"...Star differs from star in glory..."

(Vincent Van Gogh, "Starry Night over the Rhone," 1888)

I Corinthians 15:40-44:

"There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body."

I had a magnificent set of evenings over Memorial Day weekend sitting out among the moon and the stars--even sleeping out all night in my yard one night, it was so glorious--and seeing the lightning bugs begin their summer debut for the season. It was simply a magnificent weekend to be a speck in God's Universe. The sheer size and awesome timelessness of the "big" things in nature--the sky, the stars, the ocean, just to name a few--have always been the major spiritual grounding rods for me, my entire life. People just don't do it for me the way nature does.

I looked at the stars these last few nights and pondered the paradoxical dance that "people" seem to occupy in my existence, thinking how each star, in its own way, is its own "person." How like the stars in the sky, we are called to community, and how each of us in our own way feels called to individuals in that community. Yet for me, the paradox has always been nothing gets my goat like people sometimes. I can only handle people for so long, and then that secular monastic in me takes over and I retreat to my safe hermitage of my country life. There is my daily retreat from work, as well as "add on" forms like my occasional "silent Saturday morning," and my "stay-cation retreats where I never leave home." Yet I never feel "un-called" to be a part of a community. When I am home alone, after a certain amount of time enjoying my alone-ness, I think of what it is I am supposed to "do next" when I enter back into community. When I am in that community, after a while I start daydreaming of what I want to do next in my "alone time." Each needs the other, and truthfully, each feeds the other.

On one of those nights, I sat out and thought about different people with each star--what they were experiencing in their lives, and how it is that I am supposed to combine with them to light up the sky, yet maintain my own individual "star-ness." Each one of us with the incarnational light of God within us, but manifested in so many unique ways.

There seem to be at least three kinds of stars in my life experience. Most valued are the "stars I can always see"--for instance, in the winter, I can always find the constellation Orion, and in the summer I can always fix my gaze on Scorpio. They are like the people in my life who have now been my friends for three decades or more. How we relate to each other has changed drastically over the years--sometimes not even close to the roles in which our relationships started out--but we somehow can always adjust. Sometimes their light is very intense and intimate in my life, and vice versa; other times, the light is dimmer. But they are constants. They are appreciated for both their longevity and their versatility.

Then there are the stars that once were a major focus, but I now no longer pay much attention to. I really don't pay much attention to the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, or the North Star itself, per se. But there was a time I always looked for them. They are like the people who were once very involved and intimate in my life--old lovers, intense best friends, etc.--and somehow no longer figure much into the tapestry other than to be a thread once cherished, but no longer. Some of these fizzled out in a supernova of conflict, whereas others just sort of atrophied and slowly burned to extinction. Sometimes their light returns--but it is almost never of the same intensity that it once was, nor does my need to tend to that light return with the same intensity. I appreciate those stars for the history they have given me, even if it includes hard lessons.

Finally, there are the stars I just got around to noticing, like the time I first recognized all of Ursa Major, rather than just its "dipper." The first time I realized the dipper could be converted to a bear, it was an exciting time. It made the sky seem a little bigger than it used to be. I think about the gifts and talents in people I just now got around to appreciating in people who have been around me all along, or about the new people that come into my life over the years, and something about them challenge me to tend their light and let them tend mine. I appreciate those stars because they represent hope and promise.

Even the stars are perishable--which enhances my knowledge that people are perishable. It makes me understand the urgency of the Gospel of Mark, and in Paul's letters. If even stars are perishable, then people definitely are. Yet timelessness and infinity rides within all of them. What a beautiful, but messy, dance it all is!Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/nature
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Fishing

by Cassondra Murray



Have you ever gone fishing?



When I was a kid, my dad used to take me fishing a lot.




I remember my first fishing pole. I was probably seven years old when Daddy made that pole for me. If I close my eyes I can still see it, just like it was yesterday. And I can see my dad as he sat on an old stump in the back yard, putting my fishing rig together.






Once a year or so, my dad went to a creek a few miles away to harvest "cane poles". Cane poles were really a type of native bamboo that grew along the creek banks in Southern KY. He'd bring home a few big armloads of these each year, to use as bean sticks in the garden mostly. A secondary use, though, was fishing poles. Once the canes were dried they were strong, lightweight, and flexible.




He cut the pole to about six or eight feet long, then he wrapped fishing line around the end of the pole and tied it off, leaving about 8 feet of line free at the end. He attached a hook and a round red and white bobber, and I was in business. It was low-tech, but it worked.




