Nail's it #4

Continuing with Book Quotes I have liked ....
Anne Lamott wrote Help, Thanks, Wow a small book about prayer. The women at Journey Together in Stitches highly suggested it. At first attempt I could not even read it. I was at a season with MUCH anger towards God and did not want anyone else's perspective on prayer. A few months later I found it to be a good book off the beaten path of most "religious" books.

 In this passage Anne is talking about the death of her cat, Jeanie. I found it to contain truth for many situations.

    "I called to have the vet come by to put her down. I said, "Help. Also, I gave her a lot of morphine, what had to have been an overdose, which she just slept off. All I wanted was for her not to die miserable and afraid. That's all.
     It is nighttime now, and Jeanie passed an hour ago, miserable and afraid.
     When the vet came, we tried to gently get her out from under the futon, and she went crazy, and the next ten minutes were so awful that I won't describe them. Suffice it to say that she did not go gently into that good night. It broke my heart. But she had been suffering, and is suffering no more. She had an amazing run of love with my family. She was a proud little union cat, and also a model of queenly disdain with a bit of grudging affection for most people, and pure adoration for me.
     Was my prayer answered? Yes, although I didn't get what I'd hoped and prayed for, what I'd selected from the menu. Am I sick with anxiety, that I did  the wrong thing? Of course. Sad? Heartbroken. But Jeanie hit the lottery when she got me as her person for thirteen years, and the bad death was only ten minutes. So let me get back to you on this."

A friend recently had a difficult divorce in progress. Then a corner was turned and both husband and wife agreed to release the other. Before the divorce was finalized he was diagnosed with fatal illnesses and died rather rapidly. She was a cauldron of emotions. One neat item was the letter he had sent her on Mother's Day thanking her for being so good to his children when they were young and in need of love and tenderness. And for being such a good wife to him, even though he was never willing to participate in counseling or bettering their relationship. This letter helped her through some of the worst emotions.

I sent this passage to her. You see, he had "hit the lottery" when he got her for a wife. The bad parts at the end  were a few months long and the injuries to her from his adult children during the last days of his life and funeral were bloody and agonizing. But it was mere moments compared to their over 20 years together. Did it end the way she prayed and wanted? No. Has she been sick with anxiety that she did it wrong? Yes. Was she sad? Yes. In some ways heartbroken, yet in other ways she came to see that the marriage had died years ago. No, she did not get the marriage she had longed and prayed for, but her life is still on-going and God is at work.

Nail's It #3

In God's Hotel  Victoria Sweet writes about Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco prior to and during it's remodeling. She wrote researched her PhD on Hildegard's concept of viriditas. In the chapter entitled "The Miraculous Healing of Terry Becker" she writes,

Not only did her healing take a long time and need a long time, but time was the most important ingredient in her treatment. Premodern medicine knew about that special ingredient; it was called "tincture of time." Almost everything, it had observed, healed in time under the right conditions. And the most valuable thing that Terry received at the hospital was just that: enough - that is, the right amount of - time, the right amount of time being time without pressure and without end.

Hildegard referred to veriditas and Victoria tried to understand what she meant by it, "I discovered that premodern medicine did have a name for this magical act that the body performs. It was called the vis medicatrix naturae, usually translated as "the healing power of nature." But this is not a great translation. Vis is related to vim and vigor and means the force of life, of youth, of newness. Medicatrix is related to remedy and  medication. And naturae does not  mean nature as in "Mother Nature," but rather your nature, my nature, Terry Becker's nature. It means the nature of us to be ourselves. So the vis medicatrix naturae is really "the remedying force of your own nature to be itself," to turn back into itself when it has been wounded.

The idea goes all the way back to Hippocrates, who wrote that "what heals disease is nature [physis]." And what did he mean by physis? Physis comes from phuo, which means to grow, and signifies the observation that a seed grows into the only plant it can: a mustard seed into a mustard plant, a seed of wheat into a sheaf of wheat. By physis Hippocrates meant the "nature" of a being to grow into itself; and it was, in part, what Hildegard meant by viriditas.
But like anima and soiritus, physis and the healing power of nature were exiled from medicine more than on ehundred years ago. They were victims in the battle between two completely different conceptions of health, disease and healing - mechanism and vitalism.

