LORD, MAKE ME A PHILADENDRON

As much as I want to be an authentic grower person, one who not only knows how to plant, nurture and harvest but actually does it, the truth is, I am not. Blame it on ADD, perhaps. I forget to water, and in some rooms I forget to open the blinds, allowing sunlight in. If I were a plant I would not yearn to belong in the Connors' house, or yard, for that matter.

Nonetheless, I am drawn to real living plants. There’s an energy in them, and diversity. Besides that, we are perfectly suited to co-exist. Leafy plants emit what we need to breathe, and they take-in what we humans exhale.

Through the years, I’ve tried to grow various species of houseplants. I’m pretty good at being a steward over ivy, and we’ve had fichus trees that lived for years. I’ve finally learned not to overwater succulents (a perfect situation, in my estimation), and there’s a Christmas cactus right here on my family room coffee table that has limped along with me through three Christmases. But I guess I don’t treat it well enough to bloom. Really, I’m sort of like a detached foster parent to it, and of this I am not proud. A Christmas cactus should be entitled to bloom once a year, you’d think.

My mom taught me, when I first had a home of my own and started giving it a personality, that the safest house plant to own is a philodendron. “It’s the most forgiving,” she’d say. She had more routine devotion to the flora in her home, and very few of her plants withered in neglect. But she knew me well. And by golly, she was right. 

I’m pretty much a project person. I get myself wrapped up in kind of big, demanding, life-consuming distractions like retreats and concerts and albums, teaching and writing, or a friend or family member has a crisis and I jump into it with them. Daily or even weekly routine is not one of my strong suits, and therefore my plants never really know when to expect a drink, let alone a meal. Right now, I have a dried bulb-topped mini-tree I bought during the holidays at Trader Joes. It was lovely in November. And it still looks great, but it’s dry as a bone, and the filigreed leaves at the top are just hard dried shells of their former selves. 

But by golly, in my entry hall and on my mantle are living, thriving philodendrons that I’ve had for years.

 

I'm sorry to admit that these faithful plants have spoken to me in faint, dying whispers in the past. I'll be rushing past one on my way out and that wordless voice will make me take notice of yellowed leaves, laying their weary heads on the marble top, gasping for life. Forced by compassion to pause, I will take the 32 seconds I need to fill a cup with water and give it a drink before I rush out the door. When I get home those leaves will have cheered right up, lifting their heavy heads toward the light. I'll  pluck a few spent leaves, gently reposition her stems a bit, and she is remarkably chipper once again.

Philadendrons are patient, tolerant, forgiving, resilient, responsive and cheerful.

Lord, make me a philodendron.

MY BAROMETER

“Oh yes, I’m the great pretender.” 

I can sing you the tune to that whole Platters/Orbison/Mercury song, but the only lyric I know is that first line. I still hum it when I play with my grandkids. I really am a pretty unfettered pretender. I can easily let go of reality and imagine I’m Rainbow Dash, or any other Pretty Pony. Or I can happily forget I’m an old lady when I’m serving invisible ice cream cones at the playground in Liberty Park, offering playground bark French fries for four-year-old Gracie’s pretend order. 

I think that’s why Historic Plymouth Plantation near Boston is one of my favorite places to visit. The whole community of docents who play Pilgrim roles make me feel like I am right there, way back in time when the hillsides all around were lush with deep woody untouched undergrowth, with layer on layer of natural flora under hovering natural arbors. The salty sea air mixes with the scent of wood smoke, and the sounds of my daily life are individual and distinct: I can hear my feet padding along the pathway between our spare thatch roofed houses, the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer and the belching of his bellows. My linen skirt swishes around my ankles. There are no cars, no televisions, no electricity humming constantly in the background. Just the whisper of the wind and an occasional call of seabirds. Plymouth is made for great pretenders.

When our kids were all in elementary school together, and they were on the year-round school schedule, we took a trip to Boston to visit my sister, Libby in late October. That’s when I found this wonderful replica of a glass barometer in the Plymouth Plantation gift shop. It has a hammered iron hook and drip bowl, and a lovely blown glass bulb. 

I mix red food dye with water in a bowl by my kitchen sink, maybe a cup or two. Then, dipping the tip of a platic medical syringe in the water, I suck a few ml. at a time up into the syringe, then gently set the tip of it into the slender spout of the barometer. Slowly the bulb fills with the colored water. When it is an inch or two above the elbow where the spout meets the belly, I stop. I gently wipe the glass dry, then hang it from the hook. It sits here on the wall of our family room, beside my leather easy chair. It speaks to me daily, without words, telling me when the day is destined to be calm, or if a storm is coming, giving justification to my aching bones. It has become as much a part of our daily routine as the tick tock of the swinging pendulum on the grandfather clock in our entry hall, or the melody of the Winchester chime on the clock hanging on the family room wall. Sometimes I get so focused on my indoor tasks I forget to notice what is happening outside. But my barometer knows. I’ll be sitting here peacefully, clicking away on my laptop computer, and I’ll glance up to see the red water clean up to the tippy top of the arm on that glass contraption, and when the storm is imminent, it will sometimes drip right on out and drop down the curve and down into the drip bowl. Then I will get myself up and go to the window, pull up the blind, and sure enough, the sky will be darkening and storm clouds will be rolling in.

