I have been up since 4:30 and working on various things; a vat of potato salad for tonight's birthday celebration of a friend. I also want to quietly toast my inner self for turning a page in my life. I'm down to the last day and a half of work.
Next, I read some things from an author I really enjoy; Anne Lamott, who has this wonderful way of reaching in and grabbing thoughts about life and ourselves with humor and a dash of wisdom; some spiritual, some just thoughts from life.
I saw something that provoked an inner discussion with myself and that is, if we look at our lives like a back yard garden, we might find some patches that are like perky little snap dragons; they were things we said that were helpful and brought cheer to people.
We might have had a sunflower patch that produced some conversations with common sense like the large mammoth blooms with their bright cheery faces that appear to turn with the sun.
They don't. The buds are heliotropic until the end of the bud stage, and finally face East. Their heliotropic motion is a circadian rhythm, synchronized by the sun, which continues if the sun disappears on cloudy days. If a sunflower plant in the bud stage is rotated 180°, the bud will be turning away from the sun for a few days, as resynchronization by the sun takes time.[1
In the mature plant, it does finally face East when it reaches maturity.
In the top picture, you will see that the face is upright and you do not yet see the individual florets. Those later can be brushed off with your hand or a trowel which then shows the most radiant of spiral patterns.
Mathematically, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.
In the picture below, I have scraped off the florets and you can see the spiral pattern much easier.
This one happens to be the all white variety. Some, as you know, have variegated or all black seeds; the ones Cardinals seem to prefer.
The thing about God and His beauty in the universe is that the more closely you look at something, the more beautiful it is. Who coulda-woulda made something as complex and as beautiful as the sunflower, but God? The more you uncover, the more interesting it is.
Conversely, what if somebody were to take up the newspapers you laid out in the yard, weighed down with rocks that you put there to kill the weeds? What would they see if they peeled it back? Sure, the grass would be dead if you have left it there long enough but you know what? All those roly poly bugs and other creepy little things are in there too, scurrying from the light of day.
In our lives, the closer we look at ourselves, the more wormy things we will find. Sometimes, we don't even have to look for it, the creepy things just fly in.
I recently came across this while I was gardening and saw a friend drive by. I had this huge feeling I could not identify right away go through me because she has a new boyfriend.
She had a wonderful husband. He died. She told me that every woman should be so lucky to have one relationship as wonderful as the one with her husband was.
Now she has a boyfriend. Why does she get two and I get none? I'm a great gal too.
Wow! I was embarrassed to know that I was jealous!
I don't wish her less or wish her evil, I just want that too.
Now what? What do I do with this wormy thing I uncovered? I had to think on it for awhile. It crossed my mind through several time zones over several days and here is what I came up with.
I think that when we recognize that we have these little wormy thoughts and bring them into the light of day and flush them out, I think there is good that comes of it.
I also don't believe I have to write something on paper and give it to her to cause the universe to metaphysically shift on its axis. I do not think this will atone for my evil thoughts. I also don't believe they were evil.
I believe it simply helps us as humanoids somewhere else down the line if we can look at the woman in the mirror and know some thoughts are less than charitable. See it for the wormy content that it is and move on. Recognize that we get grace.
Perhaps that grace is that you get a parking place when you need it, or even better, a free bathroom when you REALLY need it.
I don't really know but I do know I appreciate grace; finding the bathroom when you need it, and mercy; which is not having repercussions from all that chocolate (potato salad, hot peppers or other gastrointestinal roulette) that you ate yesterday.
They go hand in hand, grace and mercy. You will find the grace; what you didn't earn but get, and mercy; what you deserve but it was withheld, together like salt and pepper shakers sitting on the same stand together.
We need both and thankfully, we get both, sometimes sprinkled like seasonings on the top of things and sometimes, by the shovel-full.
This is why I left the picture of the shovels on the barn (below). It is a reminder of a collection of grace. You couldn't put all the shovels-full on any amount of barns that I have had in my lifetime of grace but it is a good reminder to just be thankful because we have it.
Nothing more humbling than to find the loo when you need it!
