Peace Rose Offering for Nicholas

Spring: when buds turn to blossoms.We expect that; It is the order of things. But then life happens and turns predictable patterns on end.

Vibrant colors and beauty still surround us, even on the fraying hem of a week that quickly came unraveled by bombings and unexpected events in our nation--and more private grief and loss this weekend among dear friends that the news feeds would never pick up--and we still move forward. We inch toward a new day, "...inch by inch, row by row" in  "Garden Song":  nice and slow.

Sometimes there's no other way.

We press on because we have to, because there is no going back.

Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Need a place to call my own
'Cause the time is close at hand

Sometimes in the garden of life--somewhere between the dreaming and the coming true--those dreams collide. We face the hard reality of the dry bones portion of life and too many abrupt endings.

While some friends are grieving tonight, others are rejoicing with loved ones, anticipating weddings and births to come in a matter of days, and giving thanks for joys shared today. How can it be that we learn to live well with the point-counterpoint of birth and death, marriage and divorce, joy and sorrow? It is the nature of the rhythm of life, we are told.

We carry these two seemingly-opposite loads of joy and pain as though in invisible twin water urns lashed to ends of a pole on our backs. Sort of a Libra-meets-Gemini as we remember the constellations without attaching any unintended weight to astrology. The two are held in tension always, and we learn to live with the ever-changing contents of the loads we bear.

We  manage pretty well if we can keep life's tempo and stay in step. But when the music stops and we are left standing, or when we falter under the unbearable weight of loss and become set off balance by the load, we unravel quickly.

When we risk coming apart a bit ourselves and opening our hemmed-in lives to share the load of others, we can help bear--even if ever so slightly--the cares of another.

So we roll up our sleeves.

We get on with the business of being a friend, of loving and serving with abandon, of risking becoming disheveled and tear-stained. Because there is no other way to share a heavy load on a long road with many a winding turn.

I believe two truths to be bedrock: God is good, and Life is hard. They do not cancel each other out. They do not render each other null and void by operation of law. They are both true. At the same time.

And it is in giving thanks for the goodness of God, experiencing the Presence of God, in the midst of the searing white-hot edge of life that cuts us to the quick, that we find the grace and strength to move forward. Inch by inch.

God hears and answers those who call out to Him in distress:
“I relieved his shoulder from the burden; his hands were freed from carrying the basket. You called out in distress, and I rescued you; I answered you from the thundercloud.” (Psalm 81:6-7a).

 No distress is too big for God to handle.


Brother, let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey.
We are brothers on the road.
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you;
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping.
When you laugh, I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we've seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven,
We shall find such harmony
Born of all we've known together
Of Christ's love and agony.

Brother, let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.



Written by Richard Gillard, 1977, Servant Song

Lessons from the Fig Tree

Learn this lesson from the fig tree: When its branch is new and tender and begins to put forth leaves, you know that summer must be near. In the same way, when you see and hear the things I've described to you taking place, you'll know the time is drawing near.

Heaven and earth may pass away, but these words of Mine will never pass away.

Mark 13:28, 29, 31

It began as a mere stick in a black plastic pot labeled Brown Turkey Fig from Sut Smith ten years ago.

We pruned severely the grown fig tree out back this spring. Limbs littered the yard and overflowed three large cans. On a whim, I filled a clear vase with bare brown sticks and put them in my kitchen window.

They offered arresting beauty in their simplicity. In a few days, I noticed buds emerging followed by tender green shoots. Then the recognizable leaf unfurled.

Sticks cut off from their source of nutrients sprouted tiny buds, evidence of new life bound up in the DNA of each plant cell. They did what they are programmed to do: replicate. The coding in the cell coupled with water in the pitcher supplied enough momentum—but barely enough--to produce fig leaves.

Severed from roots which fuel long-term growth, a vase of water could sustain life for only so long; they began to drop leaves last week as though on cue. Figs, while hardy, are not made to thrive on kitchen counters.

