minted honey

I've been coming to enjoy a taste of mint leaves now and then. Did you know their flowers look like this?:


Next to our back deck are a few stalks planted by my son, James, who is at work to become a certified permaculturist. Sitting beside them in the sun, I am as well treated to a great view of the insects at work to make certified sweets.



I like that honeybees aren't robots. Every so often a busy gal will misstep and have to regain her footing. Or she'll aim for a blossom nearly gone and will have to choose again. Or there will be another forager on her intended target -- sometimes a bumblebee, flashing his black and yellow warning outfit. But our cheerful worker takes these things in stride.

I like the more earthy tones of the honeybees' garb. I wonder if they're all together or from different hives. I'm sure they know. Yet none of them needs to pepper me with status updates, as I would tend to do in their places. They simply keep up a quiet hum, a chant of the living while the breezes of August puff past.

(Tim's latest fun find is appropriate.):

humble star pie

Days like these in August are the reason spring is my favorite time of year.

I say this because I love to anticipate. Every year in March, when plants open and push up and ascend and don't stop, I'm amazed as I breathe in and remember how fragrant is the smell of promise. Then later after August has finally arrived and is ripening, I can stand out back in minimal clothing, with a sense of baked earth stretching every direction under immense sky -- though I can't see the breadth of it for the maturing beans and mulberries and bamboo and the houses and crimson king maples and mountains. I sense my body living in tune with earth, fashioned from it, and in a sense touching the promise, or part of a promise very dear. Consequently, I reenter rooms needing swipes of the duster and sweeps of the straw broom, and too easily I neglect those and return to words.

I did bake two pies last Saturday.

Sunday, an invitation came from friends to watch the Perseids. That very warm day melded into a country evening, with much more earth and sky visible than I usually see. After dusk, I lay on my back on a trampoline, a wonderful star-gazing vantage, especially with friends -- some older and some younger -- on their backs around me, our heads arranged toward the large circle's center.

We didn't see this, exactly:
[caption id="attachment_6036" align="aligncenter" width="599"] photo by David Kingham[/caption]

But several showery star-kids crossed our view. Conversations drifted. Someone mentioned their challenges in a living situation. I posited that maybe families were wiser and more humble in past eras (at least sometimes) because they could see more sky. (Like Kunte Kinte's people, I do well to receive reminders of my smallness.)

The later it got, the more often I thought about a passage from Charlotte's Web, from when Charlotte the spider is answering a question posed by Wilbur the pig (who generally is quite humble), about what Charlotte is making, up high in the darkness where Wilbur can't see.

"Is it something for me?" asked Wilbur.
"No" said Charlotte. "It's something for me, for a change."
"Please tell me what it is," begged Wilbur.
"I'll tell you in the morning," she said. "When the first light comes into the sky and the sparrows stir and the cows rattle their chains, when the rooster crows and the stars fade, when early cars whisper along the highway, you look up here and I'll show you something. I will show you my masterpiece."

It's one of my favorite passages. I would have been content to remain on the trampoline until Monday's first light came into the sky, but we needed to get going. In darkness our car whispered along the highway, while I carried away with me another tiny piece of promise before the rooster crowed.

where you coming from?

Last Saturday a man approached a table I sat behind at the Whiteaker Neighborhood Block Party here in Eugene. He browsed the books and pamphlets we volunteers from Pilgrim's Way Bookstore had set out. Gesturing to one of several icons of Orthodox Christian saints, he asked, "Are these guys prophets?"

It was a good question. I stammered, not knowing how to answer. I've been involved with Orthodox Christianity the past eighteen months; for a year now I have considered myself fully on board with Orthodoxy. Still, I barely know anything. Especially when someone asks me a question, I feel as though the oxygen surrounding my patch of earth has suddenly been sucked away.

What I often do -- what I did with the Block Party man's query -- is first leap to imagining why the particular question was asked and what might be the result of any response I attempt. This usually leads to a blurted reply of some sort, as I long to stall the moment, as I wish I could pause and consider each ramification of every possible answer (something I couldn't know, in any case, without the aid of some sci-fi mental/time travel device).

