“Layer” is the word for Frank’s photo challenge this week. My sweet tooth got the final vote this afternoon: six-layer bars (aka dream bars).
Melted butter disappears into the graham cracker crumb layer. Chocolate chips, pecans and coconut can be seen in all three pictures. The gooey-ness of the third photo is the sweetened condensed milk.
As the wind blows the fresh fallen snow covering the ice on streets and sidewalks, we’re skipping Sunday morning worship for the third week in a row. Grateful for this sermon from Mitch Teemley.
I suggest you ignore this post. Instead, find a piece of fresh fruit, pick it up, and take a few minutes to consider its surface texture. While you’re at it, notice how it was attached to the tree or bush or vine or whatever plant on which it grew.
What? You’re still reading? Or did you come back?
The other day I noticed a banana on the table. Its surface is smoother than an orange. And not quite as smooth as an apple.
The results of my attempts to photograph the banana were dismal. The orange and the apple pictures were better. Eating breakfast this morning I decided to try getting decent photos of blueberries and strawberries.
So here you are: pictures of fruit.
Fuji Apple. Photo: TLClark, Feb 2019.
I’m thinking a whole series of photos of apples would be fun to do. Different kinds with their different colors. Use a knife to cut one way to see the star-shaped center with seeds. Cut the other way – the usual way – for apple slices to eat with peanut butter. Maybe an apple with a single bite or perhaps many bites. Maybe just an apple core.
Navel Orange. Photo: TLClark, Feb 2019.
I really should have taken a photo of the navel end of the orange! But I liked seeing the stem; notice how different is is from the apple stem.
Blueberries. Photo: TLClark, Feb 2019.
I opted not to highlight the ends of the blueberries once attached to a plant because I’m intrigued by the little star on the other end!
Strawberries. Photo: TLClark, Feb 2019.
The underside of the leaves of the strawberries are a much brighter green than the top side. I wonder if that’s always true or just true of this particular crop.
Fruit in Bowl. TLClark, 2019.
If there were other kinds of fresh fruit in the house – other than an over-ripe banana and some pineapple already cut up – I’d have more pictures. Guess I need to start next Friday’s grocery list!
Thinking about the large aquarium in the waiting area of the Infusion Suite at Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, I grabbed my compact digital camera before we headed there yesterday. Frank’s Tuesday Photo Challenge this week is surface and I wondered if I could capture the water’s surface.
Aquarium, Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. Photo: TLClark, 2/21/19.
I had to turn off the camera’s automatic flash, move around to get the right light, and watch for people appearing in the frame. The bubbles as well as the reflections of plants and fish on the surface of the water in the large aquarium exceeded my expectations. A bonus: the room being reflected on the glass surface of the aquarium. A side bit of fun: an older gentleman offered to get me a fishing pole.
With my imagination primed and a camera nearby, I started seeing bubbles, reflections, or interesting textures everywhere I looked.
There were bubbles from a carbonated beverage on the inside surface of a paper cup.
Bubbles in Paper Cup. Photo: TLClark, 2/21/19.
As the docetaxel dripped its way through tubing into to my beloved’s veins, droplets clung to the inside surface of the top vial and air bubbles appeared on the surface of the liquid.
Docetaxel. Photo: TLClark, 2/21/19.
Light revealed the textured surface of a glass panel providing a bit of privacy for patients.
Glass Panel. Photo: TLClark, 2/21/19.
The glass roof below intrigues me whenever I walk by. It was covered with snow on our visit three weeks ago. Yesterday the surface reflected the buildings around it.
Glass Roof, Pomerantz Family Pavilion, UIHC. Photo: TLClark, 2/21/19.
Thanks, Frank, for a great challenge!
For those who are wondering, the chemo is working its magic with minimal side effects. With all kinds of gratitude, Teressa
It snowed nine or ten inches between 9 p.m. Saturday and mid-day Sunday.
Since snow-covered, slippery roads have veto power over (nearly) every voluntary activity, my husband and I missed gathering with other Christians to worship God for the second week in a row. We’re the type that rarely miss church. Missing two Sundays in a row is highly uncharacteristic, nearly unthinkable! God doesn’t mind; but it makes my week feel odd.
Our driveway Sunday morning after a bit of shoveling on my part an hour or so earlier; before the professionals arrived.
A week ago we held our own little worship service. We sang a few songs from Taizé, read John’s favorite scripture (Matthew 6:25-31), prayed, and sang some more.
This Sunday we listened to Iowa Public Radio and worked on a puzzle while waiting for our out-of-town weekend guests. It had just begun snowing when they headed to the hotel late Saturday; we were hoping they’d safely return to our home Sunday. (They did.)
Whether heading to church or staying home, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders has become one of my must-listen-to Sunday programs. Sam and his guests help me hear the week’s news from a perspective outside my every day experience. It has the feel of chatting with friends and leaves me feeling both encouraged and challenged (much like a good sermon). I can’t tell you what I heard yesterday but I’m sure it fed my spirit (also like a good sermon).
Be safe, friends, wherever you are whether or not there’s snow on the ground. And may you hear something today that feeds your spirit.
Teressa
My imagination must have been napping when I read Frank’s photo challenge earlier this week. Nothing came to mind for the prompt “crawl.” He had a photo of a snake. Since I’m not a fan of snakes, I knew I wouldn’t go that direction!
