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Anthropomorphizing Nature

8/29/2023

August 29, 2023

Beloved:
This picture is two of the four tomato plants grown from some two inch, single stem suckers I pinched from a church member’s plants in mid-June. Normally I keep my tomato plants carefully staked, pruned and off the ground. But as an experiment I haven't touched these except to set down cages, water, and add two pours of comfrey root tea. The tea is good but I’m fairly confident it's the neglect that has them so loaded with fruit now, letting them do as they please instead of fussing over them like I have my other plants which are now winding down. They definitely produced, but not like these sucker starts are already.
  Fecund* ~ I remember the college class and classroom, the very time and place I learned that word. It certainly was not a religion class but the word struck me as profoundly theological, a word achingly descriptive the nature of the God of my faith, One who ever makes, creates and gives birth to life, or as I often like to add to our liturgies; life, life and more life. Fecund implies both the proven capacity and energy to produce ~ abundantly and rapidly ~ like these tiny tomato starts, the back field on the church property already needing mowed again, and rabbit warren in the brush pile near our trash cans.
  I like thinking that Nature loves her work, best of all when we leave her to it, treat her like she knows what she’s doing. She may well have a reason for not letting grass grow beneath the oak tree. Yes or no, believing that she does lets me fret less and find something else to do. Fall bulbs will come in the mail before long and then there’s all that fun Fall work to do. Well before that I’ll have more tomatoes to pick, thanks to the One who is ever creating, making, growing and giving birth. May you find joy given and received in this beautiful day.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

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Home is where...

8/15/2023

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August 15, 2023
Beloved:
Having lived here several months I’m already rearranging. My original setup doesn’t suit me like I thought it would, but neither does the chaos I’ve created with all this reorganization. Grrrr, blast this state of betwixt and between! This place where so much must be set to rights before anything good or useful can begin . . . or so my heart and mind would like me to believe.
I do love a tidy space, caddies and cubbies for every bit and bobble. I have to wash the dishes to work at the kitchen table, neaten up the coffee table to use my laptop on the couch, as well as remind myself that a messy house is not a moral failing, any more than a clean one is a virtue. Mine’s a quirk of personality, a preference, a hobby.
  Home. I’m grateful for this landing place, softer than I could have hoped for. It would be practically perfect in every way, if only the dog would sleep through the night. Something about 4:30 AM pulls her outside just to sniff the air and look around. No one is sleeping until she’s checked it out. She has her habits as much as I have mine as we make this place home.
  Home, I’ve realized lately, is where you aren’t surprised to wake up. Every morning is still a surprise to me. Home is where you no longer notice what it smells like because it smells like you. My closets especially still smell like something altogether other — faintly of cats and something very, very dry. Home can also be a memory, as I found this week in a meal brought over by a church member: pork chop, green beans and scalloped potatoes. Those potatoes transported me to the kitchen table when my kids were little where they positively ate them up. I was most truly fed and most truly grateful.
  So I invite you to be grateful for whatever experience of home you have today. Whatever Love you find there is the Love that finds us all.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

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The Greater Truth

8/1/2023

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August 1, 2023

Beloved:

  A delicious break from the heat. I read that Phoenix, Arizona finally dropped below 110 degrees for the first time in a month. I used this morning’s glorious air to pick cucumbers and deadhead flowers. Birdy and I may even go to the dog park later if I get enough work done. I love high summer, when everything ripens fast and blooms hard. Farmers’ Market prices are the best they’ll be all year, because they do not want to haul last week’s home where there’s so much more to pick.
  My struggle is to keep my eyes and heart on the bounty rather than the loss, especially when the losses seem requisite. They aren’t, but they sure seem so, so fundamental, if not for survival then for happiness, for joy. These losses were fundamental to my happiness in another time and place. But not now, not here. At fifty-nine years old my life quest has returned to a starting line I haven’t yet stepped up to, for no other reason than lack of imagination, I suppose, and the promise to be gentle with myself. These are not easy days, learning to live alone and care for this broken heart of mine.
  Is this too raw a thing to write on a Tuesday morning? Maybe. Maybe it’s too personal for a space meant to encourage. Could be. Then again, I have found a certain courage in realizing other people also struggle to keep faith when life around them appears bountiful, when it seems they have so much to be grateful for. We can struggle to keep faith and be grateful for the good, concurrently. Neither cancels out the other, a truth that comforts me from both sides.
  I am well aware that I am not unique. Since high summer a year ago you’ve also known loss, the losses of your loved ones’ illnesses and deaths, along with your own devastating diagnoses, health scares, job changes, and family struggles. And all the while we must earn a living and keep the children fed and the yard mowed, amen? How we manage would be a mystery, were it not for the faith God keeps in us, moving us along when we cannot move ourselves another inch, let alone another day. This is the greater truth I lean into when I don’t know what I am supposed to do, when I can’t possibly step up to that starting block today: that God is carrying me now, that God is doing the greater part, else I would not be functioning at all. I imagine someday I will have better, more eloquent words for speaking of these days. Or maybe not. I only know that faith has become something enfolding now, rather than something exercised. Faith cares for me, and I know it cares for you too.

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette

Oven Baked BBQ Ribs at WedNightSupper last week

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Anthropomorphizing Nature

Home is where...

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