A Day of Love and Beauty

After many days of gray skies, fog and rain, last weekend was beautiful.  The days were warm and the sky was blue.  Sunday was a special day for me.  I’d been invited to preach down at the church in southwest San Jose, in the Almaden Valley, where I first served as an ordained minister 25 years ago.  It’s a long way from home, 61 miles door to door, down some of the most crowded freeways in the Bay Area.  I don’t know how I did for 5 1/2 years.  But early Sunday morning is a great time to commute and we weren’t bothered by traffic on this trip.  We had to be there by 8:30 to get set for the 9 AM service.  My sermon, which I worked on hard for way too long, was titled “How to Praise God in Hard Times.”  I can’t remember when, if ever, I’d been invited back to this church to preach.  It is quite amazing now when I remember my time there what comes to mind is all the love and spirit that were present and all the baptisms and children.  Over the years, the pain and struggles have just fallen away.  And Sunday was a love fest.  I knew the church has dwindled down and was very small.  Their part time minister lives in Colorado and does her ministry over zoom twice a month.  I was pleased to find great vitality in the community with beautiful diversity in the little congregation and even a group of children.  For me, the lesson is the love doesn’t ever go away, surviving and growing in my memory.  I always say love is the strongest force in the world and this was an example.  

After church we went by Arne and Karna’s in Palo Alto so Bob could have Liam show him where his new work bench is and how it looks.  Liam gained a shine talking shop with his Grandpa.  It was a beautiful thing to see.  I helped Elsa with her idea to train their dog to pull her around as she sat on her skate board.  I’d tempt Boba with doggie treats then run ahead waving the treat and supposedly he’d run after me to get the treat pulling her behind.  It isn’t a perfect system yet.  After not too long there, we joined the family in a trip to Filoli, the prettiest Garden in the Bay Area.  We went to see the daffodils which Arne wanted to photograph.  Oh my, they were spectacular!  Yellow was the color of the day!!!  There was a field in back with hundreds and hundreds of daffodils of many different kinds and they were all in their glory.  Everyone had a smile on their face.  Beauty does that, it begets beauty.  I didn’t see much of the kids or Karna as they were quick in their tour, running here and there.  Arne stayed back with Bob and me as we photographed every beautiful thing we saw.  There was so much beauty.  I loved the day and still smile thinking about it.  

Valentine’s Day

Today is Valentine’s Day, February 14th.  Hearts and flowers, chocolate and valentines were on our breakfast table this morning, all symbols of love.  It is the day of celebration of love.  It’s always been a special day in my book.  I have so many memories.  I remember fondly making valentines in Elementary School.  Also making special decorated boxes with colored paper and lacy doilies to receive all the valentines from my classmates.  Then the exciting exchange happened, followed by a party with red juice, cookies and candy.  For a kid that was about as wonderful as school could get.  After college when I came back to live with my family, I remember my sister and me decorating the dining room with red and white crepe paper streamers and hanging cut out hearts strung on a string off the chandelier.  We’d bake special cookies and cook a special dinner for all of us.  

But February 14th is special for me in other ways.  It was my due date for my first born.  I expected for many months that the baby would arrive that day.  I remember that night Bob and I went out for a Chinese dinner because I’d heard that monosodium glutamate induced labor.  Well, it didn’t work.  Day after day, I’d wake up and wonder if I’d ever have the baby.  Ten days later, on a snowy freezing cold day in New Haven,  he was finally born!  And then the fun began.  I can’t imagine having a more wonderful son for all these many years!

