genuine hospitality, and gardens.

the weather in florida has been particularly beautiful lately. at the moment i'm sitting on my porch watching the sun go down, enjoying the increasingly milder temperatures. by all measurements, the weather is perfect right now.

the orchid pictured above is one of the most bizarre and awesome displays of flowers at their strangest. it is a catasetum integerrimum. many people think the photo is ominous, a reminder of death. one guy even called it a hobgoblin. for me, though, this orchid is a monk: quiet, reverent, diligent. the 'bird beak' structure in the center of the plant is a sensitive trigger that when brushed against, shoots pollen onto the bee that pollinates it. this shower, wanted or not, allows the bee to pollinate the other monk orchids in mexico and throughout central america.

i picked this flower to share this evening because it represents a small piece of a growing trend in my life. during the past several months, i've grown noticeably more generous, kind, and benevolent. my thoughts and meditations on scripture are being drawn towards community, generosity, and hospitality. also, my thoughts are being drawn to gardens.

about a month back, i had a very encouraging conversation with my cousin andrew about hospitality and generosity. andrew and his wife sarah, along with their son (the rotund and dashing henry arden francis carlson-lier), live with at least one other family, in a community they have called the julian house. the namesake is for st. julian, the patron saint of hospitality. andrew proceded to tell me that he wants his life to manifest a consistent hospitality as he goes about living with family, friends, and neighbors. i told andrew that i'd been finding it hard to be generous with people. my experience is that everyone wants the playing field to be even. if i buy dinner for someone, they need to pay me back. if i go out of my way to help someone, they feel they must repay the favor. i find myself caught in these loops of feeling that i should treat people a certain way, while at the same time living in the reality that people expect to be treated by me with that weird even-handed fairness. so, people feel slighted when i don't pay them back for food, and disrespected when i don't repay favors. this dissonance will ring in my head for weeks if i let it.

i feel i'm supposed to be generous and loving to people. as a christian, i find joy in both welcoming and being welcomed. it makes little sense to me why this is such a foreign concept to many brothers and sisters in the faith.

so a couple of weeks after this conversation with andrew, my dad tells me that he's preaching a sermon on hospitality. then he lends me a book: Making Room by Christine D. Pohl. i've only just cracked it. let's just say i'm looking forward to diving in.

this brings us up to about ten days ago when my buddy daryl calls from atlanta and asks if a mutual friend of ours can fly down and stay with me for awhile. daryl and i met in scotland and lived together at a ywam base in west kilbride for about six moonths (a quick digression: daryl and i discovered, while living in scotland, that he attended the same church as my older brother mark: craziness.). anyway, we also lived with about twenty five others, including our dear friend laetizia from germany. daryl and i have had some keeping in touch since, but until last week, i had not seen or heard from laetizia in over four years. so, with this glaring opportunity to be hospitality to someone, i jumped at the chance. laetizia came to stay and had a wonderful, relaxing time. it was a beautiful week. she made it clear to me on multiple occasions that she felt welcomed in and accepted, loved and cherished. i was able to give her my bed and my car, cook her meals and provide her with buckets of the most delicious orange juice on the planet (of which she took down in pints). it felt really good to provide haven for her, to be love to her.
question: if it feels good, is it genuine altruism?

lastly, i'd like to mention my most recent book purchase: Monastic Gardens by Mick Hales. i randomly googled 'monastic gardens' one day, and there just happened to be a rather intriguing book by precisely that title. the book is about the various facets of the garden, as seen in both modern and historical monasteries. gardens are not just decorative in nature, but are sources of meals, medicine, and sanctuary. gardens provide altar flowers, wine, places to pray, and most notably: hospitality. Hales has a whole chapter on 'the guest house garden,' which is just fantastic. the book is beautiful to me because it is merging the two paths i find i'm simultaneously walking: genuine hospitality and gardens.

so, although the sentimental attitudes of generosity and goodwill are important, they are just not enough in and of themselves. hospitality, i think, is far deeper and more pervasive. hospitality is, in fact, a discipline, and entails the selfless and vulnerable act of welcoming in strangers and being life and love to them.

i don't know exactly where my life is headed, but it's months like september that seem to make a lot of sense. i'll leave you with an exceptionally appropriate quote that i received last week from a new friend:

life is short and we do not have
much time to gladden the hearts
of those who travel the way with us.
oh, be swift to love.
make haste to be kind.

-henri frederic amiel (1868)

all it takes to hearken back is a bottle of tasty oban.

recently, my housemate casey and i were out and about looking for new bottles of scotch. as we were looking, i noticed a bottle of 14 year old oban, which immediately reminded me of my dear friends joe and chris lafferty.

joe and chris once lived in oban. i was only in oban once, just passing through on my way to the fair isle of iona. my time in iona was one of the most magical times i had in scotland. it was the only holiday i took while i lived in the u.k., and it was glorious.

i was in edinburgh for the fringe festival at the time, so i had to catch a train from there to glasgow, and from glasgow north to oban. oban is a sea town on the west coast of scotland. from oban one must take a ferry across to the isle of mull. mull is a breathtaking island, so driving the length of the island to catch the next ferry is nothing but pleasant. at the very end of mull is a village called fionnphort, which is where i had to catch the ferry for the mile-long jog to iona.

