On my kitchen window sill there are two juice glasses that have avocado seeds suspended by toothpicks on the rim, the seed bottoms soaking in water. My mother used to do this when she (very infrequently) bought an avocado - there is just something about a seed that massive that begs to be sprouted. I remember as a kid that it seemed to take forever but Mom had several avocado plants in pots as proof that it could be done.
I was doing my morning purge of kitchen detritus and in my "putz wut" (German: cleaning fury) was just about to dump those seeds when I noticed a crack in the bottom of one of them. Sure enough, a rootlet is starting to poke through! Their status instantly changed from "imperiled" to "protected". Life stirs, silently, slowly.
There's a thorny little question I've been chewing on lately and getting impatient for an answer. Somehow seeing that crack in the avocado seed gave me hope.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Pethuel
The end of the year is approaching so in my Old Testament reading I'm at the minor prophets. The language is often beautiful and poetic, even though the words to the peoples are quite frightening at times. I have to admit that with my limited historical knowledge (and short memory) I often have to grab a commentary to help me understand exactly to whom the prophets were speaking and what the context is.
So the other day I was reading Keil and Delitzsch's introduction to the book of Joel and came across this little gem:
Joel is distinguished from other men of the same name, which occurs very frequently, by the epithet "son of Pethuel" (which means 'the open-heartedness or sincerity of God").
I got to thinking about that little parenthesis and it just blew me away. Most of us, if asked to describe God, would probably not come up with the term "open-hearted" right off the bat. Pethuel's parents (Joel's grandparents) must have had an experiential knowledge of God's open-heartedness toward them, so much so that they wanted to declare it to the world through their son's name.
Recently I was talking with someone about the scars left in our lives by relationships in which the person's "love" for us is conditional, where their approval is withdrawn or withheld whenever we displease them and we spend a lot of time trying to earn that love back. I think most of us have this experience at some point in our lives because as flawed human beings, our love is also flawed. To even come up with the idea of a love that never fails seems to me to simply be outside the realm of probability, given our own experiences.
So that brings me back to Pethuel's parents. I am consumed with curiosity to know what they experienced about God's open-heartedness and sincerity. Certainly some significant event or insight must have made them want to declare it to the world through their son's name. And certainly we, who celebrate God's open-heartedness demonstrated at Bethlehem, have reason to rejoice and be open-hearted and sincere ourselves. I want to be a Pethuel, too!
So the other day I was reading Keil and Delitzsch's introduction to the book of Joel and came across this little gem:
Joel is distinguished from other men of the same name, which occurs very frequently, by the epithet "son of Pethuel" (which means 'the open-heartedness or sincerity of God").
I got to thinking about that little parenthesis and it just blew me away. Most of us, if asked to describe God, would probably not come up with the term "open-hearted" right off the bat. Pethuel's parents (Joel's grandparents) must have had an experiential knowledge of God's open-heartedness toward them, so much so that they wanted to declare it to the world through their son's name.
Recently I was talking with someone about the scars left in our lives by relationships in which the person's "love" for us is conditional, where their approval is withdrawn or withheld whenever we displease them and we spend a lot of time trying to earn that love back. I think most of us have this experience at some point in our lives because as flawed human beings, our love is also flawed. To even come up with the idea of a love that never fails seems to me to simply be outside the realm of probability, given our own experiences.
So that brings me back to Pethuel's parents. I am consumed with curiosity to know what they experienced about God's open-heartedness and sincerity. Certainly some significant event or insight must have made them want to declare it to the world through their son's name. And certainly we, who celebrate God's open-heartedness demonstrated at Bethlehem, have reason to rejoice and be open-hearted and sincere ourselves. I want to be a Pethuel, too!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Lessons from a Pot
Shortly before we moved, our friends, the Bayless', gave us an enormous and very beautiful glazed ceramic pot. This pot is big enough for a tree and must weight close to 80 lbs. Google obligingly moved it out to California with all our other stuff and on arrival we manhandled it out onto our balcony. Even before the boxes were all unpacked I went in search of the perfect occupant for this pot. I knew I wanted a citrus tree of some kind and was delighted to find a lemon tree appropriately called a "Meyer lemon". I brought it home, poured in several bags of potting soil and planted my new little tree. After studying it for a few days it's shrub-like appearance began to bother me so I took matters into my own hands and pruned it, judiciously I hoped, but with some trepidation as I have never owned a citrus tree. Now it looked more like a tree anyway.