First, we'd go out behind the barn to a shady spot. My dad used a hoe or a shovel to dig a hole deep enough to get to dark, cool earth. That's where the worms were.



There's a picture of earthworms here, so if you're squeamish, don't look. Focus on the text.





My job was "Keeper of the Bait." First I had to find an appropriate container. A margarine or Cool Whip tub would do, but a coffee can was the best. I'd dig through my mom's cabinets looking for just the right one.



Once I had the container, I'd meet my dad behind the barn. He'd dig the hole while I stood ready. When he turned the piles of damp earth, I'd bust up the clods and pick out the worms, dropping them into my coffee can along with a bit of dirt to keep them cool. Daddy was apparantly in sync with some universal higher power because at some point he'd stop digging and say, "that's enough," and it always was.



He'd grab a bucket and a tackle box and off we'd go, through the woods and across the fields for an afternoon of fishing.




There were three farm ponds in walking distance of our house. I suppose it was the same universal higher power that told him which one to choose on a given day. It didn't matter to me as long as the fish were biting.




Actually that's not true.





The truth is that no day fishing was ever wasted. I will stand right here in front of God and everybody and say that even if I never got a bite, some of the best times of my life were spent fishing.





It took anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to walk to the pond, and then there was a ritual to be observed.




First, find a shady spot to set the bucket and the bait. Next, unwrap the line from the pole. Dig a worm out of the can, thread it onto the hook. For the first few years, Daddy did this part for me. He also dug into his tackle box and chose an appropriate weight for the line, based on how deep he guessed the water to be, and where he guessed the fish to be hanging out. It's that universal higher-power connection thing again. It always seemed to come through when he needed fishing guidance.



Last in the ritual was picking the spot from which to fish. He always picked out a spot for me on the bank, settled me in, and once my line was in the water he'd go around the pond to find a spot for himself. Far enough that we each had our space, but not so far that I was out of sight.



One of the lessons I had to learn as I sat there on the bank was when to pull the line in and re-set, and when to leave it there. I'd get impatient and start futzing around with it, and I'd hear my dad's voice from his side of the pond. "Quit messin' with it. Leave it in the water."






One of my clearest memories was the day I landed the biggest fish I've ever caught. No monster in fishing terms, but it was a big deal for a little girl. A big bass. So big I nearly couldn't land the thing. I'd been catching little bluegill all afternoon and tossing them back in. Suddenly there was a huge splash, and my bobber went deep, toward the bottom of the pond. I remember my dad dropping his pole and running around the pond toward me as I backed away from the bank, throwing my weight against it, pulling pole, line, and fish with me as I tried to bring it in.



Daddy never would take me to the lake when his buddies brought out their boats to fish. I wanted to go, but I always had to stay home. Mom told me a few years later that the guys were just not prepared to have a little girl on the boat. They'd have to take me to the bank every so often since I couldn't exactly hang over the side like they could ever time I needed to pee.



That was okay. I got the point of fishing on the bank of the pond.



I have a quote above my computer, cut out from a calendar I had a few years back.

Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.~~Henry David Thoreau


Recently, when the days have been a little nutsy, I've thought a lot about those afternoons at the pond, dangling my line into the water, watching the world around me, waiting for a bite.
It's a little like writing and publishing in a lot of ways. You do the work, you build your rig, you bait your hook and you toss the line into the water. And then you wait for a bite. Sometimes you get a nibble. Sometimes you have to go back and study the weather, the water, and sometimes you have to put your worms back in the can and get out the minnows because the bait just isn't right for the fish you're after, or sometimes you have to move to the other side of the pond.
The thing is that even if I'd never hooked a fish, I still would have come away a richer person. I was after something other than fish, though I didnt' know it then. Solitude. The sense of nature around me, and nature's ability to put things into order, no matter what. Peace.



I'm after that again. With my writing and with my life. As we swing into spring and summer, into conference season, with its travel, pitches to editors and agents, and its need to be "on" emotionally and mentally and physically, I think the best thing I could do for myself would be to find a spot on the bank, bait my hook and just sit there for a while, listening to the birds, feeling the sun on my skin, the breeze kiss my cheek, watching my bobber float across the water, waiting for a bite.



I think maybe that's where some of my stories came from. Maybe not from the fishing itself, but from the quiet, the solitude, and the slow-down-and look-around time I spent sitting on those banks.



I tend to keep myself so busy now that I couldn't hear my muse if it had a bullhorn. Slowing down takes effort now. I have to wonder if what Thoreau meant was that when we dip our line into the water, what we're really hoping to catch is a bit of our real selves. That's certainly true for me.