Nails it Again!

I won't ad photos to this one as Wallace Stegner writes so clearly in Crossing To Safety I am certain you WILL see the pictures in your head!

Okay, one or two for those not familiar with the exact plants...

At the four corners we turn up a dusty secondary road. Dust has whitened the ferns along the roadside, gypsy moths have built their tents in the chokecherry bushes, the meadow on the left is yellow with goldenrod, ice-blue with asters, stalky with mullein, rough with young spruce. Everything taller than the grass is snagged with the white fluff of milkweed.  On the other side is a level hayfield, green from a second cutting. The woods at the far edge rise in a solid wall. In the yard of an empty farmhouse we sample apples off a gnarled tree. Worms in every one.  But Wizard {the horse} finds them refreshing, and blubbers cider as he walks.

Goldenrod

Asters

Mullein

Nails it!

Sometimes the authors I read just nail a description that I have never been able to put into words.

Try this from Nevada Barr in Liberty Falling:

Cloaked in darkness, the world was utterly changed. A supreme gentleness personified eastern summer nights that, living so long in the West, she'd forgotten. A kindly, dreamlike quality that the sharp dry air of Colorado could not emulate. Two floating sparks caught her attention and she laughed in delight. Ellis Island had fireflies. Fireflies put her in mind of Tinkerbell and she wanted to clap because she believed.

Butterfly Living

Those who have known me for some time realize how much I am fascinated with butterflies and their life cycle. Somewhere around 1982 my love for butterflies and my faith walk joined in this short poem.

"Butterfly living

Now that's for me!

Glory bound and

Incredibly free.

Made to be

A joy to Thee.

Strengthen me for

The wings of liberty."

We do need strength to use our liberty properly. Even Jesus said that of Himself He could do nothing, but only what the Father did through Him.

My constant prayer goes something like, "You have to help me, Lord. Left to myself I will always mess it up."

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Betty and Me and Bunny Supreme!

Little did we know

​that in some ways

We were at our peak performance

​as we posed

​in front of the antennae and towers. (2005)

The years broadcast

​age to our bodies

​Hair streaking with silver

​skin in folds only imagined upon

​our Grandmothers

​not ourselves ….

Then these outer shells

​suffered falls and cracks

We endured the best

Medical America had to offer

For recovery.

We assumed we would

recapture our body as it was

before the braces and slings

surgery, x-rays, crutches.

With PT finished

We were certain

we would enter on the scene

a restored, though older

energizer bunny

ready to pick up the tasks we dropped

resume previous routines

keep or even set the social rhythm.

Once, on a clear, lovely morning

we oohed aahed and marveled

at one balloon after another

noting but not studying

that huge bunny

with its drum and sunglasses.

Now, on the other side of

our respective physical traumas

Up jumps the bunny

with lessons galore

Did you ever notice

The Bun wears flip flops!

Surely she cannot run in those things

Nor do we run much

Anymore.

She wears sunglasses

Not necessarily to mimic Joe Cool

But more likely aware

that her eyes need protection.

And the drum!

Her lovely drum and drumsticks

She can only beat it

She can only shuffle

(For flip flops cannot march)

shuffle and thump that drum

but only as long as her power lasts.

Your laughter reminds me

of His joy.

Lord, use us as Your bunnies!

“In Him

we live

and move

and have our being.”

Oh, Holy Spirit,

Dunamis from on high

help us to beat Your drum

pace us in our flip flop shuffle

Restore to us the joy of our salvation

Give us the backbone of Jesus

Shield our eyes from the negative

Flop our ears in joy

as we listen for Your voice

​setting our pace

​directing our steps

​taking us where You desire

​wherever this bunny trial leads.

Fine tune our receivers

that Your directions come through

loud and clear.

Empower us for what ever You

want us to do next.

Help us beat our drums

and sing Your praises

even to our last breath!

This Bunny Shuffle could be great fun

with God in charge

and His holy power

sending us out and on our way.

Come on, sister,

Let’s start the parade!

​

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Alien?

So is it an alien life form? Or just a May Apple emerging in Spring? Sadly, last spring I related better to the alien life form.

 

Did I mention that given my druthers, I'd druther be a child in the woods?

 

 

 

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.