Whoever invented wild garlic is an absolute genius! Greens (with their antioxidants, chlorophyll, fiber, all the good things that green leafy vegetables contain) plus the pungent, spicy garlic flavor! Yum 😋
Their season is relatively short but it is NOW! I have been enjoying wild garlic spiciness in my salads, soups, sauteed vegetables, grilled sandwiches, etc. So yummy. I feel like God created it specifically for me.
I was so thankful when a friend told me she had some wild garlic plants growing in her walkways that I could dig up to bring to my garden. Our workers last summer completely mauled my wild garlic patch. Remember my despair over that?
Now I’ve got some to replace it, if I can only put it in the ground…
Smoothie containing dandelion flowers and garden greens (no wild garlic, though)
I’m also super pumped about my (new to me) Vitamix. I have lived nearly half a century on this planet, more than 20 years in Europe now, waiting patiently to get a European voltage Vitamix. It finally happened! Ah, finally I can make smooth smoothies… Today’s smoothie featured some dandelion flowers and rocket/arugula from our garden and was a treat!
A person’s body is ·one thing [a unity; one], but it has many parts. Though there are many parts to a body, all those parts make only one body. Christ is like that also.
1 Corinthians 12:12 EXB
I was curious where the idea of Christians as the army of the Lord came from, so I did some Bible searches, comparing the prevalence of the phrase “body of Christ” (and similar) to army of the Lord (or anything of the like). The only reference I could find in the new testament, that fit well as an army of the Lord, was the angels singing praises after the birth of Christ. There are certainly angel armies in the old testament, too. But these are groups of angels, not humans!
The winner by far for metaphor of what the church should be, based on number of references, is the bodyofChrist.
A body moves in coordination, not in lockstep. I don’t know where the idea came from that the church is an army and when someone decrees that all should look one way or another, dress one way or another, vote one way or another, everyone should fall in line.
This expectation of uniformity is something that I have encountered in more than one place. And frequently, I grant you, not in the church. But now I am challenging the lockstep that I am seeing in too many “Christian” circles. (Happy to see Beth Moore call out misogyny and separate herself from the systems that are propagating it, in the name of Christ, no less!)
Certainly I have also been in church situations, even in recent years, where I felt as though I didn’t measure up because I was not the same in some crucial way to the example I was being set, the person who was trying to teach me. I don’t know if this feeling of inferiority was merely from my own filter or my way of understanding based and my past experience. Indeed, I was raised in a church where I was expected to fall in line, everyone in uniformity. Girls were expected to wear their hair in braids, to wear dresses. Ladies were expected to wear their hair in buns and also to wear dresses. There were many other rules as well. Music was a sin, cameras were a sin, TVs and movies were a sin, sports were a sin, hanging pictures on the wall was a sin, and the list goes on.
Even flowers were sinful (“vanity”). Cut flowers in your home… Decades later, I am still shaking off the lie that flowers are somehow extraneous
(Oooh, this device I’m working on would have been such a sin! It contains not only a camera, but also music, movies and God only knows what else. It is true that this device can be used for evil. But I am choosing to use it to communicate God’s thoughts and ideas to you. Isn’t that amazing?)
The older I get, the more I realise that the one who demands uniformity is the enemy of our souls, the one who attacks what God has created us to be.
My daughter has been reading the biographies of some beautiful, strong, accomplished ballerinas who were told to to either lighten their skin and/or their weight, to lose weight, to slim down. Hmmm, sadly familiar. She herself discovered this lie in the dance industry, as she was about to audition for the conservatory and began to be given unwanted dietary advice, even told to slim down “like the others”. When I responded with this information, I was told to find another dance school. Wow! Well, that is clearly for the best. We complied. I will not allow her to become fodder for the eating disorder industry. And I myself believed far too many lies for far too many years. If only I had had access to that video when I was in my teens or twenties… But I didn’t.
I am thankful that my daughter has good role models (like Misty Copeland) to follow, giving her confidence to follow her dreams in spite of the attacks of the evil one.
What role model does the body of Christ have? The good news is that we have the Spirit of God to give us life and direction.
Recently, I was discussing with a friend how sad it is that the church remains fractured. We are a bunch of individual churches with a small letter c. But we couldbe the capital c Church if we were to co-ordinate our efforts, if each were willing to humble themselves and work together in a God honouring way.
