Just Fresh

      Our fridge is overrun with green things - the good kind! Don and I signed up for the CSA at Boone Hall Farms just down the road from us.  In a CSA (community supported agriculture), a farmer offers a certain number of shares to the public.  We bought our share (planted our crops, as it were) in November.  Now, we receive a share of whatever has just been picked at the farm in an overflowing green tub  - vegetables, fruits and even local free range eggs.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been feasting on strawberries, plantation onions, cabbage, romaine lettuce, and a mess of greens -  turnips and turnip greens, mustard greens, collard greens.  Yes, we’re really eating green this spring.

     I usually grow a few veggies and herbs in a tiny corner in the backyard but I love this bounty of local food.  The CSA is a reminder that food really is seasonal - that just because I can buy apples or peaches year round at the grocery store  - they’re not in season locally.  It’s a reminder of times before big boxes when the evening dinner came from the morning picking.   It’s a reminder that there are farmers in our community working hard to keep food fresh and local.  It’s a reminder that weather matters and that we are truly connected to the earth we live on.   Last week, as I picked up my collards, cabbage, onions and strawberries, the farm worker commented.  “Yeah, we thought the squash would be in by now - but that cold snap last week slowed everything down.”   

     And I love the surprise factor.  What will we get this week?  What new recipe can I try with mustard greens?  It's a lot like life.  What will I find in my basket this week and what will I do with it? 
     And the most important question, what will I do with all this romaine lettuce?  You can only eat so much romaine.

AF

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       There are those moments in time when your perception of yourself changes. You hit 18. You land your first professional job. You become a mom. You have a store clerk tell you that the reason the fancy shoes don’t fit is because you have short, stubby toes.

     I was shocked.

     Not that I aspire to be a toe model, but I always thought I had lovely, feminine feet. Short and stubby sounds rather masculine. As an exercise instructor, I well know people’s subjective perception of themselves differs from reality. I’ll tell them to straighten their backs, and they nod from their hunched-back turtle poses as if I’m talking to others in the class. 

     I try to keep an open mind on the filters on my perceptions that may be keeping me from making changes for the good. But short and stubby? There are other body parts she could have attacked, and I would have agreed. I noticed a week after the shocking revelation, I was avoiding looking at my toes. I had to laugh at myself.

     Short and stubby or long and elegant, what did it matter? They help me walk, run and hold yoga poses. They have character and toenails that grow straight up on some toes. They bring me joy to wiggle.

     All I need is a little paint for the piggies.

DB

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     Last weekend, I had the chance to attend A [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant, held in Decatur, GA. I could write a whole book about it, I think -- how it wildly exceeded my hopes, how it was a remarkable example of the way Christians should be able to approach difficult subjects, how there was (at least in my hearing) no name calling or questioning of anyone's faith, how both the Bible and the Spirit who inspired it were engaged thoughtfully and prayerfully by the speakers, how respect was the guiding principle in our small group discussions even when there was disagreement.               
     But the most powerful moment for me was the worship service that closed the conference on Saturday. When it was time for communion, we formed a line to the front of the sanctuary where ministers held out the elements of bread and juice. Instead of the presiding ministers serving everyone, however, we served one another. After I took the bread and juice from the person in front of me, I then took the elements and offered them to the next person in line with the words we'd been told to say: "Accept these symbols of Christ's body and life, our oneness." At one moment I realized that most of the people there were strangers to me, and I didn't know how to fit them into many of the categories that so often determine how we treat one another -- liberal or conservative, gay or straight, clergy or layperson, rich or poor, educated or uneducated. And I was glad to be able to see them not in those terms, but as my sisters and brothers. 
     It must have been something like what Paul meant when he wrote in Galatians 3:28 that there is "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." As I left the conference, my prayer was that we could all focus on that rather than the things that divide us.

SS

Spring has sprung

Favorite moments from a weekend jaunt to Edisto Beach:

An early morning walk with an 8 year old, watching a starfish slip back into the sea.