An idea crept up on me earlier today. Crawling through photo file folders, I found a few not-so-creepy-crawlies on flowers. Bugs don’t creep me out like snakes do. And most of the bugs that have appeared in my pictures fly as well as crawl.
Here are three photos of Japanese beetles on flowers and one image of damage done. All were taken in early July 2011 when the beetles invaded our flower beds, voraciously eating their way through foliage.
One Japanese beetle crawling on a single zinnia doesn’t look too destructive.
One cosmos with seven – or more – Japanese beetles doing their thing.
Japanese beetles are certainly crawling all over the marigolds, but are they feasting?
Shredded leaves tell the tale of the beetles’ visit.
Love never ends. – 1 Corinthians 13:8a NRSV
I suspect, but am not certain, that every time I’ve read 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding I’ve skipped from the “love never ends” of verse 8 to the “and now faith, hope and love abide” of verse 13.
At the same time I teach that we should wonder what a preacher is leaving out when omitting part of the text.
If you’re curious, here it is:
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:8-1 NRSV
Love – God’s love, the love we see most fully in the face of Jesus – Love makes all things complete. As we mature in love, we become more whole. As we grow in love’s ways, we more clearly reflect the One in whose image we are created.
Here’s the thing: we need one another to get there. Love does not flourish in isolation. Love thrives in relationship – with God, with friend/family/neighbor/stranger, with creation. We each know in part; we need each other to begin to know in whole.
In the simplicity and the complexity of living with one another on this planet we call home, may you know Love and be an expression of Love.
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13 NRSV
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. – 1 Corinthians 13:5b-8a NRSV
Love insists that every way be loving. A person acting with love – living love’s way – will not insist on his or her own way. Usually. Particularly when the other options available are expressions of love. But sometimes love means speaking up or speaking out or speaking against a way that is not loving.
Love does not believe all things. Especially if we are talking about believing everything you hear or everything you read. Real love believes the best about another, looks for the good, seeks out the inspiring. True love harbors doubts about second-hand stories and rumors that in any way disparage another; love grieves when such stories and rumors are accurate.
Even if we are talking about believing as giving our heart to and orienting our lives toward, then love still does not believe all things. Love believes – sets its heart on and orients its life toward – all things life giving.
When one is treated without love in the name of love – say, being beaten or belittled or isolated or controlled – love does not bear it or endure it or simply hope for better. Love leaves.
When you share life – in all its glorious messiness – with one who truly supports you and wants only the best for you, who would do anything to see you smile or hear you laugh, who can sit in the silence with you when there are no words and share your tears in the midst of the heart-wrenching, then love does indeed bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. Whether parent or partner or friend, that kind of love that never ends.
May you love and be loved in all ways life giving.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. – 1 Corinthians 13:4-5a NRSV
Yes, this is the beginning of a Biblical text used at many, many Christian weddings.
But it’s not just for two consenting adults who are freely making vows to mutually support and encourage and care for one another through the valleys and peaks of life.
This text is for everyone. (Paul probably borrowed it from his culture and adapted it for the church.)
Love is not a feeling. Love is an action. Love is how we treat one another.
We all live in relationship to other human beings every day of our lives. Friends. Family. Neighbors. Strangers. Colleagues. Coaches. Teammates. Employers. Employees. Customers. Caregivers. Care receivers. Teachers. Students. Fill in the blank: _____________ . People just like us – even when they seem as different as can be imagined.
We are all called to be patient and kind. Patient with ourselves; patient with others. Kind to ourselves; kind to others. That’s what love is. It’s what love does.
Sounds so simple. Yet can be so hard. Particularly in a culture that seems to admire and even celebrate hurry-up, get-it-done, look-out-for-oneself, take-advantage-of-everyone, what’s-in-it-for-me attitudes and actions.
Love is patient. Love is kind.
At the same time, none of us are called to be envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. Not envious about what another has or has accomplished. Not boastful of our own or a loved one’s accomplishments. Not arrogant about whatever or however we might think we are superior. Not rude – ever.
Love is patient. Love is kind.
May it be so in my life.
“If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal.
“If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all the mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains but I don’t have love, I’m nothing.
“If I give away everything that I have and hand over my own body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 CEB
Did you read the text above? Really read it?
The guy sitting next to me at church Saturday evening harumphed – an audible, derisive sort of scoff – at the truth of it. He was genuinely surprised to hear this sort of thing coming from the Bible.
It’s great imagery.
Say what I will but words without love are just noise. And it’s not just about the tone or the sincerity; it’s about being truly genuine and coming from a place of deep compassion for the persons – every single one of them, friend and foe alike – who will hear what I say.
Look into the future if that’s your thing but if you don’t see through eyes of love you might as well be blind.
If my generosity isn’t fueled by love, I’m not being generous. I’d add that if there strings attached, it’s neither generous nor a gift.
The apostle Paul – formerly known as Saul, now known as St. Paul – is writing to a church divided and is calling for unity. The body of Christ – the sum total of all the followers of Jesus – is ONE. It’s made of many parts, all equally good, all absolutely necessary, each with different gifts. To treat any individual as less than, to ignore or dismiss another, is simply not the way of Christ.
How we treat each other – within the church or not, Christian or not, matters.
It’s something to consider.
Hearts at Faith United Church of Christ, February 2013. Photo: TLClark
Another LQQK 