What if we brought together the various churches to work in unity? Note that unity is not the same as uniformity. Unity would be accomplished if each did that which they do well for the service of the others. So those who have the gift of music could serve those who have the gift of languages. those who have the gift of teaching and preaching would serve those who have the gift of children’s work and vice versa.
I long for the day that the church is united, working together as a body, not competing with each other for territory, trying to copy each other when they are jealous of the influence that some have…
They’ve gotten a bad rap but they are good to eat, good for your health!
I’m in the midst of a border battle with my neighbor. We have been revisiting this for years, ever since he moved in. And honestly, the battle over this particular border is even older than that, but that’s just a problem he inherited. Mind you, I told them when they moved in, so it should not come as a surprise that this is a sore point. My expectation was that they would respect our property, but sadly this is not the case.
Anyway, I am not going to air that laundry here but I wanted to share an epiphany and analogy that came from that ugly battle, specifically from the emotions I am learning to experience and live with, instead of quashing and denying. I am actually learning that it doesn’t work to use unhealthy ways of dealing with”ugly” emotions (the ones like anger, jealousy, …) .
Wildflowers: violets
If you try to deny or minimize emotions, you only drive them deeper into your thought patterns (into the way your subconscious processes certain situations). Imagine cutting off the top of a plant that only increases when pruned. (Sage plants, I’m looking at you!) Like the Hydra, from Greek mythology, for each head you cut off, two more grow. I need to learn to sit with the ugly emotion, acknowledge it, befriend it and then use the knowledge I gain from its existence to make the necessary changes in my own life, but also in my thought patterns.
I sat with some really ugly emotions this past week, anger, frustration, hopelessness, jealousy and the like. I asked why I was being triggered so badly. I’m glad to that there are answers to my questions. I am thankful for the friends and sisters who sat with me through these difficult thoughts. Although, not convinced I am all the way through the storm, I am nevertheless thankful for the place I now am. I’m grateful for the view from here.
The epiphany I mentioned earlier was that, if I want to, I can grow my wholegarden full of dandelions and stinging nettles (assuming, of course, my husband were to agree, but that is another story entirely). It is my garden and still worthy of respect and not to be trampled by the pathetic souls who can’t see the value in those plants. I can grow it chock full of wildflowers or whatever I want.
It’s my garden and worthy of respect, not to be trampled by people or pooped in my animals, regardless of who disagrees with my gardening philosophy.
Another wildflower that grows completely voluntarily. I don’t know what benefits this one confers, other than providing food for bees and butterflies, perhaps?
To me, that was a groundbreaking epiphany (pardon the pun). I have grown up equating what I do, and how well I do it, with my worth. (I trust I’m not alone here?) So when my neighbor sneered “What flowers?” at my request that he and his workers watch out for the flowers while they are working, my reaction (supertriggered) was to loudly (apparently too loudly for his sensibilities, since he told me to calm down) begin listing the roses and bulbs that they were disturbing. Roses and bulbs that might grow if he’d stop trampling and spraying herbicide on them.
But the material point is that he should (in an ideal world, where he was a respectful individual, even respectful towards female foreigners) respect my property, regardless of what I have growing here. And when I realized that, the analogy to my own existence began to sink even deeper.
I have always identified more with wildflowers than with the high maintenance varieties that take constant care, watering, feeding, primping and pruning to look just so. (If you know me, in real life, this might make you smile.) But this characteristic of mine is how I can weather this pandemic — the closing of hair, nail and other salons with barely a notice. (I wouldn’t mind a trip to the spa, but my bathtub is pretty good, too.)
Candle lit baths hit the spot (spa-t, that is, for those of you who like my puns)
As I mentioned earlier, some of the plants listed by many people as the most noxious weeds, including dandelions and stinging nettles, have amazing properties that can be harnessed for good.
Stinging nettles are actually a valuable plant for their nutritional density. They make a yummy tea that can help you deal with seasonal allergies in a natural way. They enrich the soil as they grow, as does clover. We plan to replace most, if not all, of our grass with more resilient, useful and lower maintenance clover, eventually.
More wildflowers. What are these called? What are they good for, besides looking pretty?
