Category Archives: Christian Life

Breathe

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When I visited one of the garden centers in Houston recently, this sign caught my eye since I had just written the previous post about fragrance.  Many of the plants in our back yard garden could be labeled “featuring fragrance.”  A plant that is new to me is actually a very old-fashioned one.  Sweet almond verbena reaches out to my nose with its sweet smell and a hint of vanilla.  It is no surprise to find that this reminds me to pray with each breath, inhaling God’s goodness and peace and letting out all my fretting. Remembering the Biblical references to our prayers as a fragrant incense, I smiled when I read that another name for this plant is Incense Bush.  Breathe!

Secret Garden

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A book which is now considered  a classic children’s book of the twentieth century, Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was published as a novel in 1911.   Its story, full of loss and gain, tragedy and triumph develops as children and a garden grow and change.  There have been a number of productions produced for movies and television which bear the name and tell the story. But the movie version created in 1949 is the one which lives in my memory.  I was 9 years old, and not allowed to see many films.  The scene which so impressed me was one of sudden change. Almost the entire film is in stark black and white. The scene in which the door to the garden is opened to reveal the beauty of the garden in vivid Technicolor created a breathtaking moment.  Little girls weren’t the only ones to gasp.

It is only these many years later that I am understanding that I was far more than entertained by this. In this story, it is only as Mary begins to think of others rather than herself that she became more than a spectator of the garden.  As her perception as well as her vision changed,  the garden became more beautiful.

This photo is a sign in our garden that has become intertwined in a yellow climbing rose.  It reminds me of that other Mary, and of the miracles created when I see beyond myself.

“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

Lichen

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Lichens are intriguing. Often the first form of life to colonise a new area of rock, they are commonly seen and also commonly overlooked. They frequent older buildings, stone walls, and most perennial plants, particularly trees. Lichens are important because they often occupy niches that, at least sometime during the season, are so dry, or hot, or sterile, that nothing else will grow there.

In the hot and dry times in my life that seem unproductive, it may be that Grace is growing a bit of lichen – some small ruffled newness that needs no notice but still proclaims life and growth.

Yes

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It is easy to fall prey to complaining these days when the temperature registers 105 and most people, animals, and plants slow their pace and wilt.  I remind myself that the same blistering sun that sears my skin and makes getting into my truck seem like opening an oven door also flavors my herbs and ripens the figs on our tree. Lord, help me be alert to the yes in every day.

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any–lifted from the no of all nothing–human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

— from E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, by e. e. cummings

Sabbath Song and Shade

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Image of Redbud tree leaves in prayer garden of First Baptist Church, Richmond, Texas. 

The clearing rests in song and shade.

It is a creature made

By old light held in soil and leaf,

By human joy and grief,

By human work,

Fidelity of sight and stroke,

By rain, by water on

The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O Dust, arise!

~Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem VII (1982)

Silence

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“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.”
― Rachel Naomi Remen

After all these years, I am still learning to look before I leap and listen before I speak.  The latter is often hard for me.  Another’s outpouring of worry,  angst,  anger or sadness can make us think we are being asked for advice or to “fix it.”  Many times, the need for just having someone to listen to what we need to say is greater than any verbal response we can make.  I love sitting outside in our garden because it offers both solitude and silence.  I also love sharing that space with others and feeling the quieting that comes to us both.  The still silence speaks of the centering, settling presence of God.

Beautiful?

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When I was making some purchases at our favorite garden supply shop, I saw a wall decoration that simply had the words “just as the caterpillar thought its world had ended…it became a butterfly.”  For most of us, it is so much easier to admire the beauty in the floating and flitting of  irridescent butterfly wings than the bulges of voracious caterpillars or the lump on a twig that is a chrysalis.  Yet beauty and wonder are there if we see more than a worm.  Maddie brought in tiny larvae she found in the garden.  We found a glass jar, supplied extra host plants for food, and watched them grow.  Jordann, although a bit skeptical at first, became intrigued as she watched the caterpillars eat and eat and eat.

In her book My Grandfather’s Blessings, cancer physician and master storyteller Rachel Naomi Remen quotes Proust by saying that the voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.  She says that she sometimes suggests to depressed patients that they review the events of their day for fifteen minutes in the evening by asking three questions and writing the answers in a journal.  1.  What surprised me today?  2.  What moved me or touched me today?  3.  What inspired me today?  In this chapter, which is titled “Finding New Eyes”, she tells of one patient who told her he answered the questions with “Nothing, nothing, and nothing” in the beginning, but that gradually he realized he was building a capacity he had never used, so that he began to see things differently.  Maddie and Jordann have a capacity for seeing that I hope they never loose.

“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know.  Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is abut seeing familiar things in new ways…We can see life with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition…But perhaps it is only by those…who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served.”

~  Rachel Naomi Remen

“Roses, Late Summer”

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If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn’t mind being a rose in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.

-Mary Oliver, excerpted from “Roses, Late Summer”

 

 

I admire Mary Oliver’s poetry.  These lines, as do so many of hers, tug at my heart with an “oh, yes.”

I read between her lines that for me are describing the desire to be rid of the prickling, thorny, uncomfortable, and sometimes unnecessary things on which we spend ourselves. Oliver chooses a fox, a rose, and a tree – all created by God and lovely, although we are never told those things were created in God’s image.  Only man, with all his questions and fears, is said to be made like Him and for being with Him, not just His creation.  Only we have reason and relationship.  I revel in this life in relationship with my Creator and the family He has given me. I know who answers my foolish questions and calms my fears. I am practicing happiness as I celebrate this moment.  I think Mary Oliver likes what lies between her lines when I read them.

Waiting…

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“To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life.” Henri Nouwen

My garden calls me to remember much about waiting with openness and trust – to choose hope.  All around me are signs of beginnings and growth.  Not all happen when I predict.  Many don’t develop on the same time-table as previously experienced.  But if I am attentive, the astonishing beauty and meaning is indeed beyond my own imagining.

Rosemary for Remembrance

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Yesterday I planted Pineapple Sage,  Bee Balm, Stevia, and  Lime Balm as well as Genovese Basil. Most years we have close to a dozen varieties of basil alone, and we have mounds of oregano and mint. Cilantro and dill are beginning to bolt to flower since we have had such warm weather.  Of all the herbs, I love rosemary best for its symbolism of faithfulness and remembrance. Whether I brush against it in the garden or bruise it before sprinkling over something roasting on the grill, the pungent fragrance calls me to remember God’s faithfulness.