gardening

Here we are in the season of fresh fruit and vegetables ready to harvest. It has been a very hot, smoky, dry summer with little rain, yet my garden is producing carrots, zucchini and beets. Why? Perhaps because I have been tending to it and watering it daily.

I have also been through this season of summer enjoying, not only the bountiful garden and blooming flowers but venturing into the backroads and trails on foot and bike enjoying the warm days and quiet, calm evenings, but have seen the devastating drought and ruined crops. The rain has not come for many farmers.

We have also been through a season of discontent, uncertainty and discord in our global world and yet, when the shadow of the darkness covers the garden of my soul, I look to the living water. In the shadow of the evening, leaves are still, flowers close up and sunlight can’t permeate the folded petals or foilage of the forest to let the light in. I want to remember that heaven’s dew falls after the setting of the sun and I need to experience the darkness to see the light, the color, the cheerfulness and beauty of the garden because eventually morning will come. In Exodus 16:21, the Israelites gathered manna each morning, each family according to its need and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. God supplied their needs.

A Long Walk to Water was a #1 New York Times best-selling novel. Linda Sue Park weaves the stories of Ny, a Sudanese girl and Salva, also an eleven-year-old, one of the “lost boys of Sudan” into a novel of two children who encounter danger, yet live to improve the lives of others. She based the novel on Salva Dut, a survivor, who found Water for South Sudan. They overcame many obstacles on their journey on foot across Africa.

We will encounter struggles and go through the valley of tears, pain and sorrow in our lifetimes, but God has been and is with us every step of this life and we need to count each day as a blessing. We need to learn that God is the gardener of our souls. He knows how to tend to our gardens, make us fruitful and will see us through seasons of sadness into brighter tomorrows if we trust him. The flowers, fruit and abundance will be displayed and the flowers will bloom for us each year in full color as they wave in the wind in all their splendor. Let Him water your soul and let His words sink into the soil of your life. Let the living water bring you nourishment and quench your thirst and sustain you.

“…but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14

pop

Things sometimes pop up that need tending to. This is one of those summers.

As kids, we would make homemade popsicles and drink orange Crush pop in summers gone by. Our American cousins would tease us about drinking sodas, but we used our mom’s Tupperware, mixed the Koolaide with water and created our own popsicles anxiously awaiting the frozen treats. Sometimes we used to buy the packaged orange, purple and pink ones as well and try to divide them down the middle to share with our siblings. When we camped, we’d pop our popcorn over the fire and we’d listen to Pop music any time of the day. Relatives also used to pop in for a visit - some announced and some not. And grandpa or Pops would tease us about how much we had grown and popped up in height. Today, there are pop up shops and occasionally people pop by to see me. And so you might be wondering: What popped up?

And here’s where it all began 28 years ago….. it’s the backstory. Teach your children they’re unique. That way, they won’t feel pressured to be like everybody else. Cindy Cashman

After I had picked up my son, Tyrone from kindergarten one day, he told me that he was sad. When I asked him why, he said that they had been reading a story about a dinosaur named Tyrone the Terrible (https://www.amazon.ca/Tyrone-Horrible-Hans-Wilhelm/dp/0590414720) and he was getting teased. Being a mamma bear, I immediately jumped into defense mode and an idea popped into my head. I would solve the problem by writing a book about how terrific he was, not how terrible they thought he was. I commissioned a friend’s son to dabble with graphics using the original Mac and create a storyboard based on my stanza story. That was then.

Now fast forward to 2019 pre-COVID days when I am retired and retrieved my original story from my archived folder. A friend wanted an art project for her daughter and thus the story came alive again with new technology and the gift of a talented artist when she agreed to create characters for my story. And here we are 2021 and the project is complete and ready to be printed and published!

I am excited about this project that is over a quarter of a century in the making! In honor of children, I would like to donate $5 of the $15 I am charging for the book, to a daycare, dayhome and kindergarten to purchase other books in support of children’s authors. Tyrone the Terrific will be available on my website: www.lorriemorales.com as well as various stores in High River and area. Stay tuned for an eye-popping book to purchase for your child, grandchildren, friends and family before the end of the summer.

