Holding Counterpoise

Beloved:     
          My mother preached, absolutely nothing goes in the ground before Mother’s Day! but I checked the forecast and planted some things yesterday anyway.  I probably shouldn’t have bought them, but I’m out of town next week and don’t want them to get too dry.  One white bleeding heart (Dicentra Spectabilis) and two lenten roses (Hellebores), yellow and purple.  Also my friend gave me purple hyacinth beans and I’ve started some in little pots.  They are sprouting nicely and can go into the dirt in another couple of weeks.  Also, they have the best scientific name ~ Lablab Purpureus ~ it sounds like the scientist was stuttering.  I’m excited to see what pollinators it draws to my yard.

​              Purple Hyacinth Bean Vine                                                         White Bleeding Heart
          The wonder of it never gets old.  Collecting seeds into a paper bag one fall to drop in the dirt next spring, and for little more effort than that, food and flowers explode from the ground.  Life from an old dried-up bean pod.  Life so abundant we’d consider it obscene if it were money or property.  Yet we pass this wealth around for free, in a second-hand paper bag sealed with a bit of masking tape like my friend Fran gave me, and for all the bad and scary news these days, this abundance persists too, refusing to be shushed or shadowed.  Holding both in proper counterpoise is an unending task of faith, rooted and realized in prayer, in regular contact with one’s own soul.
          I remember first learning not to say thank you for shared seeds or plant cuttings.  The idea being that to say thank you suggests a possession of nature that does not belong to us, and to risk offending the plant so that it might refuse to thrive.  Alternative responses are, I can’t wait to see this in my yard!  Or, how generous of you to think of me!  As I wind this down a storm is coming in, lots of lightning and loud thunder, and rain, abundant rain, don’t you know. 
I pray that the day finds you grateful for the abundance of delight this life holds.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette