Ginkgo

It must have been in college, I think. I was reading an issue of National Geographic. The place I most often read those was at Grandmother's house.

Back in high school I harbored the dream of one day traveling the world, writing and photographing for the magazine. That was back when I actually printed pictures in a dark room and experienced photography as a real adventure. (Not that it isn't now, but it certainly doesn't have the same challenge appeal for me anymore. Or maybe it just fed my ego then, since it was much harder back then to take good pictures?) It was also before I realized how taxing continual travel is to me as a person.

Anyway, I used to read National Geographic passionately, and at some point in those years I came across an article on ginkgo trees.

As far as I know, I had never seen a ginkgo tree at that time in my life; small-town Searcy didn't have much beyond the native tress, I don't think.

So I read this article about these ancient trees, thought to be the most primitive tree still alive today, possibly around back with the dinosaurs. And I saw photos of shimmering gold, fan-shaped leaves, and I wondered if I would ever get to see such a tree.

So you can imagine my delight here in Memphis, where we have at least two ginkgos on our very street, one around the corner, a couple at church, four in a row on a street near our neighborhood, and four in a row at my new counseling office. I see ginkgos daily!

And they never disappoint.



They're beautiful even on the ground, scatterings of fallen gold.



Blue sky is their best backdrop.



Blue tablecloth is nice, too. I always have to bring a little bit of ginkgo home.

New York Public Library

Just for fun, and because it's late and I just remembered I needed to do this!

This is from our trip to New York a few years ago, when my chorus got to sing at Carnegie Hall. Both of us managed to forget to bring the camera, so I decided to do some sketches along the way, just so we had something to remember the trip by.

So, here is Drazen in front of the library. When I finished it, I realized that he looked rather lionish. Do you see it, too?

Tuesday for Tuesday

Even though I already wrote today, that was for yesterday. So I'll feel better if I post again just for today, being the recovering legalist that I am.

Tonight I'd like to share a quote that I came across recently while reading Kay Redfield Jamison's book Exuberance. She is quoting from Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, who wrote the line for the character Toad, who is nothing if not exuberant.

I hope it will mean as much to you as it has to me.

"O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"

Oops and Order

Oops!

Is it possible that at 7am here, it is still November 9 somewhere else?

I completely forgot to do anything here yesterday

I remember in college hearing Mike Cope say something in a sermon that has stuck with me these 20 or so years. Note that this is not the only thing he said that stayed with me--there were also more profound things.

In this case, I don't even remember what the point of the sermon was. I just remember that on his way to the point, he said something like, "You know how you have certain ways of doing things, and you have to do those things in a certain order? And if that order gets messed up somehow, it just doesn't feel right, and you feel kind of messed up the rest of the day?" He related it to a toothbrushing routine, as I recall.

What I remember vividly is that when I heard that, I thought, "No. No, I'm not like that. I have almost no order to the way I do things. I used to, but coming to college and living in the dorm changed everything, and I lost my abilitly to do things in order." I even began to wonder if something might be wrong with me!

Well, now I know that order is important in ways I couldn't have guessed back then. One of my main emphases in working with severely depressed people or people with bipolar disorder, is to help get order and routine back into their lives. There's even a name for this and a book about it.

Our memories lean heavily on order and routine. Our biorhythms depend on the steadfastness of light and dark, and eating at more or less the same times each 24-hour period.

And my life has not had much order or routine since January, when I lost my job with Christ Community. I've done what I can to create routine for myself, but without the pegs of similarity among days, I haven't been terribly successful. And when each day is different from the others, and there is not even a lot of similarity from week to week, it just makes it even harder when plans that I have been counting on and framing my thinking around, get changed at the last minute, as happened with three planned events yesterday.

So, congratulations to me for surviving this rather chaotic time period. I'm not gonna worry too much about missing a blog post.

And maybe another time I'll share about the things Mike Cope said that he may have actually hoped would stay in his listeners' minds!

A Beautiful Yesterday

Yesterday we went for a walk.


It was simply too splendid a day to stay inside too much.