Dandelions are a very controversial plant at our house. Having grown up with the ideal of a perfect green lawn of grass, completely free of dandelions, lots of people are strongly opposed to allowing anyone to grow these cheerful, butterfly and bee feeding salad greens, which have powerful anti-cancer properties. It seems only children see the beauty in them..
Then he said, “I tell you the truth, you must ·change [or turn from your sins; convert; turn] and become like little children. Otherwise, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:3 EXB
Eating dandelion flowers can also help with seasonal allergies. If you avoid the green bits and only get the yellow and white flower petals, you should notice they are sweet and not bitter. Bitterness comes from the green around the flower. The leaves are bitter, but slightly less so when harvested young. The bitterness is good for your liver, but obviously you don’t want to overdo that.
Do you feel like this grape hyacinth? Growing up between the cracks of the sidewalk. You’d really like to bloom, but you don’t know when someone is going to step on you, next?
This whole fiasco left me wondering if I’m alone here or if there are others who feel unnoticed, unappreciated, unloved and unheard, like a field full of gorgeous wildflowers, stinging nettles and dandelions, that is overflowing with treasure and abundance that doesn’t meet with societies criteria for being worthwhile and valuable.
Anyone?
Rainbow: beautiful reassurance from God that everything is going to be alright
Yes, the line from the kids’ game went through my head… Because God uses everything, even the seemingly silly and trivial, to communicate with us, if we listen!
I was spending a few minutes in that secret, quiet place (which Lana reminded me of) this morning. I wasn’t necessarily feeling distant from God, but okay, a little meh. Yes, I was nice to just be for a minute, before beginning my day full of doing. That was when I heard the line from the game:
“Darling, if you love me won’t you please, please smile!”
It resonated with something Lana said when we were in Happy Baby this morning, something about adding a smile, so I went along with it. As I complied, coaxing my mouth to smile, my eyes to join in, I felt God’s favor (joy, enjoyment, pleasure…) break forth and wash over me like warmth of the sun breaking through the clouds. Instantly, all the fruit of the spirit melded together in my brain. And in that moment, I knew (yāḏaʿ*) that when our feelings resonate with God’s, we sense his nearness.
We settle for less than God’s best when we accept as normal those times when God feels distant.
It is with certainty I say that we settle for less than God’s best when we accept, as simply to-be-expected, those times when it feels like God is far away from us.
To bring our awareness of God nearer, we need to find those places where we are out of step with his Holy Spirit and adjust ourselves in the areas of: love, joy, peace, patience,…
22 But the ·Spirit produces the fruit of [fruit of the Spirit is] love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, ·faithfulness [or faith], 23 gentleness, self-control. ·There is no law that says these things are wrong [or No law can oppose such things].
Galatians 5:-22-23 EXB
The first step is to go to the still, quiet place. To calm ourselves to hear his voice. And then to listen where he shows us we are out of synch with the Holy Spirit.
And as we draw near to God in our intention and attention, God draws near to us: Come near to God, and God will come near to you.
Come near to God, and God will come near to you. You sinners, ·clean sin out of your lives [ cleanse/purify your hands; a metaphor for cleaning up your behavior]. ·You who are trying to follow God and the world at the same time [ You double-minded ones], ·make your thinking pure [purify your hearts; a metaphor for cleaning up your interior life].
James 4:8 EXB
Wow! The rest of that verse is pretty harsh. Good thing it’s God’s job to do the heavy lifting in cleaning up our lives. We need to cooperate, but we are not the primary drivers of it. Whew!! Thank God!
It’s the reason I’m awake blogging in the middle of the night. It’s also the topic of this post…
I know I’m sensitive to caffeine, probably have been since before I was born… The accusations of being hyperactive in utero are most likely due to this caffeine sensitivity. I was apparently so active that the doctor was sure I was as boy. Well, surprise, surprise! I’m “just” a girl, but a super sensitive one, who was mainlined caffeine by way of the placenta for 8-1/2 months, so…
Anyway, I digress. I have become increasingly aware of the negative effects of caffeine on my own health; I had gradually come clean of caffeine, up until about a month ago (with only occasional falling off the wagon with a bit of chocolate or some green tea; which would promptly remind me why I was off caffeine).
