I changed my mind about annuals

I changed my mind about annuals.

Used to be, I only bought perennials.

You know.

The sort of native plants which return every year.

Mostly because I’m cheap.

But also, because I felt the vainness of tending something so fragile, knowing full well of its certain demise.

This year, I changed my mind.

I realized an all-perennial garden, while striking, did not offer much vibrance.

Though lasting, sometimes perennials lack the brilliance of something temporary and fleeting and allowed to bloom.

And once again, the soil and sun and reaching up of green things reminds me . . .

. . . there is a time . . .

. . . and season . . .

. . . for everything . . .

And lasting or not, all are welcome.

There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth: 
A right time for birth and another for death, 
   A right time to plant and another to reap, 
   A right time to kill and another to heal, 
   A right time to destroy and another to construct, 
   A right time to cry and another to laugh, 
   A right time to lament and another to cheer, 
   A right time to make love and another to abstain, 
   A right time to embrace and another to part, 
   A right time to search and another to count your losses, 
   A right time to hold on and another to let go, 
   A right time to rip out and another to mend, 
   A right time to shut up and another to speak up, 
   A right time to love and another to hate, 
   A right time to wage war and another to make peace.

 But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift.

I’ve also concluded that whatever God does, that’s the way it’s going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God’s done it and that’s it. That’s so we’ll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear. 

 Whatever was, is. 
   Whatever will be, is. 
   That’s how it always is with God.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 (TMV)

What about you?

Are you an annual or perennial person?

Or are you both?

on fifty shades

when did the umbrella of humanity

shade our eyes to fifty

doves lighting then falling still beside watery brooks

bathed in milk

fragrant with spices and balsam

tender like banks of sweet herbs

stained fifty shades of bloodred

yearning to inhale the scent of fifty unspoiled lilies distilling sweet myrrh

two in union

only

male and female

husband and wife

hands and body

pure

as ivory innocence strong

as steady as pillars holding

faith and trust and gentleness

upon fine respect and harmonious submission

to the Maker of the gift

Who creates the

exclusive

and excellent state

majestic

as the cedars

speech sweet and prose gentle

never foul four letters

never cursing the altogether

lovely of his beloved and friend

how very fair

the

unbound

the

unchained

the

free

eyes trusting

protective as the doe

lips like a thread of scarlet

mouth lovely

tongue tamed

hearts ravaged by courage

I looked for him among the debris of fifty million broken souls but could not find him

I went to the cities and into the streets and broad ways and sought the pure original gift

but I could not find

amidst the shades of gray

black and white

wrong and right

blurred

by whom and what our wretched insatiable souls seek

lost hands groping through fifty shades of self

consuming and consummating

fifty shades of demise

until at last I returned to the Watchman

the Watchman who went into the city, pushing past fifty shaded alleyways

and fifty chains that bound me

loosing the violence causing irreverent slips of the soul

and when the Watchman found me and gave me

my one love

I held him and would not let him go

until the pureness stirred

awakened

restored

shades and shadows

bowing to light

illuminated

and

right

lovely

and

good

and worth the

fight

*****

poem contains excerpts from the Song of Solomon

and is

dedicated to survivors

of sexual abuse and trafficking

who know too well how words on pages, images on screens and actions of those who would control contribute to the destruction and devaluation of the gift God meant to be pure and good and true and safe

*****

may the Lord continue to break chains and bring light and peace and hope to infinite shades of wrong, evil and injustice everywhere

*****

artwork by Dena Lowery

in memory

“That night we moved into a field and I walked past a dead man. No one seemed to pay attention to the body and I assumed someone would later gather the poor guy in. In retrospect, it’s disturbing to recall how quickly we found ourselves able to look at dead bodies and, provided we didn’t know the man, feel very little emotion. That was a terrible realization, and yet to have reacted otherwise would have quickly drained us of the will to go on. Today I think back to that moment, the placid face of death, a kid, someone who had loved ones waiting at home, who had friends, not long out of high school, a kid with hopes and dreams, a person who that very day had smiled, had laughed at some childish joke, maybe written a reassuring letter to his mom. Now he was dead, lying uncared for along a nameless country road as one by one we walked by and turned quickly away. Now, shrouded in darkness, unknown, he lay there. No one should die that way. These are the photographs of the mind which dispel any idea of the romance of war.”

~Carver McGriff, infantryman in Normandy, recipient of a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, and author of Making Sense of Normandy: A Young Man’s Journey of Faith and War

Too few are left who fight.

Too few are left who stand.

Too few are left who push aside themselves . . . comfort, security, status, pride . . . for the sake of what is good.

What is right.

What is eternal.

Indeed, too few are my capabilities to string words together which adequately testify to the holy work of soldiers who fought for our freedom.

As I type uninhibited this morning, fair trade coffee brewing in my convenient coffee maker and belly full of breakfast, sounds of war movies play in the room next to me, where my oldest son will be all weekend, watching all the television greats: Band of Brothers; Letters to Iwo Jima; Flags of Our Fathers; Bridge Over the River Kwai, and many more. He watches and reads and memorizes the broken paths of fighters: fighters with faults; fighters admittedly scared s***less; fighters questioning; fighters enraged; fighters bloodied, but fighters all the same.

My son watches.

And I pray.

I pray he and his brothers will be a fighters, too, as their bodies lengthen and toughen and grow into men. Enlisted or on the front line of ministry or behind the closed doors of their future homes, I pray they will know the necessity of fighting for what is right.

Even when the rest of the world and everything against them appears wrong and impossible.

I pray they will be the sort of men willing to carry the wounded–impaled and dismembered and life flowing out of them–across fields humid with bullet rain and onto beaches, covered in the fog of injustice, and yawning with devouring fangs of evil.

The world needs soldiers.

Still.

And now.

Needs them, in the seconds which tick by and in the recesses of minds, to remember the brave ones who fell, bloodied, before us.

In the name of freedom.

And justice.

For all.