Even when I am old and gray,
do not forsake me, my God,
till I declare your power to the next generation,
your mighty acts to all who are to come. Psalm 71:18

angels

I am back…. little summer solitude.

”For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.“ Psalm 91:11

When translated, this means that God instructs His angels to watch over individuals. Each angel has a purpose and God has them guard his children and care for them. Satan even used this verse when he was tempting Jesus.

I have many miracle stories, angel stories and answered prayer stories.

Years ago, I was in a ski accident, left alone on the side of a mountain bleeding internally. After hours of calling for help, praying, crying out in pain, God sent an angel to that mountainside and I was rescued. You see, months after I got out of the hospital I went in search of that man. No one had heard of him and they told me no one by that name worked at the resort. An angel.

Just last week I heard a story about the pastor of a church in Barrie, Ontario who felt the need to go to the church and pray for protection for his community. Little did he know that within hours there was a devastating tornado that ripped through the community. Not one life was lost and even though roofs were torn off houses, not one shingle of the church was touched.

Another story occured in Africa to a young missionary man who was serving in a small field hospital. He was home to the United States on furlong and was visiting a local church in Michigan. He told the congregation his story.

Apparently he would travel by bicycle through the jungle every two weeks to the city to buy supplies. It took about two days, so he would camp overnight. On one occasion in the city, he saw two men fighting and after the brawl, he treated one of the men’s injuries and shared the story of Jesus with him. Two weeks later, he was met by the young man he had treated who told him that he and his friends knew that the missionary carried money and medicine and they had followed him planning to kill him and rob him. Just as they were about to do so, he said they saw the 26 armed guards surrounding the camp. The missionary laughed. “I was all alone that night.”

“But I saw them and so did my friends. We even counted them and we were afraid for our lives and left you alone,” replied the young man.

At that point in the story, one of the men in the church jumped up and asked, “Do you remember the date this happened?” The missionary told him and then another story was told.

When you were sleeping in your camp on the other side of the world, I was getting ready to go golfing. You suddenly came to mind and I felt the need to pray for you. In fact, he said, I called some of the men in the church and they met me here to pray as well.

“Can all those men who prayed with me please stand up?”

The missionary didn’t know who they were, but he counted 26 of them standing in the santuary that morning.

God works in mysterious ways. When we feel the power of the Holy Spirit moving in us, we need to follow that prod and pray. We never know whose life we might be saving. May His angels watch over you.

play

According to Diane Ackerman, “play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” I love to play with words, play the piano, watch a play and I used to play hockey. I’m not talking about video, computer or phone games which are referred to as “artificial play”. I’m thinking of childhood antics like running through a sprinkler on a hot summer afternoon across a green carpeted lawn screaming from the cold spray. It’s playing hide and seek and evading the seeker, finding a trail in the forest and looking for the highest branches of a tree to climb. It’s going to the local park to roll sideways down the hill or playing tag with each other. It’s making mud pies in the sandbox or sand castles in the sand with plastic shovels and pails and splashing in the clear, blue water jumping over the waves.

My neighbor runs a dayhome for children. I often hear the sounds of laugher, kids peek a booing through the fence at me and pretending they are explorers in the back yard. I am reminded of how creative children can be. Their self-expression is how they play and "is the highest form of research” (Albert Einstein) any adult could conduct. Have we as adults lost our childhood playfulness?

Just because we are “grown up” doesn’t mean we can’t concoct some element of playfulness. Health and well-being - particularily mental health - are so important for cognitive, social, affective and motor skill development in children. Experiencing creativity and play only contributes to their growth. According to a 2012 Marks-Tarlow study, they found that freedom to play is a key ingredient for joy, interest, passion and vitality later in life.

Two Greek words capture this freedom of play. Aristotle believed that eudaimonia is the highest human good and ability to realize one’s truest potential; while Apicurus thought that hedonia was that happines and positive effects contributed to feeling good. After all, who does not want to have that passion, love and vitality in one’s life? Start today to find that childlike play within us. It’s good for the soul.

Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy. Psalm 126: 2-3

Faces

Save face! Go wash your face! Face the facts! I know your face. We get lied to our faces and can have someone laugh in our face. We can put on a happy face but be faced with a dilemma. We sometimes don’t want to face the truth but we have to face reality at some point. What dangers do we face?

We see faces on magazine covers, billboards, in crowds and even the mirror. The faces of the youth, babies, middle-aged and elderly all have a story to tell. We have laughing faces and thoughtful, pensive faces. Faces of the unknown pass us on the street and we recognize certain faces in the media - our celebrities and heros but who are they really? George Bernard Shaw said that “you use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”

There is a Japanese myth that says we all have three faces. The first one is shown to the world and we let them see what we want them to see. The second face is the one we show to our family, our close friends and those we trust. But the last or third face is the one we keep to ourselves and show no one. That is the reflection of who we truly are.

It’s interesting that God created symmetry in faces of all creatures on earth. The eyes are positioned above to view the world. The nose is down to not only drain the sinus from tears, but pick up scents. The mouth is to ingest food that the eyes have seen and the nose has smelled. There are even universalities of facial expressions. We read faces for social signals. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize a person’s face but on the other hand, FFA or fusiform facial area in the right hemisphere of our brains increases blood flow to that area when our brain recognizes a face!

James, the brother of Jesus, compares looking at our face in the mirror to listening to the Word of God and then going away forgetting what we saw. James 1: 22-25 tells us that we are to…not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Maybe it’s time to face the truth of what we are living today. Dark shadows seem to cover the world in so many ways. We can choose to live in a grey world or heed Helen Keller’s words. At 19 months, she became both blind and deaf and went on to become a writer and lecturer. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”

expialidocious

I have recently joined an on-line cooking class with the focus on allergy conscious cooking. I also learned from one of the classes about doshas - kapha, vata, and pitta. According to the ancient Indian philosophy that universal life is manifested in one of these three ways, we are all made up of a combination of these three forces. Many people I talk to have expressed their concern over what they call the “pandemic diet” which often causes the individual to eat unhealthy foods, suffer from too much inactivity from sitting in front of a screen and feelings of anxiety, isolation, frustration and even anger. So how to get healthy? Well, the Mary Poppins diet of Expialodocious is simply amazingly deliciously fun and healthy!

So keeping the body healthy, improving the mind and increasing energy, mental health are all the positives to aid the body’s systems through what we put in our bodies. What we feed ourselves with affects us. Are we eating junk or natural? Feeding positive, healthy body and mind gives us energy. What are we feeding our mind with? Are we being filled with the Holy Spirit and God’s word? or are we consuming ourselves with news, negative talk or thoughts?

Kapha refers to the body structure and the elements of earth. We are the body of Christ - His church. We are in the world and connected to Mother nature. When kapha is not balanced, there is greed and envy, but when it’s centered, there is love, calm and forgiveness. Doesn’t that sound like the way we should be living as Christians and not of this world with its focus on materialism?

Vata refers to the energy associated with movement, breathing and the heart. The elements of space and air make up this dosha. God placed air in our lungs. He gave us a heart to love and gifts to share with the world. When vata is imbalanced, there is fear and anxiety. The past 15 months have shown that some people are living this each day. Creativity and flexibility is the positive balance. Are we working to make this world a better place? Are we showing the love of Christ and asking the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us? Are we serving others with our gifts?

Pitta refers to the body’s metablic system with elements of fire and water. I think of Moses and the burning bush and the water baptism of Christ. When anger, hatred and jealousy show the negative aspects of this system, there is understanding and intelligence to counterbalance them. We are living in a time of darkness, but we can ask for God’s understanding to make sense of what is happening and ask for His wisdom. We can share the gospel with others and show God’s love and compassion.

Keeping our system - whether it be our individual body or the body of believers - healthy requires us to make positive choices about diet, exercise and health. We have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to guide us and keep our energy in balance.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4: 8-9