Well, recently I began a new medicine which contains green tea. I’d hoped that it would contain the green tea polyphenols without the caffeine, but I’m guessing I’ve only deluded myself, since it (or something) has negatively affected my sleep patterns ever since.
I most likely need to detox again. And, I suspect, take a sabbatical from blogging, as I realize that much of what seemed urgent and pressing might actually be caffeine-induced anxiety.
The voice of caffeine says “Do it now!” And I have to actively counter that with “Haste makes waste”!
I’ve been rather cynical toward those preachers especially who rely on caffeine as their inspiration to be charismatic speakers. I once wrote: “Don’t confuse caffeine induced frenzy with the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit! (Enthusiasm is an infusion of the Spirit of God, caffeine is merely a chemical that people use, abuse, over use, nowadays!)” after listening to yet another Red Bull inspired sermon. (People, it says “bull” right in the name. Why do you trust it to give you words from God?)
I have found myself critical of Beth Moore for (among other things), her obvious, stated fondness for and addiction to coffee, so I had quit listening to her teaching years ago. But yesterday, as I was mentally excusing her for this proudly announced addiction, I realized that if I put meth, crack, pot or any other drug in place of coffee into my excuse, it was blatantly blasphemous!!
“I guess that’s how she is relevant (in our caffeine addicted society). If God is involved in making sure she is adequately supplied with coffee, then that is her story, so I have no business criticizing it.” Try that with any other recreational drug, or even the legal alcohol (in place of “coffee”), it sounds blasphemous to me.
So, I won’t try excusing her, nor begin listening to her again, but I do want to say I’m thankful she is speaking out against sexism and misogyny, because that is definitely not Christlike behavior. Jesus was always loving toward the women he met. He included them and treated them as first class citizens, not some afterthought. They were the first ones to see him resurrected, etc.
Jesus loves not only the little children, but also the women. Those who do not love and respect women need to reconsider their affiliation with Christ.
Anyway, my various thoughts on topics, ranging from vaccine assumptions to the body of Christ, which feel very urgent due to my caffeinated wakefulness, will be published after I have had some rest and can discern what is really, truly urgent and write it clearly.
Tot dan!
I didn’t photograph the candles as I wrote at 5 am, but this amaryllis is about equally beautiful!
Even now, I almost clicked on my TooGoodToGo app instead of the WordPress app. There are some blog posts needing to be written but I am avoiding writing them…
Triaging the veggies I already have, instead of collecting yet another box from TooGoodToGo. Some of these are from my garden, others from previous TooGoodToGo boxes.
There are stinky vegetables; there are super stinky vegetables; and then there are rotting cruciferous vegetables.
I challenge you to find something as stinky as cauliflower that is not fresh 😜
I cleared the old veggies out to the barn several days ago while my cleaning help was here, and have been avoiding dealing with them. I would rather buy a new TooGoodToGo box instead of facing these old veggies. But today, with none of my TooGoodToGo favorites available to me, I faced up to this box, triaging and roasting what I could salvage.
It’s such a picture for life. Those of us prone to escapism would rather throw out the old and get something new.
But there is also something inherent to my nature that is opposed to that.
“Thou shalt not waste” might be the 11th commandment, as far as I am concerned. I was into reduce, reuse, recycle long before it was hip. More than 45 years ago I declared I would be a garbage collector when I grow up, based on the premise that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Yup, I had it all figured out in my preschool years. I sure did! But I never did achieve that goal, although I do buy a lot second hand…
“Thou shalt not waste” might be the 11th commandment, as far as I am concerned
More recently, I am realizing that I already have a lot of things which need to be used and appreciated, instead of looking for more things. In a parallel vein, I’ve got several word pictures and thoughts to share and blog about, so let’s see what I can get written the next days…
It kind of violates the spirit of TooGoodToGo if I buy the boxes to put directly into my compost pile. (Although Stacey Murphy recommends two inches of compost over the whole garden each year. That’s a LOT, so maybe I do need more of the bio veggie boxes dumped directly into my compost…??)
Well, the roasted vegetables taste good. That means I was not too late with those. Hopefully the next blog posts are timely and not too late, because nothing stinks quite like last week’s cauliflower!!
I will go gently with my spirit that is afraid to write the things…
And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony. And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.
