Miasma has you moping. Summertime heat has you sweating the small stuff, not to mention the bigger problems plaguing you and the rest of the world. It magnifies the tiniest of irritations. Tempers flare like the sun, lashing out whips of fire.
Take a deep breath and cool your thoughts for a moment. Park your worries on the petals of a flower and imagine yourself fanned by 200 wing beats per second. Now then, "bee" content. It only takes the smallest fraction of hope...love...prayer, multiplied by Powers of Ten, to change perspective. To help the amber quantity?
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? Thou knowest we work by wit, and not by witchcraft, And wit depends on dilatory time...
(Shakespeare's Othello, II, iii, 376-379)
Some years ago, SAM and I attended a small country church near Paducah, Kentucky, and became acquainted with the sister of a missionary in Honduras. She--the sister--spoke of and presented a slideshow of the incredible work that her brother, Dr. Jeff McKenney, and his wife had begun some years earlier in a remote area on the northern coast of Honduras. It wasn't the impressive presentation or the engaging personality of the sister that convinced us to support the Cornerstone Foundation. I must admit it was reading Dr. McKenney's fascinating account of his tribulations and triumphs that convinced me (and then us) to help fund this medical mission. Dr. Jeff has a penchant (read here) for penetrating the mysteries (to me) of missionary work.
Oh, sure, I understand the basic concept. How can you expect people to understand and accept the Gospel unless you first minister to their most urgent needs? Kindness and good intentions are all fine and good, but when a belly is either empty or split open by bandits wielding machetes, critical attention must be paid to feeding or fixing the belly before the soul.
The main thing I don't understand about mission work is how missionaries like Dr. Jeff and his wife can so easily put aside their own lives to save other lives? Well, maybe not easily, but willingly. It must have something to do with dilatory time or the lack thereof. Such a thing does not exist in such a man's vocabulary or thought process. Time is of the essence there and here. Okay, so maybe I'm beginning to comprehend. I owe, I owe. It's off to work I go...
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane ["olive press"], and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me..."
Then he returned to the disciples [after how many times of waking them??!!] and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go!"
"Help me! Help me, sir!" he said. "Or the hunter shoot me dead!"
Passionflower vine in the meadow
"Come, little rabbit, come inside, Safely to abide..."
Elderberry?
Yes, I really am off my rocker, just in case you were wondering--off my rocker on the cabin porch and back to work in Florida. Vacation in Southern Illinois is over. Or is it?
I am still savoring wild cherries and wondering what elderberries (if that's what those pink berries are) taste like...
Capturing deer emerging from thickets...
Taking a boat ride on Kinkaid Lake to a favorite jumping-off point...
Shooting wild turkeys--with the camera--just as the sun comes up...
Watching Grandson take his first hike in Giant City State Park...
Taking advantage of family photo opps...
Thinking that silliness abounds when Grandson's around.
I can't leave Southern Illinois without bringing home some of its summertime bounty. The peaches are from Rendleman Orchards in Alto Pass. Tomatoes are courtesy of a generous brother-in-law who loves to garden.
I don't know why, but for me it's a pleasure to pull weeds--as long as they're in someone else's garden. Maybe it's because I get to learn something new every time I visit. Wouldn't you know this lovely shrub is a Clerodendron ugandense (maybe 'Blue Wings')? I didn't until I asked the real Master Gardener in charge of volunteers at WFREC. It (the WFREC Gardens in Milton) is one of those places where, if you're lucky enough to be a plant, everybody knows your name. Everybody except me. I'm still learning, and it takes a lot of repetition. One of these days those plants will be as familiar to me as the characters on Cheers! I credit years of television reruns for that phenomenon.
Bees visiting this shrub don't have blue wings or extraordinary power, but they do tend to transcend ordinary when captured on a flower.
Some beds, it may be noted, were designed in formal style. If not for outside heat and obligations, I would have stayed there quite a while.
Who can resist antique roses that invite you to sit a spell and enjoy their smell? Forget your venting and breathe in their scent(ing)?
I'm glad that there were signs to remind me of the names. If not for that small help, I would have to resort to games...
Like memory-jogging-hopscotch or pick-a-plant-by-number or jump-in-the-nearest-fountain. Or smell-the-rosemary or ask-the-master-gardener-again or climb-the-nearest-mountain.... Oh dear, I would not have you deluded. In Florida, you see, the mountains are not included.
If "cool" is what you're looking for, then take a walk among shaded caladiums galore.
Some weeds in other beds are left for next time 'round. You won't notice if you don't look closely--they never make a sound.
(Thanks to Mary, my friend from NFREC and Gardening Friends of the Big Bend, who gave me the idea for this post.)
Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan) blooms abundantly in my NW Florida garden
Business for massage therapy has been a little slow lately, but I'm not worried. That's what I told someone today at the fitness center where I have my practice. It's summer vacation time, and the massage business has its ups-and-downs like any other business. Will it ever be perfect, you think? My "practice"? I hope not. It should always be unfolding, and I should always be learning something new. That's what I told someone else I met today who is still a massage student. She is hoping to make a decent, maybe even good living as a therapist. I encouraged her to not be discouraged if it takes a while to get to that point.
Curled-up Black-eyed Susan waiting to unfold
Even with the economy being depressed and many people out of work, there are still the "haves" who "have knots"--in their necks, their backs, their shoulders....By "haves" I don't mean people with more money than they know what to do with. I'm not personally acquainted with any "1%-ers," whatever that means. Around here, the people with money to spend came by it honestly. They've had to work hard for it, which explains the knots.
Francis Bacon had some wise words to impart concerning wealth, among other things, and he paid close attention to what other wise men before him had written. Wouldn't it be nice if policy-makers making decisions that affect other people's wealth would follow suit?
"...as Solomon saith: 'Riches are as a stronghold in the imagination of the rich man;' but this is excellently expressed, that it is in imagination and not always in fact; for, certainly, great riches have sold more men than they have bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly; yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them, but distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius Posthumus:
'In studio rei amplificandae apparebat, non avaritiae praedam, sed instrumentum bonitati quaeri.'
(In his anxiety to increase his fortune, it was evident that not the gratification of avarice was sought, but the means of doing good.)..."
We are enjoying almost the final harvest of this year's crop of blueberries, and the last ones to be ripe are the sweetest of all for some reason. This morning as I filled my container with these large blue spheres, a song that's been stuck in my head since yesterday evening kept me company in the blueberry patch.
Just before SAM and I headed for bed last night, we were listening to the Spa channel on XM Radio, and lo and behold, this familiar song began to play. Secret Aging Man recognized it right away. "This is My Father's House," he said confidently. Are you sure? I asked. "It's an old Baptist hymn. I'm pretty sure." Wrong. Sorry, honey. I looked it up in an old hymnal we somehow ended up with from a church (not Baptist) that we attended in Kentucky. This is My Father's World. Not house. A building could never contain Him.
This is my Father's world And to my listening ears All nature sings, And round me rings The music of the spheres...
