Meditate on it

We switched our beach timeshare week this year so that Grace could join us.  Last year her AB Tech class conflicted, and our beach week just wasn't the same.   So here we are at Atlantic Beach, NC in May as opposed to September.  After 20 years of vacationing in this exact spot each September, it's striking to see the differences in May. Usually the season is ending, the businesses are weary of the tourist grind and looking forward to the rest that comes with cooler weather and the slower paced off-season life.  At the stores, beach accessories are well picked through with many on clearance.  The mosquitoes and other insects are ubiquitous at dusk and dawn.  The ocean air is breezy but consistently hot. A rainy morning at the beach, good for contemplation... May beach air is still breezy but cooler.  The rain we are experiencing this morning is certainly not one of the hurricane-season fronts that settle in solidly each September.  This rain is more like a friendly acqu

Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter, front meadow, Northiam, UK The Bible is rich with agricultural imagery.  Often I think of the images while out in the garden, pulling this or planting that.   The Parable of the Sower is a particularly deep well that comes to mind again and again, but there are many others as well. Currently, I'm reading 1 Corinthians, one of my favorite books of the Bible--and not because of "the love chapter" (1 Cor 13) either which I feel has been mangled and waved around until it feels limp and lifeless to me. But, here, at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses division and jealousy within this church, a congregation beset by man-centered factions and petty distinctions.  Paul strives to put their focus back on God.  Why is this such a hard focus to maintain?  We lose our way so easily.... For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human? What then is Apoll