The Sylvr Pen

I come down to replenish the fire. The library’s warmth reaches out to greet me.

There are no spare logs. I will need some later.

So I step out onto the front porch, just to fetch a log or two from the woodbox there.

The silence reaches out and greets me, and I am charmed.

So still.

So chill. But I am wearing a snuggly sweater, and knee socks below my skirt.

“Seize the opportunity!” says my soul.

And so I sit. And the brook across the road, beyond the veil of arborvitae hedge, gurgles and bubbles, fountain-like, rare sound. It usually either rushes, hard and loud, banging rocks together, or trickles barely heard.

As I welcomed the room’s warmth behind me, now I welcome the penetrating cool of this outdoor air. But in both cases what I’m really welcoming most is the surprising stillness…

…enough even to put up with the mosquito circling now. I pull the scarf from my shoulders over my head and tight around my ears, hunch up my mock neck higher, and listen to passing geese in flight breaking the quiet a moment, then gone. Then I am returned to hearing just that melody of tiny cascades over pebbles and rocks.

The geese have gathered in community and return with increased honking, while the brook sound of rocks and water seems to morph into the sound of footsteps.

They are footsteps!

I stand and step forward myself and then I see them: two deer, two sizes, most likely mother and near-grown fawn—entering the meadow just beyond me to my left.

They see me. But they simply slip behind a pine for a sense of privacy. Back in my porch seat I can glimpse them if I like, now and then, between the leaves and branches.

But we ignore each other. They graze in peace. And so do I.

“As the deer…”

***

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Writing on the prompt word “True” for…  

TRUE? What’s True?

In the last ten years of my life, especially in the last five, I have been utterly astounded, rocked, knocked to the ground stunned, over how many things and people (really people in all cases, in the final analysis) have proved false that I had thought true.

Close to my life, many were. People of God, or so I thought. People I thought so highly of… People in family, people in church, organizations I’d thought I could trust… on and on. And I’d really thought I was pretty discerning, not easily duped.

I think of the scripture in the words of the prophet who says the best of them is like a thornbush… (Micah 7:2-4)

One day when I had trouble with a skilled debater’s assault upon my beliefs, upon the verity of the very word of God (a person whose occupation supposedly was upholding that verity), Husband sat me down across from him and said, “Now, tell me what you know.”

My start was slow, even begrudging. I said I didn’t know what I knew. I didn’t know if I knew anything.

He just repeated his question.

“Well…” I said, after a while, “I KNOW that there’s a Creator. I know all this didn’t just make itself.”

“What else do you know?” he queried.

Silence.

And then I began to recall the uncanny deliverances in my life and the timing of benevolences and the weirdness of coincidences in answer to prayers…

And I knew He had been there, heard, and helped.

And I knew His word had given me right guidance, and comfort, and strength…

And I knew…

I knew what was true.

I knew He was true!

He’s never proved false. “Slow” sometimes according to my impatience, but never false.

Not always responding with the answer I wanted, but always with my ultimate best.

Always true.

I know that’s true.

 Today it’s peaches.

Baskets of them. Beautiful blushing orbs of luscious juiciness.

Which won’t last long in their natural state.

Interesting, how real food, fresh from the veggie patch or orchard doesn’t have the shelf life of fake food full of additives and preservatives. God must have made it spoilable for a reason. Something to ponder…

Meanwhile, something must be done with these delights.

Or they’ll soon be no delight.

God appoints us stewards of our blessings, and making sensible use of them is part of that stewardship.

I come downstairs with these thoughts in my head, and there’s his English muffin, spread with peach jam, made with his own hands (we could open a business called “Jim’s Jams,” if we wanted to—and had the time!), and I think that would make a lovely and appropriate breakfast.

Ah, a sweet blessing.

There is a line, however (so easy to cross), even with sweet blessings, between sensible and excessive.

Extent is key. How much, how many, how far, in how deep?

Not just with peaches. With everything in life.

On life’s great teeter-totter, it’s quite a feat to stay balanced.

I’d like to place here a photo of a playground see-saw. But I haven’t time to go searching parks—or even photo buckets. (These baskets of bounty…)

The image in my mind really isn’t just of an empty see-saw, anyhow. It’s a memory picture from childhood of those clever boys who could jump up on the contraption and, straddling it, one foot on each side of the fulcrum, bring the board to level and hold it there.

I never envisioned myself as able to do that. Never tried. And it seems to me that keeping balance in the everyday stuff, with the great crowding conglomeration of things and experiences and seeming demands on our time and attention, poses even more of a challenge.

I teeter, then totter, and then often tumble.

And now… In today’s world there’s so much more crying for our attention than peaches.

You can teeter with too much tweeting on Twitter, and totter with too much time on You Tube. You can get bogged down in blogging, in comments and communities and all kinds of cyber obligations, that never existed two decades ago.

And we felt overloaded even then!

What’s a woman to do?

Something, definitely! Not just let it all pull you around by what screams the loudest or nags the longest or tyrannizes with the greatest urgency. Otherwise life becomes but a constant emergency of running to put out fires hither and yon, and never rising above the madness.

And where in that crazy chase is room for love—for God or fellow man?