A game of tag on the beach at sunset, finding the dipper on the way home

Watching a bluebird watch me

Waking a late-sleeping teen with a blue crab claw

Sitting on a dock in a tidal creek, syncing with the ebb and flow,

Napping and then napping more

DB

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     The finish line was not where it was supposed to be. I had been training for a race for months, working my way up from just about no running to running a 5K. That's five kilometers, 3.1 miles. It may not sound like much, but for a non-runner, trust me, it is. After all my hard work building up endurance, I could not figure out why I was feeling so tired already at the halfway point. I had my iPhone in my pocket, so on the return trip to the start/finish point, I turned on its GPS-enabled running application to keep track of my distance, time, and pace. When I felt my legs telling me I could not run anymore, I checked my phone. That's how I learned that this "5K" course was much longer than 3.1 miles. In fact, when I crossed that finish line, which should have been about 1.55 miles from the halfway point, I looked at my phone again and saw that it was actually 2.3 miles! That means that the race was about 4.6 miles in total, and I ran all but the last mile of it! Now I was plenty annoyed when I realized that (although it may have just been the fact that I was so grouchy from being sore and tired and hungry), but now I am almost thankful. I ran over three and a half miles, which is farther than I think I've ever run in my life. And I would not have been pushed to my limits and beyond if things had gone according to plan. I would not have learned what I was capable of if the finish line had been where it was supposed to be.

SS

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“Be tough the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, 

and at peace with what is around it.” 

Natalie Goldberg

      On my run today, I noticed the grass in all of the yards I passed. The grass has greened up in most places, but it’s still brown and full of weeds in others.  Some yards, clearly over-seeded for the winter, have a lawn of fresh spring green grass.  The fertilized lawns look a deeper, richer green.  So many shades of green.

     Grass is tough stuff.  It gets stepped on day after day and springs right back up.  It dries up during a drought but freshens right up after a gentle rain.   I pull tough rooted runners of grass from my flower beds and even out of cracks in the driveway.   Grass is persistent, continuing to grow even though it's chopped down weekly with the power mower.   I find myself needing those qualities these days - a little more toughness, persistence, resilience.  So, if you're looking for me, I'll be in the back yard, sipping a nice cool drink and meditating on the grass.

AF

 

     Although it is usually just said as an expression of boredom, lately I have literally been watching the grass grow. I decided that this spring, my first with my very own yard, I would find out how exactly one takes care of grass. Up until recently the extent of my knowledge was that you mow it when it gets too high. But now, I am doing my research, finding out about fertilizers and pre-emergent treatments, pest control and overwatering. 

      I attended a lawn care seminar at a local garden center last Saturday, and they told me that once my grass greens up, I should bring in a sample of it so they can tell me what kind it is and what I need to do to keep it looking its best. The weeds that are overrunning the grass right now, I was told to leave alone. They are winter weeds and will die soon anyway. By next year, with regular applications of pre-emergents, hopefully they won't be so out of control. 

     I'm thankful for the wisdom of experts, for their recommendation of caution and patience. Without it, I may have just hosed down the whole place with Roundup and started from scratch. This way takes more time and effort, but I can just imagine how satisfying it will be to look at my healthy lawn and remember how far we have come.

SS

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     It’s church yard sale weekend.  Providence is participating in the Red Balloon Yard sale on Daniel Island and so I’ve been weeding out clutter to donate.  An old foot massager.  Several remote control cars.  An alarm clock that still works but isn’t needed. Books. Old vases. A CD player.  An ancient Nintendo gameboy.  More books and bric-a-brac.  Unused photo albums. Where did all this stuff come from? My daughter, Savannah, who is home for spring break, goes through her closet and donates a half-dozen posters, a baby doll, several beanie babies, giant pink monster slippers, and some random trinkets. But it’s the bears that stop me.

       In Alison’s closet, I find the bears she loved as a toddler, with the uninspired names of Pink Bear and Bear Bear.  At two and a half, for reasons known only to her, Alison pronounced Bear Bear with an affected Scarlett O’Hara accent -  “Bay-uh, bay-uh.”  Even though Alison has now married and moved to St. Louis, leaving Bear Bear behind without a thought, I haven’t been able to muster up the grit to send the bears along to a new owner.  It’s time I decide - but first, I take a picture.  