Then, after I’d gone to seminary and decided to become a minister, I was ordained on Valentine’s Day.  I remember the day very clearly.  I was so excited.  Almost all the family came for it, many of my teacher friends, people from Weaverville and Almaden churches and many from the Berkeley Church.  Bob whispered to me as the ceremony proceeded, “it seems like a wedding.”  There were solemn vows taken before the assembled congregation and God.  Kate and Lyn from Weaverville sang “On Eagle’s Wings.”  Nancy, Robby and Paul played a special Telemann piece of music for me.  The Folk Choir from Almaden came up and played music.  Erik even played is tuba in the band, as I recall.  Music has always been important to me.  And special ministers to me preached, read scripture and gave me the charges that I still remember.  And then there was the laying on hands which signified the authority and Spirit given me by the congregation.  Everyone got up and formed a long chain in the aisle and lay hands of the shoulder of the person in front of them sending all their love and energy to me.  It was overwhelming.  And to top it off, in the evening, there was a special catered dinner at my friend Nancy’s house  Today is the 25th Anniversary of that special day.  What a journey these years have been!

And today is also Ash Wednesday, the day we celebrate in the church the beginning of the season of Lent.  I remember two very special Ash Wednesday services I planned and led.  One was at FCCB, after I returned there when I retired from ministry.  It was in Loper Chapel, I remember the line of people to come in was soooo long.  The number I remember is 70 people.  It felt like the whole world was coming to worship.  And last year at Arlington Church, Barry and I led a very special service.  We expected 6 or 7 people to come but the people just kept coming.  We enlarged the circle of chairs then enlarged it again and again.  The Spirit was very present and at the end of the service, no one wanted to leave.  

The thing is today represents love to me. Love is the energy that makes things happen and binds us together. I have been blessed by much love in my life: my husband and family and dear friends have loved me into being who I am today.  My ministry was focused on love, the love God has for us all and bringing that love to the congregation.  I delight in finding hearts out in nature.  To me, they are a reminder that the universe is a benevolent place and that God’s love is all around us all the time.  As the Beatles sang back in the day,  “All you need is love, da, da, da, da, dahhh.”

 

Loving the Natural World

 This morning at the Botanical Garden, it was very wet from yesterday’s rain.  I told my co-workers not to come in because everything would be too soggy.  After checking the deck and then all our plants (everything was in order), I decided to take a stroll through the Garden.  The first beautiful thing I saw were the bright purple berries on a tall Japanese bush, each one with a single drop of water hanging from it like a shining crystal.  I continued on to the Japanese pool.  It is restored after a major clean out.  There were newts and newt egg cases everywhere.  I watched their activity with delight, thrilled the newts have found their way back.

I don’t know when I began to love the Natural World.  Mother told me I was happiest outside in the garden as a young child.  There is a photo of me before I could walk with my face smeared with dirt, sitting under the avocado trees that shaded out yard. .  I’d crawl around and eat the fallen avocados (and I guess dirt too).  I remember going to a vacant lot when the field mustard was as tall as I was and making secret paths, tunnels and rooms among the verdant sweet yellow flowered weeds.  How I loved that!  As a child, we used to spend most of every summer at the beach.  Mom would just put us out after breakfast and we’d come back just to eat.  The long summer days were spent beach-combing, playing the sand and water and swimming.  Later as a teen, I’d sunbathe with friends..  In college my favorite professor, Dr.Beidleman, was a naturalist.  I remember he took us out into the mountains one night to look for beaver dams, beavers he said were nocturnal.  I’d have followed him anywhere.  I decided then that was what I wanted to be:  a naturalist.

Over the years, increasingly I found joy and peace in the great beauty I’d find outside in Nature.  When I taught, whenever I could,  I took students outside to experience the things they were learning about.  I was even considered the school’s naturalist by some of the teachers.  I never felt I learned enough.  For the last 8 1/2 years I’ve volunteered at the UCBotanical Garden and it has become my go-to place of joy and peace and beauty.  I’d forgotten how much I love that place.  But this morning, out to spot plants we might propagate, I remembered.  I was greeted by name by several of the Hort staff and had a long lovely conversation with one of them.  In these times where the news is so bad, where the effects of global warming are increasingly visible even when I don’t look for them, I find great solace in Nature, in the Garden.