The last ritual of the fishing day was to take the leftover worms and toss them into the pond. That's probably considered a bad thing now, artificially feeding the fish and all, but for my dad and me it was a sacred thing. A dedication to the idea that nothing goes to waste. A giving back, of a sort. Our way of giving back to the fish, the pond, and the higher power that had given us that time on the bank, whatever measure of luck we had, the warm sun and the gentle breeze. Jeanne blogged about honor yesterday. For a little kid, how I treated the fish on my line and even the worms in that can was important. To give back was an honorable thing and was only right. Actually, it might have been her blog that got me thinking about my dad and about summer afternoons sitting on the bank with him, fishing.





The thing about fishing is that it's a valid excuse not only to sit still for a while, but to tell everybody else around you to "Hush. Be still. You're scaring the fish."

I could use an excuse like that every now and then.


It's been years since I went fishing. I have my dad's fishing gear stashed safely in the garage, and one of my goals this year is to take an afternoon, buy a license, find a quiet spot on a bank somewhere, toss my line in the water, and see what nibbles



How 'bout you?


Have you ever been fishing?



Did you bait your own hook?


If you haven't been fishing, what do you think of the idea of going?


And if it's not fishing, what do you do when you want quiet time?



Do you like to eat fish?



Do you know how to CLEAN fish?
What are you after when you toss your line into the water?
Peace? Solitude?
Or plain old fish?



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Breaking up the big freeze

(Photo from the author of Staying Awake)

Job 28:25-30:

Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, ²⁶to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life, ²⁷to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass? ²⁸“Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? ²⁹From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven? ³⁰The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.

If you're wondering what the photograph above is, it's a rather up close and personal view of the auger blades of the new snow blower our church recently purchased. This was something that we went back and forth on for years on whether it was "worth it" to purchase one. We would bring it up now and then at church, and rarely at vestry meetings, and then always talk ourselves out of it. "Oh, we could buy it, and end up only using it once or twice some winters. It's just another thing to break down."

Another problem is, I'm the person who normally shovels the snow, partially because I'm the junior warden, but partially because I have always enjoyed the quiet time doing it, in a "monastic work" sort of way. For most folks, the snow magically disappeared, so the need for a snow blower didn't seem apparent. Since I liked doing it, and I had the time, it was not a big deal.

Last year, however, things changed. I started having less time, as some things with my work schedule changed. Also, for some reason, we always seemed to have snow on Friday or Saturday, and last winter it was almost like every Saturday I was shoveling, to get church ready for Sunday. For a lot of reasons, it got to be something that started "owning me." I had created an expectation that was partly real, partly my own projections of others' expectations upon me, and partly a few real expectations that I get it done to a certain set of specifics. I started being in situations where I had been tied down at the last minute and had to hurry through the job, and was feeling certain levels of disapproval now and then. It made me feel caught in the middle, knowing what I needed but really uncomfortable to say so.

I realized a snow blower would make my life easier, but I had a lot of reasons why I felt "now's not the time to ask." So I didn't. I could have asked others to help, but I seldom did. My life (at least on the weekends) is more flexible than folks who are "householders." I didn't feel right asking others to change their plans on the weekends for something I used to have time to be solely responsible for. I also knew you can only cry "help" so many times before people get tired of it.

But you know the old saying..."better the devil you know, than the devil you don't know." So, like the ice that collects on the sidewalks, I was "frozen." Frozen as in that passage in Job. It wasn't a crisis, it wasn't even anything that I can put my finger on as good/bad/indifferent. It was just frozen. I was okay with the job (I like the exercise, frankly), but the time frames were freezing me in place and freezing my imagination. I could not bring myself to ask the church for a snow blower. I was afraid it would seem "all about me." After all, I would be the one to use it 95% of the time.

It took our interim priest to point it out. He was quite surprised that the church in the northernmost reaches of our diocesese, the place in the diocese "most likely to get snow", didn't own a snow blower. He simply said, "you all need to get one." So we did.

Take a look at that picture of the auger blades. That thing breaks up the ice like you would not believe! We got a good snow blower, a two stage one, that has a powerful auger and a blower driven by a powerful motor. What I discovered is, well, honestly, driving it is a blast! It has taken what used to be a two hour job and turned it into a 45 minute job for me.

But the truth was, "the face of my deep was frozen." It took an outside observer to see it, and to give me permission to ask for what I needed.