I spoke to a group recently using these sticks as an illustration. One person declared them beautiful. Others asked to take them home, perhaps to root. Here we were, clamoring for fig sticks, and I had just sent a multitude of them to the dump. Armed with a new-found appreciation for my garden waste, I came home and clipped even more forked sticks from the limbs still lying in our yard. I now have containers of fig branches I've been watching, and I've learned a few lessons.

1. God makes beautiful that which we discard.

God redeems the broken and ascribes value to the things—and people?—that we throw away. We have switched the price tags in our culture of what we value, and we hardly notice anymore. Composting kitchen and lawn debris has emerged as a rallying cry for sustainable living. For really sustainable living, we need eyes that see beauty in unexpected people and places.

2. We need to develop a tolerance for pruning.

Some plants bloom off old wood; others need new growth.  Selective pruning generally increases productivity and results in a stronger, revitalized plant. Can the same be said for us?

We, too, experience times of severe loss, of feeling cut back to the quick. Freshly shorn of comfortable overgrowth, we are left raw and ragged. We know what it is to experience transplant shock after change. Starting over seems impossible. We have the choice to recalibrate and develop fresh patterns and healthy structures after being laid bare from whatever cause. Adaptation to a new environment is essential because life keeps changing. Survivors learn to adapt.

3. Develop deep roots.

We may opt to sit on the shelf in tepid water after pruning and hope no one notices life is different now. That will work for a while. Like my fig sticks, we continue to go through the motions putting out the same shoots and showing up at familiar places. We can fool some of the people some of the time but...sooner or later the gig's up. We cannot generate enough fuel from depleted reservoirs--spiritually and physically--to jump start sagging spirits and sluggish lives. When we least expect it, we resemble my fig branches in the vase: the leaves fall off and curl on the counter. Shallow or nonexistent roots will not long support life.

Root tendrils will find their way to a water source; if only on the surface, shallow roots develop. I want to be drought-tolerant and hardy, having roots driven down and penetrating deeply.  I believe we are made to seek after God who alone provides the best model of sustainability in an uncertain world.

Central to adapting to a changed landscape is to prepare for what we can expect, and not to worry about what we cannot change.

Reinhold Niebuhr penned a guide to this kind of living in dependence on the Master Gardener. For some it is a daily prayer for survival:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Today on Easter Sunday we celebrate the Good News that God offers for the pruned, the hungry and especially for those who do not think they need any help at all. He is Risen just as He said.

Thanks be to God.

A Way With Words

Our mind is a garden, our thoughts are the seeds
The harvest can be either flowers or weeds.
~ Author unknown


Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
~ Philippians 4:8

I am beginning a new study this week for young moms in our group focusing on the words we use and harnessing the power we possess in our speech. Harnessing, not stifling. As in:

Now if we put the horses' bridles into their mouths, that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also.
~James 3:3

Never doubt that something as simple as talking can have such lasting effects in the lives of others. As we habitually speak words that heal, teach, affirm, instruct, guide and delight, we learn to make conscious choices about our words which then become a natural outpouring of what is in our hearts. Likewise, words of condemnation, of name-calling, labeling and blaming wound the heart and linger in the mind long after they are spoken.

Our challenge is to learn something new about how we take appropriate responsibility for this dynamic and grow in faithfulness as we mature. We want to reduce the collateral damage from our speech and live life with fewer regrets. This is one small topic but large area of life that meets us daily where we live.

It's all about choices. Let us take responsibility for our choices and not be content with the childish, "That's just the way I am" excuse.



All photos copyright by Rob Kiser, used with permission.

Clutching Mystery in Our Hands, 2

God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.
~St. Augustine

The foxgloves pictured above remind me of the unseen mystery woven into creation that we cannot see while we are holding fast to what we want and living on accelerate at high speed. We see only what appears to be.

And we often see what we want to see.

