Honeysuckle Eats a Grape

Sleeping in the litter

Saturday: in which I gather neglected thoughts and projects, and wonder if I should find the surface of my desk one of these days. Nawwww. Everyone has departed – Sandy returned to New Zealand yesterday morning having been here since the 4^th of July. Anna Dahl has gone home to Iowa for the weekend – she’ll be back Sunday night to do her shifts as a nurse at St. Mary’s. Anita went to Madison to meet Marsena and see an outdoor Shakespeare play in the evening and hang out for the weekend. We are bunny-sitting and eating Farmer’s Market Golden Baby Tomatoes by the handful.

Honeysuckle is Anita’s angora rabbit who shares, nay, rules our screened-in back porch. She personifies the moniker “Dumb Bunny” but we appreciate her dumbness as after all, God’s made her that way. Unlike many of us, she is comfortable in her creaturely-ness. She sleeps in her litter box with no apology, nibbles Denis’ slippers, (he lets her for heaven’s sake), hops up on the shelf to eat a bowl of chips, gnaws the siding off the house (we put a stop to that!) and steadfastly refuses to acknowledge my presence unless I have a blueberry or a grape.

I never quite get it. At the same time I don’t mind the reminder – it’s the small parts of life, the insignificant, the common that become the holy parts – the places where God waters and feeds us.

Full with your love

      …as we watch the Gulf enfolded, blanketed, blotted with the black energy we all use and can’t entirely escape. I read in Psalm 119 this morning: “The earth is filled with your love, O Lord; teach me your decrees.”

     Have also been reading a little book by Frederick Buechner: Speak What We Feel: Not What We Ought to Say. Found these two quotes that reach beyond the time in which they were written.

“The present era of incredible rottenness is not Democratic, it is not Republican, it is national.”   - Mark Twain.

“The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater.” - Walt Whitman.

     Corruption has been with us since the beginning. I can’t say I’m innocent or haven’t contributed. It’s a challenge to maintain calmness and trust (as opposed to anger and ranting) and the intention to do right as creation groans with the weight of our footprints: God has not forgotten the earth. Despite the bleakness of parts and the worsening, deepening of its groaning, it will be made whole again one day. Meanwhile, I still hear wrens sing and see bumble bees drink from the dianthus in our back yard… and that’s more fullness than I deserve this day…Thanks, O Lord.