Home Grown, Stable Vegetables

Sign along the road today: 

HOME GROWN 

VEGSTABLES

To Market, to Market; Home Again, Home Again

Traffic.

Noise.

Think fast.

Fast food.

Limited.

Blinded.

Frazzled.

Less.

Waves.

Music.

Think slow.

Slow food.

Enlarged.

Opened.

Whole.

More.

Seeing the Invisible

Seeing the Invisible

FaithWriter weekly contest scores just came in, and my recent entry did fairly well!  The topic was “see.”

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Vision: The Art of Seeing Things Invisible

Summer erupted in fresh green glory the same week eighteen-year-old Jennie graduated as high school valedictorian. Her mother simultaneously urged her to embrace her emerging passion. “Take these next couple of months to prioritize your writing, Jennie. Your skills deserve to blossom!” She seemed to see inside her daughter’s heart where a creative flame flickered, just waiting for fresh fuel and the empowering wind of the Spirit to create a blaze.

Each golden day drifted into the next, spun from the same gilded skein of hope and promise. Jennie’s skin turned honey-brown, and then almost chocolate, and her dishwater-blonde hair bleached in the sun with aureate highlights. In the evenings she sat at her computer keyboard, erect and contemplative, lost in the timeless freedom of creative expression. Exciting new people and places emerged through the mysterious power of the written word as her mother continued to fan the flame. “Can I read your latest work, Jennie?”

Despite her parents’ permission to pursue her passion, uncertainties also tugged at Jennie’s heart, for she knew challenges lurked just around the corner. Poised at this intersection in her life, she wafted through the warm, comfortable days knowing independent adulthood awaited. At night she lay in bed and cowered at the thought of leaving home to pursue a self-sufficient career. “You’ll be bold, energetic, and as spangled as the sunlight dancing on the waves,” her mother confidently assured her.

Jennie entered college the following fall semester as an English major and visionary seeking the culmination of a dream: authorship and publication of her own book. Four years later she emerged with a degree and secured a job as a high school English teacher. On the wall above her desk in the English department she hung a motivational quote by Jonathon Swift: “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” She lived by this mantra, and taught her students to unashamedly reach for their own stars.

For three decades Jennie touched the lives of hundreds of students – the classic bright but unmotivated ones, those disadvantaged by the influence of dysfunctional families or wayward peers, and the scholarly, self-assured thinkers who were natural achievers. During this time her mother slowly failed with senile dementia and finally passed away. Still, her legacy lingered, having etched the truth in Jennie’s soul. “You can and will become an author! Believe the Lord for this; His lenses on your heart and soul will magnify possibility into reality.”

Because of her sacrificial commitment to those in her overcrowded classes, Jennie earned various prestigious teaching awards at both the local and national level. While striving to be the best teacher she could be, in her more private moments she also continued to envision herself as an author of a volume with a textured hard cover and deckle-edged pages. At times she could almost feel this yet-unwritten book, taste it, and smell it. She also knew its authorship could not be forced. The book would come in God’s timing.

And so she waited, while the eyes of her heart focused on Him.

The year Jennie retired from teaching she also hired a contractor to build her dream house: a bungalow facing a small pond where noisy geese and ducks sometimes rivaled for supremacy. After so many years of serving others, it was her turn to rest in this place of relative simplicity. All through the fall, winter, and spring, she spent time with her family and friends, took long walks with her faithful companion-dog, Rusty, and recorded memories of her teaching career on her blog.

But when summer arrived that year with its surge of new life, the old embers of desire stirred into new flames in Jennie’s heart. The waiting was over! She earnestly set about composing fresh pages full of insight and understanding, surprising even herself. Fine-tuned descriptions supported the development of a character named Tom Monroe, a teenager stumbling through dense, tangled forests of self-doubt who was redeemed by the unparalleled commitment of a public school teacher. She saw Tom clearly in her mind’s eye, and then loved him to life on the page.

The writing developed swiftly, which was no surprise, and by the end of the summer Jennie’s manuscript was ready for editing and self-publication. Jennie could imagine her mother shouting, “Bravo!” from the windows of her heavenly mansion. Perhaps she alone knew how Jennie had seen this book develop through the lens of her heart for years, even though she was physically blind.

Aficionado

Today aficionado came into my life.  Nope, aficionado isn’t a person or place, so despite your best guess (I know you’re thinking it’s a proper noun of some sort) it shouldn’t be capitalized. 

