Prayers for Peace

Only a fool presumes to know what demons stalk any given individual. This week we pray for stupid frat boys, yet again, to cease and desist from being stupid! We pray fervently for veterans who have defended the flag of our country, and yet we seek to understand protesters who see that flag as a symbol of oppression. We pray for lawmakers and judges and so many others who hold within their hands the fates of so many who need a hand up rather than a smack down, a hug rather than a kick in the shin, or higher. Normally I would be ranting on these things, waving my tattered liberal flag and asking how long, Oh Lord, will hate triumph over love. But this post is more personal...much more personal. It is about life and death. I have walked the razor's edge...still walk it. This week I am reminded in a powerful, tragic way, why I must continue to walk, to live.

Today, as the cold rain falls across Ohio, I mourn for a man I never knew...a farmer from a long line of farmers up here in the Heartland. He died two weeks ago, leaving behind children and grandchildren, one of whom is my student most dear. I just learned that he died by his own hand, for his own reasons, or lack of reason. And so I pray for his soul, that what survives of him in the great unknown will come to terms with whatever haunted the man and will move onward and upward. As for his granddaughter, my heart is breaking on her behalf.

All teachers at one time or another joke about the death toll papers and exams seem to inflict on students' extended families. True enough...death comes in its own time, and has no respect for coursework or exam schedules. I quit joking about it a long time ago. I've seen it happen too often, and I mean I personally know too  many people who lost loved ones at "inconvenient" moments to joke. One year I celebrated graduation with a young lady who had lost her mother a month earlier to a car wreck. I once gave an exam to a group of students, many of whom did not know that one of their number was absent because she was in the morgue. In short, I would rather have a dozen students lie or exaggerate about their loss and grief than risk ignoring or punishing one truly-grief-stricken person.

I take this position from hard personal experience. I know what it was like to lose my grandfathers. It was the year I turned 16. Teachers, mentors, friends, family all seemed to think that I just needed to move on. I couldn't, for a variety of reasons. In some ways I still grieve for the losses of that year...indeed I do. As many of you know, the ghosts of 1975 still haunt me...probably always will. So I do not joke about dead grandmothers and grandfathers, anymore than I would joke about my wife's ongoing struggle with the feeling of absence in her life due to the passing of her mother many years ago. I of course feel that absence, too, both the loss of hers and, later, my own.

Surely all of us have lost loved ones and struggled with grief. Most of us have been touched by the tragic hand of suicide in some way or another. Contrary to the famous MASH song, suicide is never painless, even if it brings many changes. I see the pain in my dear student's eyes...the tearstains, the loss, the hurt, the anger, all welling up. Her life wasn't exactly all hugs and puppies, anyway, and suddenly this gaping hole has been ripped...one man's decision, for his own reasons, or lack of reason, and a family shattered. It will take time for her to pull together the ripped fabric. She has that time, for my part...I know grief is personal, and each person has his or her own timetable for each instance. So I simply pray for peace...and for understanding. Sometimes the grandparent really does die, and the student's life really is shattered. I have walked that hellish path, in my own way...I know it can be walked...must be walked, but I cannot give someone else a time limit for walking it.

Jeanne d'Arc and Tulips

The flower fort is really coming into shape!

 Jeanne d'Arch crocuses

 Red and white tulips

 Big sexy...

 And the fabulous

 Eye-popping

 Pansies!

'Tis a happy little fort...

Fort Pansy

We cleaned out our raised beds and decided to devote the lower bed to seasonal flowers. The upper bed will be for tomatoes and such, as usual. Here is my first creation, which I have dubbed "Fort Pansy"...we are very happy to have color and blooming plants in our lives again after a rather monochromatic winter!

Building materials for the fort...

State of the art equipment

Initial construction

The Song Sparrow approves!

The tulip "tower" in the middle...added a day later

Phone photo of the completed fort!

 Mama Squirrel looks on with interest...I suspect we will have Sunflowers cropping up in our garden patch again this year, lol.

I think it is a cute little fort...if only all "forts" were constructed this way...

Somber night for a moon dance

The full moon rose midst clouds

 She played peekaboo with me for a spell

 Gaily dancing

 Darkness and light

 First full moon after the spring equinox

 Sacred to Hebrew, Christian, and Pagan alike

 Passover had begun

 Eastertide was upon us

 Our darkness, her light...

 A bit after 6am this morning, the heralded lunar eclipse began

 Earth-shadow devouring the moon

 Ancient dance

Blood moon eclipse, setting in the west

Today is filled with somber reflection...grief for what has happened to students, friends, all of us; anger for seeming senseless violence, hate, destruction; horror for young lives, families, communities shattered, children orphaned, bright lights extinguished. We could use some resurrection up in here! Some rebirth and renewal. May it be so!

Duck Hunting with the Nikon

 Synchronized swimming...beautiful pond!

 Mixing it up...Canvasback and Ring-necked ducks

 Ring-necked duck crashing the Canvasback party!

Couples and singles

Eligible Ring-necked bachelor

 Canvasback couple giving another female the cold shoulder

 Hmmm...is that the guy who almost landed on us?

 The look that female Canvasback is giving the other female!

 Yep, that's the guy...

So...swim here often? Beautiful Ring-necked couple