I almost consider it sinful to stay in on a beautiful blue-sky day,


the sin of ingratitude being taken quite seriously by saints and poets alike,
and sin meaning to miss the mark--which certainly happens when a day or a moment like this goes unappreciated.


At any rate, yesterday was a day to be thankful,


and it was wonder-full,




and wonderful being with my husband,


and wonderful being in the woods,


and wonderful simply being.

Christmas in November

Celebrating the birthday of my grandmother, Mildred Evans Christmas, beautiful both to see and to know. Born into this world 93 years ago, she stayed here 87 years, and lives on forever in my heart and in those of many others.

And as beautiful as she was, I never saw this picture of her until after her death.

I celebrated her today by getting outside for a morning walk, drinking hot tea, reading from a good book, and sending someone else a birthday card. I've never looked much like her, but I want to be like her in ways that matter more.

NaBloPoMo

National Blog Posting Month entered my universe last year via my friend Lucy's blog, Box Elder , and I can assure you that a rich feast awaits you if you read her blog this month.

I can't promise the same here at Folk, Flocks, and Flowers.

That said, however, something just got into me and I think it would be good for me to try making myself write on a daily basis. I don't know what I'll write about, which makes this a great time to start, since the month of November has no theme for NaBloPoMo-ers to concern themselves with.

So I'm really doing this more for myself than for my readers, and I think it fair to warn you of that in advance. Not that I've ever set out to be a terribly audience-focused blogger. Not that I ever really even expected to have an audience beyond family and close friends.

Which brings to mind the strange fact that according to Blogger, my profile page has had circa 2,000 views (I guess at some point Blogger got tired of keeping specific numbers?) since I started the blog. While I realize that that number is nothing compared a bunch of blogs out there in the -osphere, it did kind of startle me when I saw it the other day.

Why on earth have anything close to 2,000 people looked at my profile page? Who are they? How did they come across it? Are they mostly people who know me? Or mostly people who don't? What did they hope to learn by looking at it? What did they think after looking at it?

The main feedback I get from anyone who has seen it and given feedback, is that my photo doesn't show me enough, so why did I choose that photo? Maybe I'll write about that one day this month.

And the (sad to me, in a way) truth is that I doubt anyone who has looked at it has given it much more than a moment's thought. And the reason I say this is that most people who are looking at blog profiles have probably looked at lots of blog profiles, and will probably look at many more. And the human mind can only manage a certain amount of information, which is what a blog profile gives you.

And that's the sad part to me, that in a way, a blog profile reduces real people to images and little lists on a "page" that is really not a page like a page in a yearbook, or a photo album, something you can pick up and touch and keep on your shelf and treasure.

No, by having a blog I have put myself out there in this impersonal space that I can't even begin to define or explain....this "page" is not touchable, or smellable as the pages of a book are. (I love the smell of old paper.) It's just a visual image that appears on a screen and disppears with the click of a mouse. (Which is not really a mouse at all, either.)

But for better or for worse, I'm out there, and now I'm making this daily commitment, and maybe on December 5 I will have reached some amazing insight because of it--or maybe I'll just be relieved to write that final daily post! We'll see.

In any case, I'm thankful to those of you who have told me that sometimes what I write strikes a chord, or even makes a difference. When I started this blog, I so did not want it become an exercise in vanity. If it ever becomes that, my intention is to end it.

Until then, here's to sending thoughts into intangible space for unknown readers!

C.S. Lewis weighs in

"Don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion," he wrote in A Grief Observed, "or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

(I just read this in an article on life after death and had to share it.)

A Piedi Nudi 3

In case anyone is still wondering, a piedi nudi is simply Italian for barefoot. The "a" works like the French "a" in a la mode, and the rest is obvious, I suppose.

And in case you are still wondering, I have been walking barefoot because I want to be able to run again, and it seems doing it barefoot is getting me there.

Thanks to a reader and friend who will remain anonymous unless he chooses to identify himself, my eyes have been opened to a whole world of people who run barefoot out there, even in civilized America. And to a whole body of research that explains why you are much less likely to be injured when walking/running barefoot as opposed to wearing athletic shoes.

