To the Ocean

The rain is coming down in sheets.  So no work in the yard today.  Which is actually a good thing since I have to pack to leave for Florida in the morning.  I'm so blessed!  I get to go to the sunshine state and walk the beach, listen to the waves, swim, read, eat, and basically veg out!

There's something about being by the ocean that renews me.  I suspect having grown up in a seaside state, MA, the ocean is in my blood.  All I know is that when I see that vast body of water, the waves lapping the shore, the sea gulls wheeling in the sky, my heart quickens and I smile.

My world becomes very small when viewed next to the massive expanse of water.  The ebb and flow of the tides, the myriad of sea life, from the fish to the smallest mollusk, puts everything into perspective for me.

I never go to the beach without thinking of the story/parable that some Saint used to explain the mystery of God and eternal life.  He told of the child who digs a hole in the sand and tries to fill it up with the ocean.  No hole dug on the beach can hold the totality of the sea.  So too is the infinite love of God for us...it's unending.  We cannot comprehend the immensity of God's love.  So while I walk on the beach, I grin when I see a child or cluster of children, busily digging away and slowly carrying up one pail after another of water to pour in the hole.  Or how about the kids who spend their entire day building that waterside fort, barricading the castle with rocks and walls to fend off the encroaching tide?  How industrious they are!  And it seems all for naught.  The tide will wipe out that castle.  The hole will absorb that pail of water.  So why do they try?  Because they can!  Because they just might hold it back.  Children engage in challenges everyday.  They pit themselves against forces they can't comprehend.  And they learn from each and every challenge.

So I'll walk the beach, I'll collect stones that call to me, I'll watch the seagulls wheel about, and I'll meditate.  I'll reflect on the great privilege it is to be near the ocean again.  I'll give thanks for the grace I'm given to enjoy it.  I'll dwell on the ebb and flow of love in my life, on the challenges I've faced since last I was at the sea and contemplate on the ones lying ahead.  And I'll frolick by the ocean as I did as a child.  And maybe I'll even build a sand castle of my own!

Nesting Birds

Today, while cleaning up in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw a female cardinal frantically tugging at a bare branch on my butterfly bush.  I must have watched her for a good 5 minutes.  She tried tugging one way.  Then she shifted and tried tugging another way.  Nothing.  Then she hopped down to the ground, walked around a little, flew back up and landed on the same branch (really just a twig I forgot to clip off!) and tried the tugging again.  She went through this routine at least 5 times!  And never got a piece of the twig/branch to come off so that she could take it to her nest.

While she's beating her head against an immovable object, mourning doves are picking up stray twigs from the garden bed and flying merrily back and forth from their nest sprucing it up.  Black birds are bomb diving into the newly cut lawn looking for the stray worm.  The male cardinal is zooming back and forth, obviously fed up with his mate's attempt at housekeeping. And a lone yellow finch loops-to-loop right by her and she never notices!!

Ah, the persistence of the female.  You can be told "it'll never work" and you refuse to believe it.  You just know you're right.  In fact, you'll be damned if you aren't right.  Meanwhile, the world goes merrily on its way and look what you're missing.  You never got that flash of yellow as the finch glories in the air shafts.  Your staid relative, the mourning dove is showing you how it's done but you just won't quit.

So when do you know when to quit?  When does your admirable perseverance become stubbornness or worse, blindness?  When is enough, enough?

I often think of this when I meet others who share their stories with me.  I'm so amazed at the tenacity of men and women, who, all evidence to the contrary, hang in there.  They just don't give up.  And you have to wonder, are they better for having not given up?

Isn't there a time when you have to realistically look at your situation and admit, it's just not going the way you meant it to?  Or the way it's suppose to go?

That poor female cardinal this morning.  I wanted to go out, rip that twig off the bush and put it in her mouth myself!  Yet if I had, she would have flown off the moment the door opened.  I could have put it down on the soil for her, but would she have known it was meant for her?  Would she even return?  More likely she'd have flown to another yard and looked for building materials in someone else's garden.

Aren't we blessed to have such lessons given to us from nature every day?  When will I know that my tugging and tugging at an issue/problem is enough?  More food for thought.

Ruminations on a ruined recipe

Have you ever worked really hard on making a recipe and then discover it's absolutely the worse thing you ever cooked?  Well it happened to me again last night.