How many times in our own prayer lives are we afraid to ask for something for ourselves? How many times do we get ourselves in a life rut, and accept it, often even without complaint or an awareness that it IS a rut, until the rut becomes so deep it's hard to drive out of it? The heck of it is, so many times, we would do it gladly and willingly. We might not be a single bit resentful of the rut. But we freeze. We convince ourselves, "it's just not gonna happen, so why wish for what you know you can't have?" We are mostly content and occasionally unhappy. It's not "that bad," so we don't worry about it.

This, I believe, is the value of the prayers of others. It's the value of a community of faith. What we no longer see as us having a need for "deliverance," others see right away. It's easy to see the "major" things from which we need to be delivered. But the "minor" ones are more obscure, more veiled. We might not see them, but those who care for us and pray about us, do. In that "seeing the frozen parts of others," we deliver them...and they deliver us. Those "minor deliverances" add up, and our being relieved of them renews not just our souls, but the souls of those who care for us--thanks be to God!Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/nature
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Fireflies

by Cassondra Murray



Steve and I went to Sonic tonight. Yes, we were desperate for quick, easy food. It's been a hard, fast, three-weeks-of-hell beginning to the summer (you'll hear more about that in later blogs from me almost certainly).



I don't have to work tomorrow for the first time in about 15 days straight, AND I'm sort of back online after a computer meltdown. Slow connection, but it's there. So the last thing I was gonna do tonight was cook. Okay, so there are stacks of boxes and books and the leftovers of a major garage cleanout piled in my kitchen and dining room, but the fact that I can't get to my cookware may or may not be a factor in the Sonic decision.

For you unfortunate souls who don't have Sonic near you, it's a double-sided drive-in with a big patio in the center. You can order right from your car, or you can get out and sit at the tables on the patio. We'd dug our way, with those stupid flimsy plastic forks, at least three bites into our foot-long chili-cheese dogs when we noticed the little girl at a table in the center.


She was probably seven or eight years old, and had on a purple outfit with a big glittery butterfly on the shirt, and long blonde hair. She was with her dad. He was eating a hot dog (not foot-long) and she was eating something that looked like popcorn chicken bites. But she was not eating many. She was too busy chasing fireflies.




There weren't many visible. There's way too much light around a Sonic to see them well. But she was completely entranced, jumping into the air and ducking under bushes trying to capture them. I got so caught up in watching her that I stopped eating less than six inches into my foot-long coney.





What is it about fireflies?





To this day, I think they're magic. Do all the research you want, tell me how and why they do what they do, and it won't dim their magic one bit for me.



I think it's because of the memories. Some of my best memories are of fireflies, or "lightning bugs" as we called them.

About this time of year in Southern Kentucky, the fireflies come out. Oh, nowadays there are a few rebels flickering their lonely little lights in early spring, but right about now...mid-June...that's firefly season here. It's also the time of year when it gets too hot in un-air-conditioned houses to enjoy sitting inside in the evenings. I did not grow up with air conditioning.




When I was little, in late May and early June, as the afternoons grew hot and humid, and the evenings grew warm, my dad would go outside after supper, in search of a cool evening breeze and the sound of the tree frogs and crickets, and since I went everywhere with my dad, I went outside too. He'd set up a lawn chair in the middle of the lawn. One of those cheap aluminum-frame chairs with the nylon webbing that lasted a couple of seasons if you were lucky.




Honestly though, the seating quality didn't matter much. We were there for the view. I grew up on a small farm about eight miles south of nowhere. No artificial light except the faint glow from the kitchen window around the side of the house. Quiet.




When my dad got his chair off the porch and headed for the front yard, I'd run into the kitchen and dig under the sink for my jar.



Mine was a Mason jar with a mayonaise lid. Daddy had taken a nail and hammered a few holes in the top for air flow.



Once I had my jar and he had his chair, we were ready for what, to this day, I consider some of the best evenings of my life.





First we'd sit until the last glow of day had faded in the West and the sky had grown dark. The stars flickered on just for us. If we put the chairs right in the middle of the lawn, we had a great view of the Big Dipper almost straight overhead.



Then came the contest--who could spot the first lightning bug in the tall, uncut fescue hay across the road. As the little bugs crawled up the grass from where they'd spent the day hidden, they'd start to flash, one by one. Just a flicker here, and a flicker there.


"There's one!" My dad would say in a loud whisper, then he'd lean forward and point, adding drama to the hunt. He always saw them first. Inborn talent I guess.


Soon though, there would be hundreds, all around, high and low, blinking and streaking across the yard like tiny shooting stars. My dad would hold my jar and keep the lid on real loose for expedient transfer of fireflies from my little-girl hands to the jar. To us, injuring a firefly was a sin almost as grave as the killing of a unicorn is today, in the world of Harry Potter. I'd chase the bugs and catch them ever-so-gently, then I'd run across the dewy grass and my dad would open the lid just a crack. Into the jar they'd crawl. Soon enough I'd have my own lantern.



