It is squash/pepper/tomato time!

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

For even as He crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

But if in your fear you would seek only
love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.

// K. Gibran

"Learn from this"

Don't beat yourself up!
Ask God's forgiveness (I'm sure you have),
let that be sufficient, and learn from this :)

Thank you, kind stranger. God must have known I would need such a forgiving friend these whelming weeks. Thank you for a fresh wind of forgiveness.

"Fun to think God might have sent that pretty face of my old friend to NYC just to help you out this week," Abby had said. He was like my own Totoro, a transitional object. I called it an innocuous crush, a silly fun divertissement during a week of messy grief.

But there was nothing innocuous about indulging my ravenous heart... foraging on slippery slopes.

Take, eat. Hunger no more.

Thank you Pa for shielding my way and shepherding my grief. For your mercy that time and again spares me from my folly. I dangle precariously over destruction. Apart from grace.

Caught by mercy in my reckless coping. Oh, you never let go of me.

Yours are loving constraints. While I hang out over pits of hell.

Til soon, Ahma.

願主同在直到再相會，願主話語再指引你，

如在羊圈主保守你，願主同在直到再相會。

再相會，再相會，靠主恩得再相會，

再相會，再相會，願主同在直到再相會。

願主同在直到再相會，在主翼下得蒙恩庇，

願上主每天賜嗎哪，願主同在直到再相會。

願主同在直到再相會，當危險驚惶纏繞你，

上主膀臂必懷抱你，願主同在直到再相會。

願主同在直到再相會，主愛旗幟常引領你，

死亡波濤不能傷你，願主同在直到再相會。

June is bustin' out all over!

Without the wait, and without the emptiness, and without the browning and drying and blowing away, the cold, the frozen pots, the bareness, the shriveled herb leaves, the sticks of fig and rose, without the white pillows of snow, the spare horizon, spring would be nothing . . . We need sleep. We need to be empty. It is the only possible preparation for the excess to come.

// Marie Viljoen

Friends have been seeking an explanation for my infatuation with farms. I could give heady socially motivated or theologically grounded ideas about dominion, community cultivation, nutritional security and sustainability etc.

But at the visceral level... of why I actually can't (or at least don't) resist its draw. I think I just need the joy and life that seasonality (and living by it) brings. The hope of the first egg, the feast of the last pig. The ebb and flow of sabbaths and solstices.

remembering maya angelou

for a midwest-bred and Harlem-rehomed woman who read and day-drank and hoped and prayed and wrote her way to freedom in a wide open world, who refused to speak for six years and declared about it "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you":

i know
as you knew
how a clipped wing
could sing
a dirge for dead

dreams
let freedom ring.

sister bird
with bosom sore
you're caged no more
your struggle's done
but you'll sing on
that holy trill
hope's ghostly chill

the sky,

at last,

your home.

sister bird
Love has come
through wasted fears
in desert years

Love's come through

for us.


in grateful hotdiggety memory of Maya Angelou, whose wings surely fit her well.
with hope that she now sings to the Lord a new song.

---

there's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light . . . it flies by day and it flies by night and I'm frightened by those that don't see it there was a dream and one day I could see it like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it // The Avett Brothers

Little one

My dear little booboo:

You are making me long with all my heart to dance and play and sit and picnic and sing and nap with you beneath the shade of that Tree of Life––that long but hopeful shadow reaching from the New City back into our present New York City.

The day we received your diagnosis was no ordinary day. You see, it was not a random holiday filled with bunnies and eggs and chocolate––although, you do love all three (especially eggs). Baby, on Easter, eternity broke into history in the most wonderful of ways, beginning the end of all that is sad and scary about our schedules: every distress and disease, every way our disintegrating bodies don't live up to our hopes and plans... On this day, we are called to celebrate the beginning of the end of all that is WRONG on our calendars.

Be brave in light of the coming day, though it's the shadows now making that light stark. On that day, we will inhabit renewed, resurrection bodies in a renewed, restored creation. Be brave for all the vehicles of that grace, even the ones that look like needles and white coats.

And when you say, "I can't! Cuz... cuz... I'm a small girl!" like you like to say when you don't want to try, child, know that He can. And He has. Walked the valley of all those shadows.

I pray you would sleep well with Spirit-enabled song, even when pain and fear persist. I pray that Papa God would be near to you in your sleepy song:

Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong

Jesus loves me, this I know as He loved so long ago

Taking children on His knee saying, "Let them come to Me!"

Jesus loves me, He who died Heaven's gate to open wide!

He will wash away my sin, let His little child come in.

Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you! Yes, Jesus loves you. We hold unswervingly to this; this we know when other questions remain.

With hugs and hope,
E-E

we sleep because He loves

9. Resolved, to sleep nightly, trusting Papa God to run the universe, lying down as one who is kept in safety by the One who in His goodness daily renews the work of creation. God wore us out with His goodness today!

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. // GKC