Hi, friend. What was it you wanted to say? I've been listening and hoping to hear you.
I'm up early on a Sunday morning. I've been out to the greenhouse and sat in the mostly dark for about thirty minutes, with only a little light from the fountain to guide me. The wind blew and gently shook the greenhouse walls, and occasionally the dogs barked. I have been listening to old time gospel music because I'm in the mood for it:
Sunday Morning Medley
Playing now: Highway to Heaven... an alternative to the well known Highway to Hell. Next tune up: "When the War is Over," which features the title line, "When the war is over, we're gonna have a time." Aren't we? We're at war with a virus, folks are saying, but when it's over, there will be joy. If you want a joyful experience, try listening to the Georgia Mass Choir:
Joy
So beautiful it gives me chills -- my friend Robin says that means my spirit is bearing witness. And in fact, I know what it means to be joyful this morning, with my cup of decaf coffee annointed by a bit of turmeric, sitting by the fireplace. Well, I can't stay in the greenhouse all the time although if I could put a bed out there I might take a good long nap sometimes, or read to the tomato plants, who need a little nudge, or to the ordained wasp straddling my cabbage stem. As my friend Rob said, his sermons are pointed.
I've been reading The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, by Terry Tempest Williams, and Earthly Delights: Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way, by Margot Rochester.
My Heart is Very Deep in These Wild Lands will give you a good sense of who Williams is. She makes me long to lie down in green pastures, and to quit my job and go traveling through all of our beautiful national parks, each one a cathedral, each one with an ethos and a call to something pure and grand in each of us. There's also this, for going deeper: The Relationship Between Inner and Outer Work
Rochester's work employs a tone that makes me smile. She's not deadly serious about gardening --- and she reminds of us of that throughout the writing, calls herself a lazy gardener. She doesn't water the garden much, and she doesn't do composting that requires any labor. My kind of gardener. But she does understand the seasons and what will grow in each, and that is a long lesson I need.
She was a South Carolina gardening writer and speaker who died in 2008. I wish I had known her. Now I will, in a way. She "tended a 1-acre garden" in Lugoff, just 'round the corner from me. I live in Elgin. She was also a past president of SC Teachers of English, a sister indeed.
Margot Rochester Obituary in the Herald
Her body went back to the soil, but her spirit is alive and well in the Church in the Greenhouse. And we too are alive, in a strange time. Take a deep breath now, and speak from your own brave heart.
Blessings,
Tamara
I'm up early on a Sunday morning. I've been out to the greenhouse and sat in the mostly dark for about thirty minutes, with only a little light from the fountain to guide me. The wind blew and gently shook the greenhouse walls, and occasionally the dogs barked. I have been listening to old time gospel music because I'm in the mood for it:
Sunday Morning Medley
Playing now: Highway to Heaven... an alternative to the well known Highway to Hell. Next tune up: "When the War is Over," which features the title line, "When the war is over, we're gonna have a time." Aren't we? We're at war with a virus, folks are saying, but when it's over, there will be joy. If you want a joyful experience, try listening to the Georgia Mass Choir:
Joy
So beautiful it gives me chills -- my friend Robin says that means my spirit is bearing witness. And in fact, I know what it means to be joyful this morning, with my cup of decaf coffee annointed by a bit of turmeric, sitting by the fireplace. Well, I can't stay in the greenhouse all the time although if I could put a bed out there I might take a good long nap sometimes, or read to the tomato plants, who need a little nudge, or to the ordained wasp straddling my cabbage stem. As my friend Rob said, his sermons are pointed.
I've been reading The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, by Terry Tempest Williams, and Earthly Delights: Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way, by Margot Rochester.
My Heart is Very Deep in These Wild Lands will give you a good sense of who Williams is. She makes me long to lie down in green pastures, and to quit my job and go traveling through all of our beautiful national parks, each one a cathedral, each one with an ethos and a call to something pure and grand in each of us. There's also this, for going deeper: The Relationship Between Inner and Outer Work
Rochester's work employs a tone that makes me smile. She's not deadly serious about gardening --- and she reminds of us of that throughout the writing, calls herself a lazy gardener. She doesn't water the garden much, and she doesn't do composting that requires any labor. My kind of gardener. But she does understand the seasons and what will grow in each, and that is a long lesson I need.
She was a South Carolina gardening writer and speaker who died in 2008. I wish I had known her. Now I will, in a way. She "tended a 1-acre garden" in Lugoff, just 'round the corner from me. I live in Elgin. She was also a past president of SC Teachers of English, a sister indeed.
Margot Rochester Obituary in the Herald
Her body went back to the soil, but her spirit is alive and well in the Church in the Greenhouse. And we too are alive, in a strange time. Take a deep breath now, and speak from your own brave heart.
Tamara
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