My evening book group met at my house last night.  We were to discuss The Zookeeper's Wife and since it's a true war story from WWII taking place in Warsaw, Poland I decided to fix my sister-in-law's famous Polish kielbasa appetizer.  So I called her, bought the ingredients and happily sliced and boiled away!  Well, it turned out to taste like cooked boots!!  Which I pointed out to my friends, is what many did eat during the war.  What I had done wrong, as my Polish friend Joey told me, was used smoked kielbasa not fresh!  Smoked kielbasa is already cooked and only requires re-heating for 6 minutes or so.  Fresh kielbasa needs to be cooked much longer.  This recipe required boiling kielbasa in beer and brown sugar until it thickened.  Took nearly 2 hours!!  So when I say it tasted like boots, you know what I mean!

However, once more, it was an opportunity for me to learn from a mistake.  And why does it seem people have become so wary of admitting mistakes??  As a child, and granted that's awhile ago, making mistakes was accepted.  Many times with a severe talking to but also with the admonition that "Now you'll do it differently, won't you?"  I have to be thankful in hindsight, that the folks that guided me through childhood, my parents, my great-aunts, my great-grandmother, my Gramps and his wife Jerry, always talked about my mistakes with me.  So it became okay to make a mistake.  Of course, the serious ones you never forget!

Yet today I observe that many try to dodge a mistake.  It's someone else or something caused one to act mistakenly.  What a lost opportunity.  Does it stem from us?  Did we come to expect that our children would be better than us?  I have to reflect on my own kids.  Did I allow them to make mistakes and not feel ashamed?  Did I use that moment to show them that reflection on actions can often educate you?  I hope so.

Oh, and by the way, my friends were just that about my dismal attempt to offer Polish food at our book discussion.  They gamely chewed and chewed and chewed until we finally agreed it was absolutely awful!!  But friends are great that way...their reactions set the tone for one to acknowledge a mistake.  I could laugh at myself and my misguided attempt at setting the tone for our discussion.  We had a great discussion about the courage exemplified in The Zookeeper's Wife and an honest appraisal about how we would have acted in those circumstances.  How refreshing to sit with friends and honestly appraise one's reactions.  And what a blessing to have friends that laugh with you and not just at you!!  So another lesson learned even at this "midage"!!.

Good Friday thoughts

Well today is Good Friday.  And we have had terrific thunderstorms and tornadoes here in Southcentral KY.  This week has been hard, weatherwise.

As I listened to the weather radio bleat out its loud buzz, and I saw the dark clouds roll in I wondered what it was like for all near Golgotha as the sky darkened and thunder rolled as Jesus was crucified.

How nervous they must have been.  No weather alerts to let them know it was a cold front rolling in on top of warm, moist air.  Just the wrath of God as predicted.  How emotionally exhausted some must have been.  Especially his mother.  I reflected on her today.  She stood by and saw her worse fears realized.  Her son led as a criminal to a hill and nailed to a cross to hang until he died.  I can't imagine anything worse.  How did she keep from wailing and rushing to throw herself upon his torturers?  Could I witness my child's death and not rail against them?

My children are adults now but they are still my children.  My flesh and blood.  How to explain what lies in a mother's heart no matter how old her child?  I have a son working relief work in Sudan and following his calling.  My daughter is in law school in Chicago, hoping to go into school law and help those who need equal education as our laws state.  Both have chosen areas that require self sacrifice.  How did they come to these paths?  What experiences in their childhood led them to go far from home to pursue a dream?

When I was young, I dreamt of going no farther than the next town from my parents.  I saw myself teaching and living in a cape surrounded by a white picket fence covered in rambling roses.  How romantic, right?  Yet that was my dream.

I did teach but never got the town next to my parents, nor the picket fence.  I ended up moving from my home state and living in 3 different states and 1 country overseas.  

It helped mold me and offered lots of opportunities for me to discover myself that I may never had known if I stayed back "home."

So Mary watched her only child walk to his death in quiet certitude.  Her heart had to have called out to her God to keep her strong.  And don't we all do that?  We find the ways to keep us centered and strong despite what life hands us.

Maybe Jesus's example of certitude and trust is what we need to hold onto most.  That we are never truly alone.  When you have faith in something it carries you through everything.  Whatever that something may be.  So I know, that despite distance my heart is always connected to my children's hearts and that as I feel their presence each day of my life, they feel mine and are strengthened by it.  