About a month later, as if to announce to the world that it found it's new pot to its liking, the tree began to sprout flower buds. Not just a few here and there but enormous clusters of blossoms at the end of every branch I hadn't lopped off. I, of course, watched this development with growing delight but one problem niggled at my brain. Pollination. There are myriad citrus trees in yards all around us that are heavy with fruit so I knew there had to be some pollinators out there. But would they find my diminutive little tree in the sea of concrete that makes up our complex? The balcony is only 6 feet wide with a 7 foot concrete wall around it. I figured if worse came to worst, I could pollinate the blossoms with a brush but hoped that some insect would find it, even though insects are rather rare out here ("no bugs!" is the mantra of everyone who moves here from the Midwest).
I was sitting at the kitchen table sewing the other day when something on the balcony caught my eye. A beautiful green hummingbird was flitting (is there any other word to describe a hummingbird's flight?) around the lemon tree! He worked the blossoms quickly, darting from branch to branch, then zoomed away over the wall. Aha, I thought - Mother Nature wins again! I wasn't sure if a hummingbird's visit would pollinate the blossoms but it was a hopeful sign.
Yesterday I was having lunch and reading a book out on the balcony, basking in the sunshine. Mentally I was miles away in rural England but a familiar noise began to penetrate my brain and brought me back to California. I looked at the lemon tree next to me and there was a BEE! Not just one but three beautiful bees, busily working every blossom on my tree. What a welcome sight! I looked at them closely and sure enough, they were plain old honeybees, Apis mellifera. Either there are feral colonies of bees out here or someone within a few miles of here has beehives. Each little bee was wearing his yellow pollen pantaloons and now I KNOW that my blossoms have been pollinated. What joy. I could have hugged them, blessed little bees that reminded me of home.
So even amidst the concrete and asphalt with only tiny, manicured yards and no wild spots where nature is allowed to run rampant, God's creatures prevail. I'm blessed to witness it and learning to keep my eyes open for the wonder of it. Thanks for the pot that is teaching me, Tom and Tee!
About a month later, as if to announce to the world that it found it's new pot to its liking, the tree began to sprout flower buds. Not just a few here and there but enormous clusters of blossoms at the end of every branch I hadn't lopped off. I, of course, watched this development with growing delight but one problem niggled at my brain. Pollination. There are myriad citrus trees in yards all around us that are heavy with fruit so I knew there had to be some pollinators out there. But would they find my diminutive little tree in the sea of concrete that makes up our complex? The balcony is only 6 feet wide with a 7 foot concrete wall around it. I figured if worse came to worst, I could pollinate the blossoms with a brush but hoped that some insect would find it, even though insects are rather rare out here ("no bugs!" is the mantra of everyone who moves here from the Midwest).
I was sitting at the kitchen table sewing the other day when something on the balcony caught my eye. A beautiful green hummingbird was flitting (is there any other word to describe a hummingbird's flight?) around the lemon tree! He worked the blossoms quickly, darting from branch to branch, then zoomed away over the wall. Aha, I thought - Mother Nature wins again! I wasn't sure if a hummingbird's visit would pollinate the blossoms but it was a hopeful sign.
Yesterday I was having lunch and reading a book out on the balcony, basking in the sunshine. Mentally I was miles away in rural England but a familiar noise began to penetrate my brain and brought me back to California. I looked at the lemon tree next to me and there was a BEE! Not just one but three beautiful bees, busily working every blossom on my tree. What a welcome sight! I looked at them closely and sure enough, they were plain old honeybees, Apis mellifera. Either there are feral colonies of bees out here or someone within a few miles of here has beehives. Each little bee was wearing his yellow pollen pantaloons and now I KNOW that my blossoms have been pollinated. What joy. I could have hugged them, blessed little bees that reminded me of home.
So even amidst the concrete and asphalt with only tiny, manicured yards and no wild spots where nature is allowed to run rampant, God's creatures prevail. I'm blessed to witness it and learning to keep my eyes open for the wonder of it. Thanks for the pot that is teaching me, Tom and Tee!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Still chuckling...
