Gardens and Stooges

I’m so tired of the rain and grey skies!! I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. I’m just so over it all!! I want to sit out in the sun and warm my poor old decrepit bones. I’m really, really tired of being cold! I miserable!! --- Don’t you feel sorry for me?

I really am ready for spring to be here in all of her glory. This past weekend I planted flowers in my pots, hung window boxes, and finished trimming the bushes. Ok so maybe it was more like hacking at them, and Danna (my sister) helped A LOT, but it got done. The yard is looking pretty good; the flowers just need to grow now.

Yesterday Danna said we should put a veggie garden in my backyard. Excellent idea; as most of her ideas are! I have a good yard for a garden for several reasons: 1) My backyard gets great sunlight all day, 2) There’s plenty of room, and 3) I don’t have any kids or dogs, or all the things that go with them. Danna’s plan is to get the kids involved in the planning, prepping, planting and growing of the garden. This of course means she will be doing the lion’s share to the work, but the kids will still have a blast and learn something in spite of their short attention spans. I will try to remember to water it, and help as I can. I have to admit my attention span isn’t too long either.

I’m really excited to have a garden at my house. I like gardens, I just can’t stay interested in caring for them, but I will do very well if there is someone there to do the work with. I suck at solo endeavors, I’m much better with at least one other person to work with, or a team. You know having someone to talk to and laugh with as you do the work. Without that the work seems to take forever and I can find very little joy in it.

I never really got the whole convent and monastery thing where you work from sun up to sun down in silence. How does drudgery pleasing God? When does a loving parent wish that on their child? It’s a total mystery to me, which probably explains why I have a hard time with religion in general.

I want a faith that’s about possibilities, opportunity and being all you can be --- wait that’s the Army! The point is religion always seems to be about don’t do this and don’t do that; about you must be this or believe that to be accepted. It drives me crazy when people say things like you can’t get into heaven unless you believe in God, or you have to accept Jesus as your savior. REALLY? I better hope I was born and raised in the Bible Belt and not some corner of China where I’ve never heard of Jesus, because in that case I’m just plain out of luck.

What if the Muslims have it right, or the Buddhists and we’re all wasting our time in church? What if the Bushmen of Africa have the real answer? Because you know we all think we have the right answer, and if there can only be one (Highlander reference) how do we truly know?

The common answer in Christianity is kinda like the one your mom gave you growing when you’d just keep asking “Why?” to every answer, “Because I said so!!!!” “God says so” or “Jesus says so”, on and on. Faith equals obedience, because I said so. And, by the way, it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t earn a place unless you are obedient and believe. God gives us reason and independent thought to set us above the animals and then says, wait you can’t use it where I’m concerned. How do you accept what reason tells you is not true? It’s like the freaking chicken and egg question. Was God really just trying to see who he could make crazy?

I get visions of God sitting in the clouds with the heavenly host, eating pop corn and sucking down sodas watching us wrestle with this. We have to be endlessly entertaining. We can cure disease, overcome natural disasters, rearrange the earth to meet our needs but in the end, no matter the millions of things we can do in coordination, it comes down to the very few differences that keep us separate. Watching this has to be something like watching an ant colony where all the ants are clones of Curly, Mo and Larry.