This lantern was good, of course, only until the first mosquito bit my dad. Then it was time to go in, and the last ritual of the evening was to let the fireflies go.



Tonight I sat at Sonic and ignored my foot-long hot dog as I watched that little girl, and I realized that some magic is timeless. I'm not the only one enchanted by "lightning bugs." Apparantly it's nearly universal. When I googled pictures of fireflies, I found essays, research, pages and pages of photos of the bugs themselves, and even "faux fireflies in jars" with little electric firefly lights, just for effect I guess. Lots of people seem to want to hold onto a bit of the magic.




Catching a jarfull, just to let them go again is one of those things that goes away with make-believe and childhood I suppose. Sometimes I wonder why, as an adult, it's no longer fun to do simple stuff like that.

Nowadays I sit by my firepit with my very adult glass of cabernet, a long way from that dew-covered yard. I know the Latin names of the trees and plants around me, and I have the stresses and worries of an adult in a fast-paced world.




But I can still watch that same Big Dipper sail overhead, and listen to the frogs on the pond behind my house.




And I still go out there early, just so I can try to spot the first firefly.


So tell me, did you ever catch fireflies as a kid?




If you grew up in the city, were there fireflies there?



If you have kids or grandchildren, do they still like to chase the flickering lights?




Apparantly, in some parts of the world, the fireflies all light up at the same time, synchronized, like this picture on the right. Have you ever seen that happen?



What time of year do the fireflies come out where you live?


Do you pay attention, and watch for the first firefly each season? Or am I the only one who still does that?
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Spring Iz Sprung...

by Anna Campbell

Well, at least it has in Australia! It's been lovely and warm and I've had a couple of swims in the pool. Bliss!

But before I extol the beauties of the change of season in South East Queensland, let me get to the important part of today's blog. I got the advance reader copies of TEMPT THE DEVIL a little while ago and I'd love one to go to a good home - and as you know, a good home means a BANDITA BUDDY! So someone who leaves a comment here today is in the draw for a sneak peek at my January 09 release.

The birds have been enormously noisy and, sure sign of warmer weather, the bearded dragons have started to come out. Here's a couple of pictures I took of one in the bushes outside my office. They're amazing-looking beasts, aren't they? Like miniature dinosaurs. I love them. They're this wonderfully benign presence around the place.

The grevilleas have started flowering like crazy. Which means the parrots make so much noise trying to get at the nectar, sometimes it's hard to hear myself think.

As a lot of you know, I only recently finished a book which is always a very strange moment in my life. I should be dancing and shouting and carrying on. But it's actually a little like mourning.

It takes me a year to write a book and time before that when the characters and the story are taking shape in my mind. So it's hard to say goodbye to those people with whom I've lived on such intimate terms for so long. New people are moving in as I wave bye-bye and they'll end up being as dear and as compelling as the characters who lived in my head for the last twelve months. But right now, I don't feel like it.

So it's lovely to have all this natural beauty around me while I go through my withdrawal! And I've really enjoyed the quiet contemplative times swimming in the pool, feeling the sun on my back and listening to the birds squabble. Well, sort of quiet!

This is a photo I took last year of the flowering gum tree in my garden. Isn't it gorgeous? The color is even more vibrant in real life - it really burns your retinas. Those naughty parrots love the flowers and the blossoms never last very long, sadly. So I'm very proud of this shot which I managed to catch before the blooms were torn-up history all over the grass underneath the tree.

And speaking of the lorikeets, here's a picture of the noisy, troublesome little beggars. Aren't they amazing-looking too? More colors that burn your retinas! We have a couple of varieties of parrot that hang around the house but these guys are the naughty teenagers of the neighborhood! There's a park up the road where thousands of them congregate and I swear it's louder than a 747 taking off! I love them - they're full of personality and they don't take nonsense from anyone.

Anyway, enough of the nature watch! You've got a book to win! The prize will be randomly drawn from today's comments.

What are the signs of the changing seasons where you live? I'm sure my Northern Hemisphere friends are green with envy at the thought of swimming in the sun right now! Do you have any native birds or animals around your house that seem like the soul of the place? I'd love to hear about the locals at your place!

Oh, and if you'd like another chance to win an ARC of TEMPT THE DEVIL, don't forget I'm also giving one away in my website contest this month. All you need to do is read the excerpt and answer a simple question. GOOD LUCK!Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/nature
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