Pete and I have been blessed with the most delightful daughter-in-law. Not only is she beautiful and wise but extremely quick-witted. At the moment, she is also very pregnant.
I've been kind of concerned for her, since she works in downtown LA and takes the bus to work and home each day - not the most comfortable mode of transportation in her condition. I have volunteered to be her personal chauffeur for the duration, driving her to work and picking her up. I reminded her again of my offer the other night. She thought for a moment as if visualizing this and then said, "Yes, and I could sit in the back seat and ask you the meaning of life."
I laugh out loud every time I think about it!
I've been kind of concerned for her, since she works in downtown LA and takes the bus to work and home each day - not the most comfortable mode of transportation in her condition. I have volunteered to be her personal chauffeur for the duration, driving her to work and picking her up. I reminded her again of my offer the other night. She thought for a moment as if visualizing this and then said, "Yes, and I could sit in the back seat and ask you the meaning of life."
I laugh out loud every time I think about it!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Laugh Lines
I was talking to my daughter Rebecca a while back and relating to her an incident that Pete and I had found hysterically funny. After we had finished laughing together she said to me, "Mom, my favorite sound in the whole world is the sound of you and Dad laughing."
I thought of that frequently over the next few days. For most of our lives both Pete and I have not laughed enough. We are pretty intense people; sometimes, I'd have to admit, we are almost pathologically intense. Add to that a decade of life in Germany, a culture that isn't exactly known for it's lightheartedness and sense of humor, and well, you can see why our laugh lines were developmentally delayed. This kind of focus, though, has it's downside - that of losing some of the peripheral vision that brings balance to life.
The last decade has brought a lot of progress, though. Now I'd say we do laugh a lot. Oftentimes we find ourselves laughing over something before we ever get out of bed in the morning. One of the things age teaches you is that you have less control over things than you thought you did. Your well-intentioned intensity is pretty much useless in a lot of situations. And there's a ream of truth to the admonition to "don't worry, be happy". I'm proud to say that Pete has some of the happiest and most beautiful wrinkles around his eyes - those that come from smiling a LOT.
So from the funny video on Ocean Spray's website to the hilarious email a friend forwarded to me to the turkey-wrestling woman on the TV commercial we're finding our laughs all over the place these days. We're making up for lost time...
I thought of that frequently over the next few days. For most of our lives both Pete and I have not laughed enough. We are pretty intense people; sometimes, I'd have to admit, we are almost pathologically intense. Add to that a decade of life in Germany, a culture that isn't exactly known for it's lightheartedness and sense of humor, and well, you can see why our laugh lines were developmentally delayed. This kind of focus, though, has it's downside - that of losing some of the peripheral vision that brings balance to life.
The last decade has brought a lot of progress, though. Now I'd say we do laugh a lot. Oftentimes we find ourselves laughing over something before we ever get out of bed in the morning. One of the things age teaches you is that you have less control over things than you thought you did. Your well-intentioned intensity is pretty much useless in a lot of situations. And there's a ream of truth to the admonition to "don't worry, be happy". I'm proud to say that Pete has some of the happiest and most beautiful wrinkles around his eyes - those that come from smiling a LOT.
So from the funny video on Ocean Spray's website to the hilarious email a friend forwarded to me to the turkey-wrestling woman on the TV commercial we're finding our laughs all over the place these days. We're making up for lost time...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A 30 Cent Treasure
I was reading a book (Mrs. Miniver) the other day and the author (Jan Struthers) used the word "prestidigitation". It was fairly obvious from the context what the meaning was but I looked it up just to be sure ("sleight of hand"). There were a number of other words in the book that I had to look up and I can only conclude that the vocabulary level in pre-WWII England was much higher than in the US today.
I found the book in the used book room at the Alhambra library and it was marked $0.30. It is a first American edition (published 1939) and I was delighted to find it. I'd read references to this book many times but had never read it myself. It is an absolutely delightful book and one I'll re-read at regular intervals. By the way, if you've seen the movie - well, read the book.
One of the things I love about reading is finding a thought put into words in a way that resonates so deeply with my own experience but which I had never put into words or perhaps even conscious thought. It is so satisfying when someone else hits the nail on the head for you! Or when the author presents a picture that communicates an idea in the perfect way. Here's one from Mrs. Miniver:
As she walked past a cab rank in Pont Street Mrs. Miniver heard a very fat taxi-driver with a bottle nose saying to a very old taxi-driver with a rheumy eye: "They say it's all a question of your subconscious mind."
