In the spring of 2012, my father’s home insurance company sent an inspector. As a result, the insurance company required two changes: part of the roof needed to be replaced and two trees needed to come down, one of them being the tree shown above.
The roof and the treeStanding tall though stripped of its gloryMay 2018 — the stump
“I am sorry,” sighed the tree.
I wish that I could
give you something…
But I have nothing left.
I am just an old stump.
I am sorry…”
Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
The flowers around (and on) the stump — August 2018
Well, an old stump is good for a garden.
Come, plant flowers and enjoy.
A purple coneflower gives glory to God by being a purple coneflower and a petunia gives glory to God by being a petunia.
There is a world of difference between a community and a crowd.
Thomas Merton, The Silent Life
People often comment on the size of our family — “That’s a crowd!” But the truth is that family can be the very best of community, united in love.
Family — the best community
A common purpose and working together create community, even when languages and religions are different.
Working together in community (Bosnia – 2017)
The small town of Greene, NY, is community. When the village flooded some years back, we watched neighbors tirelessly helping neighbors and it struck me that this is a special community.
This high school graduation may look like a crowd, but it’s a community.
And then there’s Cooperstown, whose population swells from 2,000 to 50-, 60-, 70-thousand on Baseball Hall of Fame Induction weekend. Of course not everyone is like this, but an awful lot of make-a-buck people, get-that-autograph people, and swoon-at-celebrity people take over the village.
The tip of a very large iceberg — Cooperstown draws crowds. 2004?
Along the lines of community, on Monday, I was reading a post from one of my favorite sites: The Rabbit Room.
It began with these words:
Recently, there have been a lot of conversations about how the Rabbit Room can best bring people together and support the work of creative communities across the world. We’re happy to tell you we’ve been listening, and today we are excited to lift the veil on the next frontier of the Rabbit Room experience.
How exciting, I thought.
As I read the next line, though, I became troubled.
We believe social media is the key to shaping the world into a better place.
Oh, golly, I thought. I guess we’re moving in different directions.
As they laid out their vision, I became more and more sure that this was a parting of the ways — until, that is, I came to the Grammar Police.
Our Grammar Police™ filter will automatically correct abbreviated textspeak and fill in you’re every missed Oxford comma, incorrect apostrophe and dangling modifier.
I looked at the “you’re” and the date, and started laughing. I had been April Fooled.
just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales air.
from The Wisdom of the Desert (collected sayings of 4th century ascetics, compiled and translated by Thomas Merton)
A swimming picture because it’s in swimming that we learn to be intentional about our breathing until it becomes so natural that we no longer have to think about it.
In Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton reflects on the writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Bernard spoke of three advents of Christ.
The first advent is “that in which He comes to seek and to save the lost.”
The third advent is “that in which He comes to takes us to Himself.”
The second advent, the one which I’ve been thinking on ever since reading about it, is the present advent which “is taking place at every moment of our own earthly life as wayfarers.”
Thomas Merton said, referring to the second advent, the one between the first and third,
I’m taking one more go at the April A to Z Challenge — this time using quotes from Thomas Merton and photographs from my stash.
What is the A to Z Challenge? Basically, it’s a challenge to post every day except Sundays during the month of April, and, since it usually comes out to 26 posts, using the alphabet as inspiration for each day.
I’m loving my year of reading Thomas Merton, so I’m going to let him speak for me.
Tune in April 1 for the first Merton quote, based on the letter A.
2019 is the year of Encouragement.
(I wrote about it here.)
2019 is the year of No Snark.
(I decided this after laboring over a response to an upset swim mom in December. She had been rude and unreasonable, so the first things I thought about saying were on that level. Then I went snarky. Then I wrote a reasoned response. I thought, I need to train myself so that the reasoned response comes more readily. So I’m setting snark aside.)
2019 is the year of Merton.
(Thomas Merton, that is. I realized that I’ve read essays and quotes but never a whole book of his. I’m going to start and keep going to see how many Merton books I can complete in one year.)
I finished my first Merton book today — Ishi Means Man. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry. I don’t think it’s one of his better known works.
Honestly, I thought I had grabbed Seeds of Contemplation. That sounded like a nice way to begin the year. But when I settled in my chair on the morning of January 1, I saw that I must have pulled off the shelf the book next to Seeds of Contemplation.
Chapter One — The Shoshoneans. Merton comes out with guns blazing. Literally. He goes back to the days of our country when the Native Americans were called Indians and considered a problem. We found a solution.
In putting the Indian under tutelage to our own supposedly superior generosity and intelligence, we are in fact defining our own inhumanity, our own insensitivity, our own blindness to human values. In effect, how is the Indian defined and hemmed in by the relationship we have imposed on him? His reservation existence… is as close to non-existence as we can get him without annihilating him altogether. I fully realize that this will arouse instant protest.The Indian is not confined to his reservation: he has another choice. He is free to raise himself up, to get out and improve his lot, to make himself human, and how? Why, of course, by joining us, by doing as we do, by manifesting business acumen and American know-how, by making money, and by being integrated into our affluent society. Very generous indeed.
Was Thomas Merton just snarky?
In another chapter, Merton tells the haunting story of Ishi, the last of the Mill Creek, or Yana, Indians in California. I always thought that genocide was something that happened other places — Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia. But we annihilated an entire tribe. I can’t read the story without feeling sick inside.
Honestly, one of the things that has bothered me about Germany’s holocaust is the question of what the people who lived on the other side of the death camps did. How can someone live on one side of a wall enjoying warmth and food and relative prosperity, while on the other side people are being slaughtered? I never want to be the idle bystander.
What would I have done if I lived in turn-of-the-twentieth century California?
What will I do in 2019?
Ishi Means Man seems an inauspicious beginning to 2019. A little foreboding.
But Seeds of Contemplation seems to be missing now from the shelf and I’m not sure where to go.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 