First, my experience with a jar of peanuts a few days ago and how that relates to the theme of this weeks post, which is "Weeds." I ate a few of the "peanuts" and was immediately disappointed with the taste which seemed to aproach something akin to chalky cardboard. Turning the jar over I read the ingredients which explain everything about what is offered as food to us by the huge companies that supply around ninty percent of all the packaged goods on the supermarket shelves these days. I offer the list of this jar's contents below the photo which I took a few minutes ago.
Weeds you ask .... well the weeds of industry for instance in their many forms, not only food, but everything that grows in our sight several thousand times a day through the barrage of a continuous stream of "Buy Me!" (Not all garbage as there are many useful things that I do buy having first seen an ad somewhere, this computer for instance.)
Then there are the weeds I photographed Monday morning within fifty feet of our door that have a quality of wonderful beauty which is usually passed over as not worthy of a second look by most, including myself. I ask you to look at them with a sense that God does not create junk, and that all life has an inherent quality that is well worth the effort of stopping, taking a few breaths, and looking more closely.
Weeds may be only weeds in the garden of our life, but let's be careful not to throw out those that have real value, exceptional qualities that bear a second look.
Ingredients:
Peanuts, Sea Salt, Cornstarch, Sugar,
Malt Todextrin, Monosodium Glutamate, Yeast,
Corn Syrup Solids, Paprika and other spices,
Extractives of Paprika, Hydrolyzed Soy Protien,
Natural Flavor, Garlic and Onion Powder.
------------------------------------
I start with a quote from Cliff Browder's Blog about New York City. Please visit his site as it is is exceptionally well written and never dull or uninteresting. A real treasure.
" But why frightening, you may ask?
Because any intensity becomes, in the end, threatening. Among the various images of nature that
appear on my computer screen are huge flowers in full bloom, filling the entire
desktop screen: rich, exuberant vaginal blossoms that threaten to devour the
viewer: again, intensity of life. I’ll
let the Freudians analyze this as a personal obsession of mine, but I insist
that it applies to us all, that any intensity of life implies destruction and
intensity of death, following which life will rise again. Okay, a cliché, a stereotype. Can’t help it, that’s what potted plants with
huge leaves, and goldenrod sprouting out of rotten wood, and sunbathers basking
in the life-giving but lethal sun say to me.
(“Lethal”? you may ask. Just
check with your dermatologist, and maybe a meteorologist as well.) So once again I celebrate the richness of
summer, the frightening intensity of life.
And I hope we all do, each in our own way. "
Cliff Browder
Goldenrod
Please click to enlarge and see the small, now dried flowers encased
This and the next photo are leaves from the same stalk.
The holes are made by insects and beetles that obviously enjoyed their taste.
Above - "There's a crack in everything, that's how the Light gets in."
Leonard Cohen
Below - Even in death, the shell of life still reaches for the Sun.
Growing between blades of grass this tiny flower reaches for the Light.
Goldenrod
---------------------------------
Some Humor:
No post next week as we will on Campobello Island.
Peace, Bill Lagerstrom