Shortly after college, I hyperextended my left knee while playing a crazy kids' game with a bunch of grown-ups. Being the tough little tomboy I was, even at that age, I stoically went back into the game and promptly hyperextended it again. I couldn't walk after that, had to use crutches for a while. I remember telling the doctor, "Well, I know this sounds crazy, but it felt like my knee went backwards. But of course knees can't do that, so I don't really know what I did to it."

And he said, "Well, that's exactly what happened."

Anyway, since then, every time I've tried to run, and even when I walk long distances, my knee ends up hurting a lot. A whole lot. I tried doing the thigh-strengthening exercises recommened, and that surely didn't hurt me. But it also didn't do much to keep my knee from hurting.

So I was resigned to a life of no more running.

And this was very sad to me. I used to love running. I mostly loved sprints and running hurdles, and I often did those barefoot when I was in elementary and junior high school. Later I got into longer runs, and enjoyed it up to about 3 miles. After that, not really. But running was part of my life, part of me, and I never thought a day would come when I wouldn't be able to run if I wanted to.

So, learning that my friend was running barefoot after a knee injury was enough to make me want to try it.

And that's why I've been walking barefoot in the park. It's wonderful in and of itself, for the feel of soft moss underfoot and the joy of dew in the morning, the ooze of mud between the toes, which I hadn't felt for years. It's kind of like getting a foot massage each time I go out.

And on top of that, I've had no knee pain whatsoever. I'm meeting interesting (interested) people. I can feel my legs getting stronger.

And the other day, I ran over half a mile for the first time in years.

La vita e' bella.

Open Wounds

I'm not putting a photo on this post because I could hardly stand to look at the photos I found of open wounds. I admire doctors and nurses who are able to work with skin and blood and wounds. I can do it when necessary, but unless a real person is involved, I don't do well seeing images.

I dedicate this post to the client I saw today who has had several miscarriages in a short time (and has no living child), who is angry, who wakes with nightmares every night since the most recent miscarriage, who fears she will never have children, and who gets told all the stupid things people say, "Everything happens for a reason," "God wouldn't let it happen to you if he didn't think you could handle it," "It'll all be okay and you'll see them in heaven."

People don't mean to say stupid things, as I told her, but that doesn't mean their words don't hurt deeply. I realize that some people mean well and are probably just not good with words. And some people have not suffered great pain. Others have and are afraid of it, and so are afraid to enter into another's pain. Some people, of course, just don't care. Some are too hung up on their own fear of not knowing what to say, so they resort to cliches rather than just listening and saying, "I hear you. I'm with you."

What strikes me most, however, from my own experience of people trying to address my pain, as well as what I hear from clients, is that people just don't want to accept pain and suffering. They want it to be over, they want to pretend it isn't as bad as it is. Some Christians are worse about it than those who don't believe. They seem to think faith means finding a way to make everything okay right now.

Sometimes the only thing I have to offer clients is the willingness to hear their pain and to feel the depth of it with them, to acknowledge that it is truly real, that it matters, that it may last a long time or even a lifetime, and that it is not to be glossed over. And at times it's clear that that is the main thing they need. I wish they didn't have to pay money to find someone who can do that, but at least I can offer it.

In our culture of instant makeovers, artificial white smiles, Hollywood happy endings, and sappy greeting cards, I was thankful to find this on a blog I was looking at:

Too often Christian theology makes light of suffering by immediately jumping to the future glory, or by looking for the ‘greater good’ that can be seen in the present. The problem of suffering remains a problem, and it must remain a problem. It is inevitable and indiscriminate, it disturbs our existence, invades our peace and destroys hopes. What is needed is a worldview that doesn’t pretend this isn’t the case. Rather, we need a worldview that acknowledges the inevitability of suffering and darkness.

God and suffering belong together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, common question… It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound. (Moltmann: 1981, 49)

from the blog All Things New:
http://smgallthingsnew.wordpress.com/tag/eschatology/