It was a gray, rainy day So I wore gray And painted Pondering what it is that makes gray.
Not so unlike life, painting that is… When you moosh together the black of fear and sadness with the red of anger….
(Ooops! Anger?? Better blend that in quickly before anyone sees!)
Then maybe mix in some yellow of excitement or orange of joy A little green for contentment (and jealousy?) or purple of serenity Calm, melancholic blue is also accepted in measured amounts…
However, when you smoosh them all together, blending until they are indistinguishable from each other, because it’s not okay to be anything other than “fine,” the colors lose their distinction and become muddy brown and gray.
The point is, if you deny the ‘bad’ (negative) emotions, you mess up the color of the ‘good’ (socially acceptable) ones, too.
And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry,
Ephesians 4:26
Anger, in and of itself, is not evil. It is a tool to be used to fuel change. It is a warning light for injustice. Please, please, please don’t deny it or demonize it! There is a reason red signifies love and passion, as well as the anger I mentioned earlier.
Emotions are a gift from a God who shares them, and uses them as a tool to connect more deeply with people.
Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it.
Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows where our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we’ve been and lets us know when we haven’t liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.
Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.
Also like the fog It will take effort to shine truth To shine God word And my infinite value Into this place
But it’s worth it.
Otherwise today is liable to be very gray
Lacking in direction Like a ship lost in the fog Looking for its path but seeing only the gray closed in around it And helpless until something breaks through
God has already broken through I do not need to wait I only need to find the light Of the truth God’s already given me And shine it out.
I was filling a jar with dried apricots at a bulk shop when I realized I have permission to pick the soft, mooshy ones that I prefer. Some combination of “less is more” and “haste makes waste” met in my brain to form the instruction “pay attention”. By not paying attention, I was taking the drier ones, too, that I would then choke down to get to the good ones. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration because dried apricots are a treat whether soft and scrumptious or a bit more chewy, but I’d definitely enjoy the soft ones more than the hard ones.
It was at that moment I realized that I could apply “Holy noticing” in order to buy only the apricots I wanted. All I needed to do was pay attention, as my little voice admonished me. And then I could even buy less of them. (Better for the budget and my waistline!)
It reminded me of a different time I was shopping and buying a case of tissue boxes. As I stood at the display, deciding whether or not it was okay to reshuffle the boxes from one case to another, I reshuffled a few but didn’t completely redo the case exactly to my liking. At the register, I noticed the woman in line ahead of me had several of the bleak gray boxes, the very ones I had rejected and none of the beautiful colorful ones I’d chosen. I think I just stared at first but then I realized we all have different preferences. And that is perfectly okay!
When buying flowers, of course you choose the color and variety that you like. Why would it be different with apricots, for instance?
It’s okay to express what you want. Believe it or not. You don’t have to take what’s left or go with what everyone else wants to do. Your thoughts matter. Your preferences matter.
In fact, if you are blase, you might end up with someone as indifferent as you are and go round and round with the classic “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Sometimes the rejects are positively glorious, however. Look at the amaryllis from my TooGoodToGo plant order!!! I tried a new garden/flower shop 😊
Yesterday, as I was pruning gooseberry plants, I clipped one branch so long it was dipping into the earth. As I tried tidying away the clipping, I realized it was rooted in the ground. A baby gooseberry plant!
I was rewarded for paying attention, with a baby gooseberry plant!
It’s a baby gooseberry plant!
In fact, I now have a lot of baby raspberry plants and strawberry plants that need new homes. Please let me know if you want any…
I am experimenting with propagating more currant, gooseberry, blackberry and tayberry/loganberry as well, but they are in the early stages, so not ready for new homes, unless you want to try your hand at caring for the cuttings better than I am (which, honestly, won’t be difficult, considering my near complete neglect of them).
Can not identify yet if they are loganberry or tayberry cuttings. But they are just chilling in this planter. (Pun totally intended with our current weather conditions.)Some cuttings, might be baby plants in the making… or compost. Time will tell!!I leave you, for today, with this visual about the difference it makes when you take a moment to focus on what is happening around you, versus going through life at full throttle. My camera isn’t spectacular (and I’m probably still moving too fast) but you can see the difference that taking just a split second longer makes.
elämänpuun lehti 