I do not know how a barometer works. I will likely Google it in a minute here. I know it has to do with air pressure, and vacuum spaces, but I couldn’t, at this point explain it you anyone. But my not understanding how it works does not keep me from trusting it. 

There are many beautiful mysteries in my daily life: my heater almost instinctively knows when to turn itself on and off, I just push a little plastic button when the sun sets and there’s plenty of light in our house. I am daily reminded how blessed we are to have flushing toilets, right in our homes and other buildings. I haven’t studied how it works, but boy am I glad it does.

I also do not know what happens in the human body when cells divide for good or for bad, or how a broken bone heals, or how something that will take the life of one person will pass on through another. 

And I do not know the great mysteries of the universe. I have a good guess about where we come from, and where we go after we die, but it’s not something I can scientifically prove to you. All I know is I have a sort of confidence in it, like I have in my barometer. And even though I don’t know how it works, or why it works, it works nonetheless. And I’m glad that Someone, even if it’s not me, has it figured out.

LENT 2020 - THE HAND OF GOD

The sun had sunk into the meadow, and that dry Idaho air turned, almost in an instant, to a goose-bumpy chill, as if some unseen angel opened the massive door to heaven’s ice box. The token Priesthood that accompanied us at our Girls Camp had prepared a fire while the sun still shone, in that blazing heat, knowing it should be trusty and radiant by dark. God bless devoted men.

I was serving as president of the Young Women’s group in our church, overseeing a few dozen girls between 12 and 18 years old, and we had spent four memorable days at Sheri Brown’s family cabin near Preston. We rode horses through the sagebrush, shot rifles at tin cans, floated lazily down the river on inflated tire inner tubes. We had gobbled up Suzi Ferg’s delicious culinary delights, had strummed tiny ukuleles, made unimportant crafts, and pondered important scripture together. We prayed daily, and sang nightly, and now, at the end of our adventure, we gathered around that well-tended fire and cinched our hearts to each other as we bound them to the Lord. Testimony meeting. It’s a long-honored tradition in church camps. I have participated in such circles since my youth.

There’s a safety in nature, and a freedom. When you have a group of gals around a campfire, and they’re tired - not sleepy, just tired - their defenses are down and their hearts are soft, it seems to allow shields to fall and tenderness to rise. This is the time we invite each other to share our faith, and to witness what we believe. But I knew there were girls among us who had within them unsprouted seeds of faith, and putting them on the spot about their testimonies was not what we wanted. So, after we played a couple songs on our ukuleles, singing slower than usual in order for everyone to switch their fingers between chords, I stood and spoke.

“We’ve had a great time up here. It’s been awesome…even getting up a couple hours after we went to bed in order to hike that mountain and watch the sun rise. Watching that light peek over the mountain, one tiny little ray, then a pink glow, then a full-on face-warming brilliance – I saw the hand of God in that. And I saw His hand in the way I watched you help each other climb, and how you linked arms on the water to keep from going down the wrong fork in the river. And I saw His hand in the bravery of one of you when your horse took off unexpectedly and you held on like crazy. And I saw His hand in the homesick tears of some of our Beehives and how some of you Laurels used humor to ease the ache of your sisters. I’ve seen His hand so much these past four days. The thing is, many people see such things and don’t recognize it as God’s hand. So, tonight I’m inviting each of you to tell us when you have seen God’s hand in your lives, in these last few days, or other times throughout your lives.”

One by one the girls stood, tucked their hands into the pockets of their sweatshirts, curled their shoulders in toward their hearts, and witnessed to each other and to their Lord that they had noticed Him. Even those who could not testify to their knowledge of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ could say they had seen God’s hand in their lives. It united all of us, and we left that circle enriched and enlightened. I carry that evening in the memory box I keep tucked under my heart.

When I pause to notice it, I see the hand of God pretty much everywhere. The trick is in making myself look for it. Whether massively life changing moments, or in tiny seemingly inconsequential snips of daily existence, the exercise of noticing His hand changes the way I approach each day. Like pretty much everything else,it begins with "desire". The desire is the lifting of the veil, the shifting of the blinds. From where I sit, I close my eyes and ponder my day, each little moment, and if I see clearly, I always see the hand of God.

______________________

Because I am incapable of disposing anything of sentimental value, I happen to have saved some photos of that Girls Camp. See below.

 

Our motley crew of Young Women (some of us not-so-young)

Dry. 

Wet.

Our littlest YW, Stephanie.

Mounting our trusty steeds.

Unimportant, but fun, crafts 

Outside the Logan temple. 

They'll go inside sometday.
(most of them already have now) 

Taking aim.

We be jammin'.

Rocking their ukuleles.

Who ever wants to actually sleep at "camp"?

Are they not just so beautiful?
This seems a lifetime ago.
 Each of these girls has become a
brilliant, radiant, accomplished woman now.

The Harris sisters. 

Cassie leaves a love note.

I love them still.

You may or may not know that, like in days of old, God has appointed a prophet to keep us on the path back home. It’s awesome to live in these times, when such a thing has been restored. Our prophet today is Russell M Nelson. He is world renowned as a pioneering heart surgeon.

But we of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, revere him as one who knows the non-physical workings of the heart as well. Here’s what he said today:

In this special year, as we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the First Vision (of Joseph Smith, Google it if you don’t know),I invite you to think deeply and often about this key question: How do you hear Him? I also invite you to take steps to hear Him better and more often.

President Russell M Nelson