     It’s my new de-cluttering strategy.  If I’m feeling too sentimental to get rid of something - even if that something has been stored in a box in a closet for ten years - I simply take a picture of it.  The memory can remain with the picture, taking up a lot less real estate than a box full of stuffed animals in a closet.  I’m feeling brave, so I photograph Big Bear (a five foot tall bear who has lived in Alison’s room for years) and sent him off to the yard sale as well. Those bears will find new children to love them and their digital image will remain to trigger memories and inspire blog posts.  The pictures of the bears are now safely stored in a file on my computer named “Favorite Old Things.”  

      Letting go of what we love is never easy... but it does free up closet space.

AF

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FOCAL POINT

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire 

not things we fear.                                             ~Brian Tracy

I took a walk with a photographer friend of mine who took this shot.

It's amazing what a long lens and shallow depth of field can do. Likewise in life we can change focus and reframe events.

It is said we are the stories we tell ourselves.  Can it really be that simple?

For a March day, it was.

Hello, spring.

DB

Thorns, redbuds, and a diaper pin

Can you identify this thorny vine?

I spent part of Ash Wednesday weeding - pulling vines out of the holly bushes, cutting back bamboo, pulling grass and weeds out of the flower beds, trying to steer clear of any poison ivy.   There's a particularly thorny vine that wants to take over my yard, it seems.  I don't even know it's name - but it's very prickly and blooms with a little white flower.  Even with two pairs of leather gloves, I felt the tiny thorns as I pulled it out of even pricklier holly bushes and asparagus ferns.  

I think weeding will be my spiritual discipline this year for Lent.  Rather than giving up something I love, I'm going to look for the weeds in my spiritual life and pull them out by the roots.  Grass growing in the wrong place. Prickly vines taking over. Bamboo that persistently returns to sprout in the middle of my lawn.  Smilax winding up the crepe myrtle.  Nettles, plaintain, white clover.  Even the star aster that I planted myself and then found that it would completely take over the flower bed.  

What are those weeds in my own life that need to be pulled, cut back, or uprooted?  What are those things that waste my time and energy?  What creates chaos in my life? What activities have simply outgrown their place?  What are those things that have taken over my spiritual garden, leaving no room for the Holy? Time for some weeding!

AF

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Frosty country barn

Eastern redbuds in the mist

Spring thaw, flaming bright

        This is a haiku I jotted in my journal after a misty mountain walk in the mountains in Tryon, N.C. The magnificent purple-pink blooms of the Eastern Redbud trees were the only color breaking a mostly gray landscape while I was there. It's one of the prettiest times of the year for this tree, and I was delighted to witness its passage into spring. The haiku captures the moment and mood for me more than other ways of journaling. The short poems, which can be read in one breath, feel like clean, simple meditations, verbal snapshots of emotion.

DB

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     Inside the collar of my ministerial robe hides an object that looks a bit out of place. When I was given the robe during my ordination, it came with a green stole, the kind we wear during ordinary time. That one is tapered at the place where it goes around my neck, so the next time I wore my robe, to preach at Providence during ordinary time, my stole stayed in place.

      In the winter of 2010, I was asked to do my first funeral, which called for the white stole I had gotten as a gift but not yet worn. This was not just any funeral. My Gramma Carolyn was the one in the casket. I had a lot on my mind as I arrived at my parents' house in KY the day before the funeral. The fact that my stole wouldn't stay in place just added to the stress.

      My mother and I tried to safety pin it, but we couldn't find a pin large or strong enough to go through the thick robe and stole. "I think I've got something that may work," Mom said, and went rummaging in drawers until she found what she was looking for -- one of the diaper pins they used when I was a baby. It was the right size, and seemed fitting in other ways, too. Now it is a permanent part of my ministerial attire. It reminds me of the whole person I am, past and present, child and adult, daughter and granddaughter and minister. Amazing that one little pin can hold so much together.

SS