1.7.20

Turning Bulbs into Tulips: a lost poet or a lost post

The leaves fall gracefully to earth, and the trees this year are a tapestry of brilliant colour.  I am gardening today and planting the tulip bulbs.

--Emily Isaacson

The miracle of growth and nature reminds of the miracles I have seen, including this picture of a geranium without the soil. It literally grew for six months just like this with no earth, in a clay pot. How like God to grow us at times without what we need, in clay pots. So we know the power is not our own. 

"For we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." 2 Corinthians 4:7-8 NIV).  

When we love others it is breakable; it is delicate and in the modern world, can easily be broken. The remnants of our lives can be marked by broken relationships if we choose to see them as failures, instead of stepping stones. They are like the stepping stones of the Japanese Garden at the Butchart Gardens if we use them as life's lessons, to walk over our pond.

I have used my new understanding of Zen Poems, to write a few of my own. I am learning to cultivate my own silence, to be rich in the faith that does not let us drown while walking on water like Peter. I am submitting my poetry next to small presses with the hope of publishing small books of a modest collection. 

In the meantime, you might want to hear about the beloved cat Coco that I started this blog by writing about. She was taken to the vet on March 9, 2017 as an emergency case, and was pronounced dead on arrival. She died after 15 years of old age, with several complicating medical conditions. I gave the vet a copy of my book A Familiar Shore, with the poems about her marked in it. 

I will remember how she went outside one day, and I looked out the window and she was on the roof. What a character. I saved one of her whiskers.

After she died, I realized I had spent eight years talking to my beautiful Siamese-Persian cat, with its joys and comforts, at the expense of human relationships. (Like the previous owner said, you will never be without cat hair again.) I decided to make deeper friendships with people, and immediately started writing and messaging my friends. I turned to social media, and began posting regularly on facebook, to keep contact with my close friends, and relatives in California. I rejoiced at their response to my attempts at being more social, and their quaint replies.

I have made more close friends, I have learned to love people, regardless of how important they think they are; I now have years of friendships to my credit. These are the treasures in life that will endure; the gems of the crown of Abbotsford. It is all part of building community around Koinonia; of being a community builder in the spiritual realm. Jesus is building a house for us in heaven; we can only imagine the builder, and the stone that the builders rejected. It has become the Chief Cornerstone. 

I can hear the builders down the street from my small condo in Abbotsford, and it reminds me daily that I am kind of like the soul of a geranium that had no dirt.

Emily




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