I’ve made my way to my laptop this morning to begin this entry for you all and my self after a morning of planting sweet peppers, hot peppers, and eggplant. My favorite sweet peppers to grow are of the Marconi category. They are an Italian sweet pepper variety that come in oranges, reds, or yellows. This year I planted Marconi Red, from a seed packet I purchased last Summer from Seed Saver’s Exchange during my cross country road trip (read an entry I wrote along this journey from Montana to SC on seeds and faith here.) I am drawn to growing Marconi peppers over other types of sweet bell peppers because of their prolific and hardy nature. They are really good producers while handling our long, hot, and humid summers. They produce until frost… Side story, growing up we had a few raised beds in our lawn downtown. And I had an Italian Gold Marconi pepper that survived winter and bore fruits for 2.5 years! It was nuts. Since then I’ve been sold on Marconi peppers. This is the variety I planted this year. I’ll let you know if they do as good as the gold ones!

Signs of Winter are behind. Most trees I know are fully leafed out as of now bringing shade to us ground dwellers, and a lime green show if you gaze up into the tree canopy this time of year. We’ve been blessed with a streak of clear sunny days, and I can not get enough of gazing up into the lime green tree canopy, against the clear blue bird sky. The fresh leaves only stay lime for so long, as Spring turns to Summer they mature to a darker richer green. So do stare at the trees for now, the leaves are electrifying.

Easter Reflections

I’m an Easter person. Some folks love Thanksgiving. Some love Christmas. Some love 4th of July (yikes), and some love Halloween. For me, Easter has always stood out as my favorite holiday for as long as I can recall.

As I grow older in years, I am more drawn to finding, creating, and exploring deeper meaning behind the holidays. In our culture that has commercialized the holidays to the point of their spiritual extinction, it can require added effort and discipline to return to the more spiritual dimension behind each of our celebrated days.

Many of us understand that Easter symbolizes Jesus’s story of crucifixion and resurrection, and Easter is the day that we Christians have chosen to celebrate the Resurrection and Eternal Life, but what does that really mean to me, to you, to us? Perhaps this is why I am drawn to slowing down, turning inwards, and cultivating quietness around certain holidays. Because it is in those quiet moments where I discover the true meaning of something for me, and that evolves and depends year to year as I gain new life experiences.

It’s often a difficult thing to quiet down because around Holidays we celebrate. We gather with family, cook lots of food, chit chat, drink alcohol. And all this noise can make it difficult to sense the true meaning of the celebrated day.

But Easter is a more quiet one. My family has no long standing tradition aside from being outside most of the day, and eating a good meal at some point whether its supper or lunch. Sometimes its immediate family, sometimes its the whole Gregorie clan (upwards of 35+ people that are like immediate family, we’re quite close). This year no plans have been made yet and I’m delighted to plan my own which is to pause, go outside somewhere beautiful with a few people, and simply enjoy the truth of Life, that everything is being continuously made new in Christ.

I’ll never forget a sermon I once heard in person by a minister who was once a thief and murderer. He came to know Eternal Life while living in prison where he was being punished for his past actions. Without going into the nitty gritty of this man’s story, he found Jesus in his own story. God’s grace fell upon him one night, the night this man tried taking his own life, and instead of death he found the Holy Spirit in his own heart. And in his own heart for the first time he was able to feel God’s love and forgiveness and therefore love and forgive himself.

He used the words “made new”. And this man realized everyday we’re being made new. Everyday we are a new person in Christ if we chose to see it. And it was this knowing he had in his heart, that allowed him to let go of all his past actions, and start loving himself and others the way God intended for us to be loved- the way God loves us. He completed his term in prison, and eventually started a ministry to support the spirituality of people in prison.

I was in awe of this man’s story. How capable he was to surrender judgement of himself for his past, and seriously wake up everyday with such renewed aliveness, love, and compassion for himself and the whole world. He is someone really living the faith, where as me, I’m still trying to!

I think about the Natural World and how most spiritualities share patterns with Creation Herself. This pattern of birth, death, and resurrection is everywhere all around us particularly in Spring. New Life bursts forth everywhere out of Winter (death and decay). There really is no such thing as “eternal death” in Nature. If something dies, it is reborn into a new form of life. Our bodies become food for worms. Dead trees become fungi. Dead animals give life to buzzards and other scavengers.

I hope to never find completion in the meaning of things. I’d rather let meaning evolve- I think we are smarter and wiser that way. It’s also a practice. May I be willing to see this the way God sees it. I’m always having to learn that. Being quite the nature ideologue, I’ve had to learn to soften my frustrations and anger around the many “wrongs” in our society. Life becomes lighter when we cling less to our beliefs.

So, those are my Easter rambles. If the day is anything for you, I hope it is a day of trusting in the newness of life that is promised to each of us if we are willing to allow.

To honor the death of a tree.

I’m angered by the loss of a tree. And the only way I can process the anger is to honor the tree by way of sharing it with you all.

A majestic old pine fell to fire (prescribed fire) today on the land my family calls our own. It was an avoidable situation, hence the anger, and we must accept what is. The majestic tree is no longer. What new life will come of its death? We shall wait and see. Perhaps it is my courage to speak. Perhaps it is an invitation for someone to live differently. Perhaps it is snakes that will use the charred stump for nesting.

The pine was girthy, but more than that its canopy was wide and large and housed many of hawks and owls, as they scanned the open understory for rodents and amphibians. The pine cones fed many a squirrels and birds. And lizards and insects nested in the cracks of its shaley bark. Snakes and small mammals nested in the cavity at its base, the cavity that led the tree to eventually being caught ablaze. No other tree is exactly like it. In that place, with that branching structure.

There is protocol prescribed burners take to protect old trees. In our current environment, after all new ones aren’t being made. Raking around the tree prior to a prescribed fire and having a water based fire extinguisher on hand if it happens to catch is one way to save it from being burned to death. But burned to death it went because no one was there that cared to protect it.

What new life will come of its death? May I be open to seeing it.

Till next week,

Lucie