And no, it’s not slang, either. 

It has nothing to do with affection, or action, or bravado.  At least not overtly.  Although conceivably it could be a mutant composite of all three.

It’s a WORD.  That’s all I’ll tell you. If you don’t know what it means, look it up.  In the meantime, just know I’m an aficionado of something.  Actually lots of somethings.  So are you.

Purple Ham - the End of the Story (Part VII)

Yesterday I celebrated the grand anniversary of my hamstring tear; it had been exactly 3 weeks since feeling the “pop” in my thigh while attempting to get up on the slalom ski.  So for the sake of closure, I decided today to post a final Purple Ham update.  The other six entries, complete with pictures recording progression (if you haven’t yet seen them and are gutsy enough to stomach some very Purple Ham), can be viewed in previous July blogs.

The leftover bruising continues to slide down into my calf where it still hurts, just in a new location!  The thigh is looking pretty good, although it still complains when I squat or bend in certain positions.  I’m grateful for a relatively quick recovery even though I realize after-effects will continue for some time, and for a miraculously crafted body that knows how to self-heal.  Pretty amazing, really.

Four Musketeers Camp

Picture for a moment, Four Musketeers (two 6-year-old boys and two 9-year-old boys) as they:

-       * search for shells and rocks on the bottom of the lake through foggy goggles (see picture below)

-      *  compete (kindly and graciously, no less) while tossing “cornhole” beanbags

-       * snarf food and more food including homemade cinnamon rolls, ice cream sandwiches, brownies (junk food is allowed in controlled amounts at Camp)

-       * tube and knee-board behind the boat

-       * read and are read to

-       * somersault in the hot tub

-      *  sleep on wall-to-wall mats on the floor of the same room

-       * create space ships and various other nameless creations from legos

-       * build castles, moats, and bridges in the sandbox

-       * play golf at the local North 40 course

-      *  make up fantasy stories about aliens and invasions and count-downs and things being blown up – ka-blooey!

-       * tease the dogs (yes, 2 dogs came to Camp, too)

-      *  run like stampeding buffalo down the pier and…true to Grampa’s example… JUMP!

-      *  dive underwater (and dive and dive some more), proving little boys just might be genetically half-fish and half-human

Such was our first annual Four Musketeers Camp at the lake with three grandsons and a friend in attendance (with our daughter and son-in-law as chaperones) beginning Friday and ending today.  What great kids.  Granted, times like these stretch my energy/endurance levels, auditory management abilities, and “food fairy skills” (Emily has dubbed me “the food fairy” when meals suddenly appear for the masses). But they also give me confidence in the emerging generation, since I imagine such confident-but-respectful, courteous, well-rounded kids will grow up to become fun-loving but responsible, thoughtful, faithful citizens and leaders. 

It’s humbling to think I had a turn at parenting my own 4 kids (those years were full of both blunders and successes), but now have another opportunity to help, even in small ways, imprint yet another generation.  I am blessed.

Grass

PRESENCE is what fills emptiness and eliminates void, and it has taken me a lifetime to begin to understand God’s presence with me is everything.  While sometimes circumstantial curve balls bonk me in the head, other times I’m awed by glimpses of paradise.  In it all, my assurance and comfort is that GOD IS WITH ME.

Recently an extended family member emailed me a simple thought about presence in the sense of relationships with others, particularly the inner circle of family.  It made me think, and think some more, about what true PRESENCE looks like. When I boil everything away, presence is what matters - sharing (sometimes sacrificially) and receiving (sometimes until it hurts).  It is what provides meaning.  BEING THERE.  Coming alongside.

I was reading in Isaiah several days ago and have continued to think about a metaphor there: people are grass.  Perishable, seasonal grass.  In my mind’s eye I can easily envision one lonely (autonomous?) blade standing by itself in a world of barrenness. I can also imagine a lush yard or field or whole valley of blades in intimate contact, in full presence with one another while acknowledging that the sovereign, omniscient God gives life to each one and takes it away in His due season.

“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. 

The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. 

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”

- Is. 40:6-7

What if each blade lived transparently and authentically in full presence with God and one another rather than pridefully taking stands and assuming defensive postures?

Ah, we are all just blades of grass, bent.

“Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere;

My humble song of praise

Most joyfully I raise

To Him at whose command

I beautify the land,

Creeping, silently creeping everywhere.”

- Sarah Roberts Boyle, The Voice of the Grass