump before, but for reasons we may never know, this time it didn't work for him. One of his friends who was doing the same jump died, too.  They both left girlfriends and many other friends and admirers.
      The other day I read a detailed article about the events leading to the jump and its immediate aftermath.  Toward the end of the piece, Potter's girlfriend shared a time in which she returned to Taft Point to remember him.  As she sat on the rock, she saw a raven who, as many ravens who frequent national parks will do, approached her and ate food out of her hand.  And she thought, "Yeah, it was Dean."
     Roughly four years ago in October of 2011, a time I wrote about a couple of times in this blog, my three siblings and I scattered our mother's ashes on a mountain in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California.  As I tossed my last handful into what seemed to be a very empty and lonely space, I saw a crow soaring up to the edge of the cliff, looking intently at me.  Though I'm not fully convinced that animals speak to us from the other side of death, I do believe that God speaks through everything that is.  He's always calling us, always reaching out to us, in life as well as death.
     God wants to love us.