Pastor Annette's Blog
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"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD . . . NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
Beloved: I’ve pulled up more common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) than I left in my little flowerbed, else I’d have no space to grow other things. The first year it got established. Last year the lawn service sprayed pesticide too close but this year I told them to go away and look what’s happened! So many big fat caterpillars munching down the leaves and two chrysalids hanging from my porch eaves. There must be more nearby because yesterday a monarch was hovering about as I puttered in the yard yesterday. My neighbor and I are as excited as kids in a classroom. I pick a tomato or two almost every day from the two plants I put in. A third volunteer tomato vine has suddenly come on. The tiny fruit on it may be big and ripe before the frost. Friends share their bounty, so I still get enough to freeze for soup and pasta sauce. Tomatoes, herbs and flowers are what I have space for now, the exact right amount to leave time for my grandkids, crafts and volunteer work. I cannot imagine ever not growing something, if only in a pot of dirt. Some living plant to tend and trim and fuss over, for the simple magic of watching it come to bloom, to grow, go dormant and then come to life again, ever careless of the unceasing human drama around it.* The slowness of the garden slows down my mind and spirit even as it amps up my body. My watch says I did 9400 steps yesterday! An hour can go by in which I think about nothing but which lavender branches to prune. If gardening isn’t your thing, no worries. Maybe it’s running. Or motorcycles. Or baking bread. But I do hope you have something removed from the rest of the everyday world pulling on you. I hope you have something as magical to you as caterpillars and ripening tomatoes are to gardeners. Because the world needs us at our best these days, clear-minded and ready for the work of being Jesus’ hands and heart. I’m so grateful to be in it with all of you. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette * I just remembered this book: The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. A great read!
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August 19, 2025 Keep my anger from becoming meanness. Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. Keep my anger turned toward justice, not cruelty. Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. Keep me fiercely kind. ~ Laura Jean Truman Beloved:
Keep me fiercely kind is yet another on the list of tattoos I’d get if I were to get one. On my forearm, so I’d see it all day every day. Not that it would help so much – since the far greater portion of my unkindness is not in deeds but thoughts. Unkind thoughts. A notebook’s worth a day at least. The progress I have made in thirty years would not fill a jam jar, so I’ve no advice to share save a couple of very tiny observations.
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette * Colossians 3:5-12 * Ephesians 4:21-25 * 2 Corinthians 5:17 August 12, 2025
Beloved: The command strip Velcro has given out, so the pressboard box I use to organize small desk things keeps falling off the wall. I tried new strips on the box, to no good end. I just picked everything up off the floor for the fourth time at least, threw the stupid box in the trash then took it right back out again. It can live on my desk for now. An old friend once told me his camping club had considered changing their name from camping club to guys-who-like-to-buy-camping-stuff club and I knew exactly what he meant. I am afraid to do the math lest I learn I’ve spent more time collecting and organizing my fabric, yarn, craft and office supplies than I’ve actually spent sewing, knitting, collaging and writing. Fortunately my habits are not outrageously expensive, bits and bobs my kids will someday donate to the Quilters’ Guild or Teachers’ Warehouse. But not books. Books don’t count. A new pen* or a hank of yarn soothes, each in their own way ~ fun to hold, look at and play with, to put away and get back out. While books are friends whose presence in my house reminds me of when and where I was when I read them. I remember how they changed my thinking, and my heart, which is to say my life. When I could first read easily, around age six or seven, I’d wonder if I could forget how to do it. I’d test myself on cereal boxes and billboards. I felt like a magician. Half a century later, it still seems a little magical, chunks of inky paper with the power to change a person, a people, the world. I sit down to write these Tuesday notes without much plan. I look around and see the pressboard box on the floor again, so I start there and see where my typing takes me. Halfway around the room to the stack of books by my rocking chair, as it turns out, where the novel I started yesterday lies open. The Testament, by Eli Wiesel, an interesting companion to the one beside it, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi, each doing what the best books do ~ changing me. Breaking me wide open to see and hear and know again the inhumanity of which human beings are capable, to commit and to endure. I’d like to throw both books in the trash, but take them up again with what faith I can muster, knowing neither will end happily ever after but maybe with an ember of hope. And if not hope, then awareness. Accountability for our own time in this world. For how we speak and act in reference to and toward other people. People who are as in love with their lives as I am mine ~ here in my little study surrounded by my bits and bobs and other tiny treasures. I pray this hot, hot day treats you kindly and you have the chance to pass that kindness along. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette My favorite novel ~ The Glad River, by Will Campbell ; I also love East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. Everything else is at least a couple of ladder rungs below these two. Wendell Berry’s Port William novels and stories always comfort me and make me laugh. *My favorite pen ~ Rare is the pen that doesn’t smear under the drag of a left-handed writer. These are my two hands-down favorites. |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works. Archives
September 2025
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