Enchanted, she put the incident into her pocket for Clem. It jostled, a bright pebble, against several others: she had had a rewarding day. And Clem, who had driven down to the country to lunch with a client, would be pretty certain to come back with some good stuff, too. This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day's pocketful of memories, this deft habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.
Anyone who is married knows that habit of tucking away little incidents to share. I'd just never put it into words or a picture like she did, that of pebbles stored in the pocket. That's what good wordcrafters do, I guess, put a frame around pictures of life so we remember them or perhaps even become conscious of them.
I found the book in the used book room at the Alhambra library and it was marked $0.30. It is a first American edition (published 1939) and I was delighted to find it. I'd read references to this book many times but had never read it myself. It is an absolutely delightful book and one I'll re-read at regular intervals. By the way, if you've seen the movie - well, read the book.
One of the things I love about reading is finding a thought put into words in a way that resonates so deeply with my own experience but which I had never put into words or perhaps even conscious thought. It is so satisfying when someone else hits the nail on the head for you! Or when the author presents a picture that communicates an idea in the perfect way. Here's one from Mrs. Miniver:
As she walked past a cab rank in Pont Street Mrs. Miniver heard a very fat taxi-driver with a bottle nose saying to a very old taxi-driver with a rheumy eye: "They say it's all a question of your subconscious mind."
Enchanted, she put the incident into her pocket for Clem. It jostled, a bright pebble, against several others: she had had a rewarding day. And Clem, who had driven down to the country to lunch with a client, would be pretty certain to come back with some good stuff, too. This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day's pocketful of memories, this deft habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.
Anyone who is married knows that habit of tucking away little incidents to share. I'd just never put it into words or a picture like she did, that of pebbles stored in the pocket. That's what good wordcrafters do, I guess, put a frame around pictures of life so we remember them or perhaps even become conscious of them.
Monday, October 29, 2007
LA Times
Five weeks in California. The days seem so long on the one hand but the weeks fly by - how can that be? The boxes are unpacked and stashed away and most moving-in projects are completed. Today I passed my California driver's test so I'm an official resident. That's the externals. The internal "moving in" isn't quite so measurable and has been harder than I expected. There can sometimes be a real disconnect between the "head" (thankfulness for all we've been blessed with) and the "heart" (feeling like life is suddenly formless and void without all the normal parameters and identity mirrors).
California factoid - distance measures are pretty meaningless here. We live only 4.9 miles from Joel and TeeTee's house. But consider that there are 29 stoplights along that stretch and the distance seems to grow exponentially, especially mornings and evenings. When looking up a destination on GoogleMaps it's not uncommon to see the travel time given as 20 minutes with "may take up to 1 hour and 30 minutes during peak travel times" in parentheses. I love their honesty!
It doesn't seem quite so strange to me now, though, to walk out of the house and see palm trees and mountains instead of corn fields and red barns. Yesterday the thermometer said 92 degrees so I'm trying to reconcile that with the end of October. The morning glories I planted in front of the house are sprouting like crazy and the lemon tree on the balcony is starting to bud and blossom. This is a whole new season of life but I'm not sure what defines "season" out here. Guess I'll just have to call it the "LA Times" of my life.
California factoid - distance measures are pretty meaningless here. We live only 4.9 miles from Joel and TeeTee's house. But consider that there are 29 stoplights along that stretch and the distance seems to grow exponentially, especially mornings and evenings. When looking up a destination on GoogleMaps it's not uncommon to see the travel time given as 20 minutes with "may take up to 1 hour and 30 minutes during peak travel times" in parentheses. I love their honesty!
It doesn't seem quite so strange to me now, though, to walk out of the house and see palm trees and mountains instead of corn fields and red barns. Yesterday the thermometer said 92 degrees so I'm trying to reconcile that with the end of October. The morning glories I planted in front of the house are sprouting like crazy and the lemon tree on the balcony is starting to bud and blossom. This is a whole new season of life but I'm not sure what defines "season" out here. Guess I'll just have to call it the "LA Times" of my life.
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