It takes time to see with the heart.

Known as the fairy bell flower, the tall spires of purple enticed me to plant a few until the heat and drought in our climate defeated my best plans for gardening this blossom. Nature's indigenous beauty surrounds us, yet I try to fit square pegs into round holes, as I did when trying to force recalcitrant foxgloves to make a home in the deep south. I didn't have the touch.

We grow and cut and gather something as simple as flowers in a yard, never realizing that in our arms lies a possibility for healing. I had young children at the time and was aware to be careful with this plant. The foxglove is said to be poisonous--poisonous yet miraculous in the same stem. Digitalis is a derivative of this plant and has been a staple in medicine. Yet, at a glance it is only a lovely bloom.

We cannot know what we hold in our hands because we only see from our limited perspective.

Life itself is a tremendous mystery.

Let us open our palms to receive it. There is always more than meets the eye.




Photo by Rob Kiser

Bloom Where You Are Planted

 

















Mabel Brantley Haardt, beloved and wonderfully eccentric sister to our grandmother, was always one to offer whatever she had to others. I do not remember ever leaving her home empty-handed. One trip she insisted that I take a black plastic pot among several in her back yard holding a Night Blooming Cereus, a spraggly plant that we wedged onto the floor of the car.

Pronouncing it 'series' with native Alabama honey in her voice, Mabel told how in the 1960's they would have garden parties and go outside about ten o'clock to see the blooms "as big as a pie plate". She tended it all these decades and promised that it was easy to care for.

The plant itself is unsightly: flat, green, woody cactus stems emerge from a parched soil base. It grows from tubers underneath the surface--some grow the size of a watermelon in the Sonoran desert--not exactly the thing that would garner a nomination for Yard of the Month in the deep south.

But the oddest thing happens to this plant which looks like it has been discarded in my back yard near the woodpile: delicate petals in white and yellow the size of your outstretched hand sprout forth from the dried stem and open to the summer night. What a beautiful sight! Who is there to enjoy it? We have no garden parties at our home, though my husband, always watchful, gives me the heads up so that I can check the blooms in the early morning the next day when he sees that one forming, because they close and shrivel after one night's show. September and October are prime months, and this one pictured above showed out this week. There were four blooms all in one night a few years ago in September on the day of Aunt Mabel's funeral. I had to smile.

Wikipedia even has a reference from a surprising source noting this flower: John Wesley, "John Wesley's Journal", Mon. 24th July 1780, describes the blooming and fading of the "Nightly Cereus" which had a 125mm dia. white centre, and 225mm dia. [that would be 8.86 inches across!] "yellow ray" petals. I plan to read it because I have long thought there is a spiritual dimension to many of God's creations which offer a lesson for us.

Not many things thrive on neglect. People, relationships, and most growing things need care. But this hardy plant lives to bloom no matter what I do to it.

I have not fed or repotted it in many years, though I realize I am confessing my poor gardening skills about a family heirloom publicly. It is hard-wired into this cactus to produce glorious blooms out of nothing but the reservoir below the surface.

We, too, can appear to be past our prime....at the end of the road....suffering from various maladies that afflict us throughout this life, having neglected the care of ourselves or having been discarded by others whose approval and love we longed to receive. People can be figuratively sitting at the place where my plant is right now - at the back corner of the house feeling unable or unworthy to venture forth to a proper place in the mix of others. We pass them all the time. They can even be each of us from time to time. Do we even notice?

Each of us has intrinsic value and the potential for a bloom to burst forth from the most unexpected place. Don't miss it!

"Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it shall spring forth. Do you perceive it?"
Isaiah 43:19

I am trying to watch for the 'new thing' when we least expect it and I am seeing it all around.

The Lord God provides a reservoir of sorts for us as well - ways of sustaining us when we have exhausted our own resources:

"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you...There is hope in your future, says the Lord." Jeremiah 31:3, 17

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." 2 Corinthians 1:3-4