Divine Silence

The divine silence is not a vacuum to be filled but a mystery to be entered into, unarmed with words and undistracted by noise…Our job is not to pierce that mystery with language but to reverence it.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Spring

Spring is sprung,

The grass is ris,

Eyes itch, I sneeze,

Hay-fever is.

Joy

There is always joy, you just need to know where to look for it.

Words

Words form themselves,

Spill gently

Onto the attendant page,

Swirl, re-form, make sense

Make sentence.

Beautiful words that

Roll off the tongue:

Mellifluous, numinous, eloquence,

Concordance, assonance, antithesis,

Inchoate poetry…

Metanoia.

Who’s Driving?

Max has a new car, a hybrid, silent running when the electric motor is engaged. And environmentally friendly. Cool!

But it also has a lot of bells and whistles that my simple little manual doesn’t have. It senses your presence with the gadget in your pocket (no key to put in the ignition!) and opens the door for you. It thoughtfully leaves its lights on while you walk to the front door, digging in your bag for the right key, then switches off.

It reads roadside speed signs and chastises you when you’re above the limit. It puts the brakes on when it thinks you’re too close to something. It beeps angrily at you if you don’t engage/disengage the park brake or don’t put your seat belt on. Cruise control means it doesn’t need your foot on the accelerator to keep going… It has satnav to give you the wrong directions for where you know you want to go, and argues when you ignore it. And, it has an annoying female American voice that greets you with “Right here for your driving safety”, “Powering up”, “Powering down”. I have to grit my teeth because apparently there’s no way to switch her off…

Who needs a human driver? The robots are coming…

Swan Plant

Been doing some research into growing swan plant (Gomphocarpus fruticosus) and found that strictly speaking it is a noxious weed here and shouldn’t be grown in the home garden! It’s native to South Africa, spreads like a weed here in South Australia, noxious because its sap is toxic. The purists won’t countenance growing it as butterfly food for the Monarch as this is a feral too! They insist we should not grow food for the foreigner at the expense of natives. Not very Christian if, like me, you extend care for others to the whole of creation.

The quote below is from one of my online resources. http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au/plants/apoc/gomphocarpus-fruticosus.html

Sums it up nicely…

“Whilst neither Gomphocarpus fruticosus nor Danaus plexippus are natives to Australia, if that is going to be held against them then most of us are going to have to pack up and move out with them.”

Joy

Just had the joy of watching a pair of Monarch/Wanderer butterflies (Danaus Plexippus) circling close around my head in a beautiful mating dance. My hair is currently purple, so maybe I need to change my name to Buddleia?

My candle

Burning a candle at both ends can have more than one meaning…

The Book Keeper Book Shop

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

Image by Christophe Blain

View original post

Books

“A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.”

Henry Miller The Books In My Life (1969)

Sermon: Putting one foot in front of the other

“Sometimes we cannot fly; we cannot run. In those times God offers us the much less impressive power of walking without fainting.”

Rev Doc Geek

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
7^th of February 2021

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147
Mark 1:29-39

We woke up on Thursday morning to a new case of community transmission in Victoria. The covid19 journey is truly a wild rollercoaster of a ride. This week we swung from celebrating effectively eliminating covid19 by going twenty-eight days without community transmission, to once again masking up and reducing the size of our gatherings. It is exhausting.

The Book of Isaiah, that wonderful ‘fifth gospel,’ offers us perspective. The last time we heard from the prophet we know as ‘Second Isaiah’ was in the second week of Advent, when we were given the beginning of his words of comfort from the ‘Book of Consolation’. Whenever I preach from Second Isaiah I remind the congregation of the circumstances in which he was prophesying so, in case you have forgotten: Jerusalem had been conquered by…

View original post 1,722 more words