I wonder if other people, from various beliefs, nationalities, and backgrounds, experience the same slight panic when unexpected questions arise regarding the stuff of their inner paradigms/cultures. Are there very many people as awkward and self-conscious as myself?

What I found out, in the course of further discussion with the Block Party man, was that he grew up in Jamaica, in the Rastafari faith culture. His question made sense from that perspective. Aside from giving me an urge to watch Cool Runnings, the exchange with this man educated me further regarding Orthodoxy, as there can be a connection for some Rasta individuals with the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The point is, I couldn't imagine his views before he told me. Instead of rushing to say what I thought he wanted to hear (or what I thought I would sound best saying), I could have posed a good question, asking him to help me know where he came from in terms of his faith background.

Thinking this led me to want to say something here on this blog about where, these days, I'm coming from in terms of faith. Then I'd like to ask any of you to relate your...what shall we call it...statement of perspective. This might involve some amount of consideration about the journey you've been on to get here. At least for me, trying this has led to such consideration.

Here's my (working; ever in process) statement of perspective, short version (sort of):

I grew up believing the Christianity of my parents (my dad is a retired Protestant minister), but, differently from them, I knew the viewpoint of a preacher's kid, and I reacted with some horror to what appeared in many individual Christian expressions as wishes for magical enchantments that never came true. This played out in my adulthood as an aversion to ritual. At one point, I found a Christian group that had shed virtually all ritual, and I happily studied the Bible with them for many years. These dear folks, sometimes called Radical Biblicists (RB), helped me construct an amazingly rational paradigm regarding God, with a very high view of God's sovereignty in reality. I still consider myself a RB, and I consider that the RB perspective was what God used to introduce me to Orthodox Christianity (OC) and help me sort out what was going on in the rituals I encountered. I also consider that in OC I have found, quite surprisingly to myself, fullness of meaning in every ritual and in the complete, sacramental tradition it expresses.

Because I tend to assume people think (or have journeyed) like me, it would be a big help to know where any of you are truly coming from.

structure change

[caption id="attachment_5900" align="alignleft" width="300"] Casing of the Okanagana Cicada, left behind on our mulberry near the side fence.[/caption]

Twenty-one years ago I prepared to move with my family into the suburban house where I've lived ever since. Things in the yard looked different then, but it was the same place.

I believed our buying this home meant I was beginning a new, settled era. Such musings made sense at the time for this mother of two small children, apprehensive yet set on brilliantly nurturing and educating them. I wanted to pursue the dreams and goals flowing from inside myself.

While I have remained settled in the geographical sense, now I consider that my structure has been and continues to be more than just my living space. Changes are the result of slow, messy processes in me and are influenced by various things I make note of that come along from outside myself.

Take, for instance, writing. As a bookworm schoolgirl I spent free hours penning stories, sometimes novels, but I told people writing would be my hobby when I grew up. That is, until one afternoon in college my favorite teacher -- the history professor whose enthusiasm kept him bounding up the classroom aisles and whose tough essay finals I didn't really mind -- took me aside and said I ought to consider writing as my profession. Returning my graded term paper, my teacher pointed out that all I really needed was to learn to spice my earnestness with humor, and I could be quite good.

Whether or not I've since gained humorous ability, and whether or not you can say I have a writing profession (my income is still mighty hobbyish), I believe that the little talk by my teacher stuck, in the particular way things sometimes do. And so I have stuck with writing.

Yet my authorly life has always looked more like a process than a moment when everything changed, new era-style. In a sense, I'm continually moving into a writer's house -- my writing "structure" changes. In a sense, as well, our physical home's structure is always changing, though I may not notice ants multiplying under floorboards and shingles decomposing on the roof.

[caption id="attachment_5899" align="alignright" width="225"] Bean blossom residing on our 20-year-old satellite dish.[/caption]Today this house in which I live is quieter, emptier, and so my writing life within it looks as though it might expand. Maybe it will burst the bonds of a sometimes hobby, as I often wish. From inside myself, I do a bit of dreaming (after, of course, I've spent time laboring on an essay). I'd like to brilliantly nurture my craft within these walls, and I hear experience reminding me I will proceed to a great degree in messy process. Then again something I don't expect could arrive any moment -- in the form of quiet talk or resounding events -- that might stick and may set me on the path of a different process altogether.