Chocolate for Lent

Today we finished up our lenten reading: Chocolate for Lent.  it was a great book to do during Lent.  Based on the movie Chocolat, we reflected on our need to judge others, to avoid those who are "different" (whatever that may mean for us) and our inability to sometimes just be.  The characters illustrated various stages of despair and/or control.  So lots came out about how as you grow older you hope that you become stronger in the sense of who you are and not as dependent on the approval of others.

That's a tough one for me.  I thrive on the approval of others.  Maybe more than most people and I'm not sure why.  I have definitely improved yet I still become dismayed when I sense that someone doesn't approve of me.  Even if I have no desire to be friends with them!!  How crazy is that?

What drives us to see approval?  And why do some people seem able to go through life not affected by what others think of them?  I envy them.

I can waste hours mulling over and stewing over someone slighting me or even worse, speaking against me!  And yet if I know my intentions were good, what does it matter?

Will I ever "grow up" about that?  Will it get better?

Reflections on Plam Sunday in a garden

The work in the garden continues.  Although the severe thunderstorms and tornado watch early this evening cut into my time!  I would have been there earlier but today was Palm Sunday so we were at Mass.  I must say I still chafe under that long reading!  But then, I reflected on what it was telling me.  Here was this man who contrary to his times, actually gave himself to others.  Think about it.  Everyone but the Romans are poor.  Nobody cares about them.  The only way to get ahead is to collaborate.  And you know where that's going to get you with your neighbors.  Yet, Jesus comes along, preaches a new gospel...God loves you????  the same God that wreaked vengeance on anyone who crossed him in the Old Testament?  Who is this guy?  He gives up home and possessions and asks others to do the same.  And he gets these fishermen to go along with him.  Must be pretty dumb guys, right?  And who takes care of him and his groupies?  A bunch of women of course!  Notorious Mary Magdalene, and a few others who go unnamed (of course they are only property in those days).  So I thought about the unnamed woman with the alabaster jar in today's reading.  She shows up, breaks open this very expensive jar of oil that was worth a year's wages, and anoints Jesus.  Gutsy lady.  Jesus tells her she will be remembered forever.  Yet we can't name her.   We know the name of every Tom, Dick and Harry that ever met or talked with Jesus.  We have a woman who ministers to him in a way deserving of his being the Son of God and we have no name.  I know.  Put it into contextual meaning.  No woman had a name in those days.  They were all pieces of property.  And many woman today are in the same position.  So today as I worked in my garden, I reflected on the fact that women still to do the anointing.  We minister, we nurture.  And most of our names will never be known.  But we know.

So I give thanks to all the women who minister without our knowing their name.  I call you sister.

Ah...my aching back!

Worked in my garden again today.  The bee balm has taken over everything!  So I am ripping away a ton.  I can tell I'm getting older because my lower back is killing me.  For two years I've had back pain and I keep telling myself it's all part of the aging process but I have to say it stinks!!  Anyways, how great it was to work in the soil.  Nature carries so many blessings.  I watched the fat worms scurry today.  I disturbed their dark solitude with my spade and let the sunshine pour in.  How traumatic for them.  Thanks to them the garden soil received nurtrients and my irises will bloom with great color this spring.

Gorgeous day today but due for rain tomorrow and a drop in temps so that we may even get snow on Monday!  The beauty of Kentucky...wait long enough and the weather will do a tail spin.

We had terrific thunderstorms here last night.  Got my supplies into the closet under the stairs since we had a tornado watch.  Made me feel a bit like Harry Potter!  Despite living in tornado alley, I just love the spring here.  The blooms come earlier than up north and it lifts my spirits so to see the daffodils bobbing their heads at me.

Gardening is such a joy for me.  To get down close to the earth reconnects me in some way.  It's as if I hold energy in its purest form when I dig down into the soil and hold the dirt in my hands.  Clearing the way for my flowers to bloom is so therapeutic.

I really got into gardening when my kids grew up and moved away.  I guess nurturing plants took the place of the day to day nurturing of my kids.

I wonder if other mothers felt that way too?

First Blog

Well, here it is, my first blog!  I'm excited to just write about the things that fascinate me and what makes my day.  I love my gardening, my cardmaking, hearing from my kids and spending time meditating on how blessed I am.

Right now, I'm working on ideas for cards and waiting for a major thunderstorm system to pass through our area.

Until later!