Pushed right off the teeter-totter long ago, most likely, crashing to the ground.

It’s hard to live love while so hampered and harried.

This bears more thought. This bears more prayer. This requires stopping to get better balance on life’s see saw before playing teeter-totter again.

Which I plan to do…

As soon as I get finished with these peaches. And with… (uh-oh).

(Oh, thank God for sweet Sabbath!)

***

{This is PART FOUR in a series on LIVING LOVE. PART ONE is here , PART TWO is here, and PART THREE is here.}

{PART THREE in a series on LIVING LOVE. (Though it doesn’t seem to fit, it does.) PART ONE here  and PART TWO here}

Meet Tom. (If you didn’t already.)

Tom A. Toh.

My mascot through the latest Tomato Madness…

Husband brought his head-to-be in from the garden as a curiosity, and I thought it really must have some googly eyes. Since none lay handy in the house, I made some paper ones.

He sat on the kitchen table and looked so much like he was listening when we talked that he began to feel like a companion.

“I’m going to miss him when he’s gone,” I told my husband. Shortly thereafter I opened the fridge door, and here’s what I saw:

So that’s where Tom stayed, because, after all, he’d last longer that way.

But later when I looked in the fridge...

Then still later…

Yes, toms and zukes and happy apples all get old and wither away, and before that some of them lose their tenderness while others go all to moosh—like people, but much faster. And so each year the race is on!

We race the peas. And beans and tomatoes. And zukes and cukes and yellow squash. And cherries and berries and peaches and pears, and even onions and garlic. And if any don’t get the attention they’re “entitled to,” they get huffy and go bad on us, and there we are, left with a pile of mess to deal with.

I don’t know about you, but despite the fact that I’m thankful, I really am, for all this abundance, I hate being bossed about by beans, run ragged by raspberries, and pestered by the pleas of peas and pears and peaches and the call of corn… and yes, tyrannized by tomatoes.

I know, that little guy at the top of the page looks so innocent and mild, but put him together with bushels of his kind and the mob can get demanding… nasty!

Meanwhile, my Bible reading takes me to passages about Isreal’s despicable worship of the ba’als, and commentary tells me its riveted focus was fruitful fields of plenteous crops—which drew them away from trusting God to supply their needs (even after all that miraculous manna and such!)

They became quite enslaved to ba’al worship—tyrannized. Seemingly unable to break away to save their lives even when God’s disgust at it became very clear.

Then, more than one commentary relates, even equates, OT ba’al worship with that NT parable of the prosperous farmer tearing down barns to build bigger ones… for his overload.

Ouch. We don’t store our tomatoes in barns. We use jars and pantry shelves, and freezers. But when we remodeled this farmhouse kitchen, we did expand the pantry… then built more shelves in the basement… and just a couple years ago bought that new freezer, supposedly to replace an old one, which still stands, stolid, down near those cellar shelves…

The parallel isn’t lost on me.

So what do we do? Give away more?

I don’t see how. After a few visits from my husband with his bags of stuff, I think the neighbors start to hide when they see him coming. And you can’t send tomatoes to African famines, and even the local food pantry doesn’t want anything that perishable. 

Finally get rid of an honestly unnecessary freezer? (Or two?) And downsize the garden some more?

Maybe that’s not a bad idea… (Secret smile.)

~

Seriously though.

This really may be serious. Glut can over-occupy our time, and choke out love. Especially our love for God. Which is why this post is part of the “Living Love” series.

More on this later…

~~~

It’s been a while…

But last week I thought what fun I used to have taking on Ashley Sisk’s weekly photo challenges. So I hopped on over to her site to see what she was up to.

When I saw the photo prompts, I felt I had to go for it… because I’d just taken two of the photos already! (#2 and #3). And all the prompts brought to mind something especially meaningful for me right now.

So here are my offerings:

1 – Something you wore:

I wore this on my “pearl” anniversary away, gift from husband just before we went to dinner. Through thirty years the symbolism of pearls grows significant: that it’s the rough times and painful trials we navigate together through life that build the beauty and form the pearls. (I shot it just in the bare box because I liked the effect of all those every-which-way silver stripes.)

2 – Reflection:

This is my usual outdoor place of reflection: the front porch, where glass at left shields from bugs in heat and breezes in early morning chill, blends the outside with the “inside” (on porch), and gives me lots to reflect on.

3 – Inside Your Fridge:

I opened the fridge door one afternoon, and this is what I saw. Who he is, how he got there, and why he’s significant… is scheduled subject matter for a blog post in the week ahead.

4 – Daily Routine:

I was glad to get this prompt. It made me realize my life hasn’t yet fallen into total disarray. Until I considered what “routine” I could shoot, I wasn’t sure I had any holding steady lately. But that red journal I started on August 1, and by September 6 had filled all its pages with almost daily entries, and the open blue one already has letter scribbles covering one-third of its pages. A routine that maintained itself! (I guess I can’t not-write. Maybe not-blog, but not not-write.)

5 – Morning:

There it is, all aglow, sun climbing the eastern sky, reminding me also that I did get up regularly at an early hour, did get some kind of quiet time almost always before that bright orb reached this height…

…and that tomorrow is another brand new day…

***

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