Gardening

Bethany and I have transformed our little dead garden into a beautiful array of colours, stems, and sweet smelling petals.

But in the middle of the garden was a bush that had not yet sprouted any green leaves or flowers. It look dead. It was dry, brown and quite ugly against our fresh little flowers that we had planted around it. I looked at it and was then determined to pull it out since it didn't appear to be living, and since it made the garden look so ugly.

However, we decided to give it another week or two just in case it was still alive. Sure enough, several weeks later tiny little green leaves are beginning to peek out of the brown stems. This reminds me of life.

When we view our lives and look at the pain that we see in them we begin to feel disheartened. We don't want pain to be in our lives because it looks so ugly against the bright colourful cheerful things. We have a choice to either pull the pain up and pretend it never existed, or let it sit there a while.

If we choose the latter option, we will find that it will teach us things about ourselves and who we are. And if we wait long enough we will soon find little green fresh living things sprouting from the dead bush...give it time; eventually it will blossom and the garden will be fuller because of it. And I really do believe that our lives will be fuller when we allow ourselves to feel pain and let it sit with us a while, trusting that God will eventually bring beauty even into the darkness of our lives.

may my heart always be open to little... (19) by E. E. Cummings

may my heart always be open to
littlebirds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

99

now all the fingers of this tree (darling) have
hands, and all the hands have people; and
more each particular person is (my love)
alive than every world can understand

and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before-
and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which
fingers are without hands; and i have no
you: and all trees are (any more than each
leafless) its silent in forevering snow

-but never fear (my own, my beautiful
my blossoming) for also then's until

"No single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!"
-Abraham Kuyper

Poetry

This next poem was first read on some hay stacks. A few friends and I had gone to watch the sunrise. We set up our blankets on the hay stacks and then waited for the golden globe of light to peak over the long dark fields of morning. As we were reading this poem the sun began to peek its way over the dark fields, and then by the end it was spreading its warmth on all of us. These moments are poetry in themselves. Here is the poem:

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
Any experience, your eyes have their silence:
In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
Or which I cannot touch because they are too near

Your slightest look easily will unclose me
Though I have closed myself as fingers,
You open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

Or if your wish be to close me, I and
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
The power of your intense fragility: whose texture
Compels me with the colour of its countries,
Rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is about you that closes
And opens; only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e.cummings

e.e.cummings

i thank you God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-
and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Translated by Robert Bly

Looking-Glass Self

The way humans view themselves is largely built up on the ways in which the primary people in their lives view them. In essence, nobody is free from the views of others, these perceptions that others have of us, begin at a very young age and make us who we are; this process is defined by Horton Cooley (1864-1929) who created the term, “The Looking-Glass Self”.
This refers to the fact that the image others have of themselves is based largely on how they believe others see them. We become self-fulfilling prophecies through the eyes of others.
We begin to form attachments and make friends with people who share the same view of ourselves that we have of ourselves. And the view that we have of ourselves comes from those people who have shaped that view. If someone has come from a family that has thought little of them, their perception of themselves results in low self-esteem and a negative self-image, brought on by the negative views their parents or close relatives have had on them.
Perhaps that is why many girls who have grown up with a father who was abusive and condescending repeat this pattern with boyfriends and husbands. They view themselves the way their father has taught them to view themselves, and they are most comfortable with people who hold this same view, because that is what they are used to, and that is who they believe they are.
There is a pattern that exists between abusive and condescending relationships. Soon, the person begins to see them self, just as the abuser sees them, and it is difficult to jump out of this pattern because the negative self-image becomes a part of that person.
How can these patterns of abuse be broken?

People cannot find themselves alone; without the views and assumptions that others have placed on them. We find people that see the same truth about ourselves that we have been taught to believe.
In Karl E. Scheibe’s book, “The Drama of Everyday Life,” he writes that the equilateral of asking, “Do you love me?” is: “Do you see the same truth that I see?” Do you see me as I see myself? When we have positive thoughts about ourselves we will seek out positive people that will see us for who we believe we are. Yet, if we have a negative and low self-esteem it will be easier and more comfortable for us to find someone who also sees this “truth”; that we are unlovable and incompetent.
This cycle can only be broken through a loving God, who takes his children up and shows them how he sees them. Beautiful, glorious children of God; worth every drop of blood; worthy of love, worthy to make attachments with people who can say, “I see the same truth that He sees.” The One who looks deeper than the skin, and past the insecurities and faces others have placed on us.
People categorize, marginalize and dehumanize people everyday. All of us are tainted with the masks, names, words and negativity of others, but it is when we look past all of that; realizing its weight and power, yet negating it to what is: masks, words, names that hide the real person underneath. When we begin to ask God to show us the truth that He sees then we will be better able to love and be loved in return.