it was nearly dusk when i arrived on iona, and very foggy. i could hardly see fifty feet in front of me. i hadn't made plans to stay in a hostel, so i was planning on camping out on the beach. i ran into someone that told me that the iona community discourages primitive camping to protect their scarce and rare grasses. so i was wandering around in the fog and near dark, playing with stones on the beach and dancing on very large rocks. out of respect to the people of iona, i wandered back towards the town to try to find a hostel or family willing to take me in. on the way, i heard sheep and walked through the fog towards where i heard them. eventually i found the sheep, and to my surprise and delight, they belonged to the owners of a hostel. i walked in and was given a bed for the night. later i found out that people book rooms on iona several months in advance, and that it is unheard of to simply 'walk in' and expect a bed.
well i did.

the next morning, i woke up to the clearest, most beautiful day i can ever remember. scotland it rather grey and dull and cold most of the time, but this day the sky was blue and it was warm enough to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt. so i explored all day. i wandered around and sang and prayed and drank in the rugged beauty of the ancient island. i could write pages about my time on iona, but i'll share just one story.

i was sitting on a hillside, munching some crackers and cheese, when i was approached by a monk from poland (iona is steeped in christian history, a story for another day) who told me that his monk friend was off on a tiny island just beyond where we were sitting. he said his friend was exploring, and that he'd been gone for hours. we talked for awhile and his friend came back, and they were off to continue their adventures. i was interested to see what the polish monk was doing on the tiny island for all that time, and there was only about a foot of water between iona and the tiny island, so i took my shoes off and waded over. the island was about 150 meters long and 50 meters wide. it was grassy on top (tended by sheep. i don't know how they got there), and had tall, steep, rocky walls that ran down to the water. i spent hours on the wee island, climbing up the rocky ledges and basking with the sheep. it was a delightful time. as i walked back to the edge of the island to get back to the 'mainland,' i realized that the tide had come in since i'd first gone over, and the water was now chest-deep. i looked around and realized that i was completely alone. no polish monks, no locals, not anyone. so i simply removed all my clothes, held them over my head, and walked back to iona. also, i hadn't bathed in days, so i took this opportunity to wash myself in the sea. it was invigorating, it was freeing. i've never felt so alive.

so here i am, sipping my oban, thinking of joe and chris, and dreaming of fonder days. i'll leave you with another quote from 'the wounded healer:'

"through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. when they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. for a compassionate man nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying."

simon.

a couple of weeks ago, i found a photo on my brother's computer that i had lost last year when my computer perished. it was the above photo of michael's hands and of simon, my ruby-throated hummingbird. i found simon one afternoon after class. i heard a noise, looked down, and at first thought it was a dragonfly. upon closer inspection, however, i discovered that it was a beautiful hummingbird that had one bad wing and was struggling to fly. i was thrilled at the discovery, as i had never seen a real, live hummingbird. so, filled with compassion, i took simon home, holding him in the palm of my hand all the way. occasionally he would try to fly away, only to be reminded that he could only flutter downward to the floorboard. i kept him for a few days, feeding him sugar-water from a spoon (which he lapped up with his threadlike tongue) and taking him for "walks." our walks consisted of me carrying simon to various flowers in the back and front yards to see which ones he enjoyed. his favorite was a vine that had thousands of tiny white flowers blooming. eventually i decided that i could no longer give simon the care he needed. so, reluctantly, i took him to the wildlife rescue mission and charged them with healing my sick friend. i hope he became well enough to fly again.

earlier today i was reading nouwen's "the wounded healer" when i was struck something he said about prayer. writes nouwen, "prayer is not a pious decoration of life, but the breath of human existence." this sums up a lot of what i've been feeling of late. all my longings and joys, pains and trials of life, struggling to find meaning for them within my spiritual existence. prayer, says nouwen, is the very essence of being alive.

as i was mulling over this in my head, i was reminded of a prayer that i said every sunday for ten years at [st. francis of assisi episcopal] church. when i was younger, this prayer had little meaning for me. as i grew older, though, beginning to understand and develop my own faith, this prayer became very meaningful for me, as things do when one grows older. this prayer is commonly called the "prayer of st. francis," and is widely attributed to him.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that i may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

in remembrance of simon, i will note briefly that Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of birds, animals, and the environment.

summer's winter wonderland.

this is my most recent flowering orchid. it's a degarmoara winter wonderland 'white fairy.' this plant is an intergeneric hybrid that has bits of miltoniopsis, brassia, and odontoglossum in it's background. my flowers have been four to five inches. they are pure white with a small cluster of purple spots at the very center of the petals and sepals. they have a subtle, sweet scent that is quite pleasant. i am fortunate to have two spikes with five flowers on each spike. i originally thought this was an oncidium hybrid with bits of brassia in it, but i was recently corrected by someone wiser than i. this is a lovely orchid.

two days ago i treated myself to a new surfboard. it's the first epoxy board that i've had (epoxy is tougher, quicker, more buoyant, and, of course, more expensive than fiberglass). thursday the surf wasn't very good, so stu and i took off from work early on friday and went to the cross for some quick, drifty surf. kristen came, too. it was a fun day.

surfing is something i've grown to love over the past few years since i moved home from scotland. it's magical. there's nothing like it. it's been my escape, my time to think and refuel. it's also been a great fellowship experience with my friends, and this is most true with my brother michael. surfing has become something that we enjoy together, and sharing that time in the water has helped us get to know one another as adults, which has been very meaningful and important for our relationship. we took a surf trip with some friends last year to costa rica.
the photo below is from that trip.

i love my brother.

update on kristen. and slippers.

this is a phragmipedium. phrags are one of four genera in their subfamily. all are commonly called slipper orchids, because of the 'slipper' or pouch that forms instead of the lip as the unique front petal. the different subfamilies are classified for the different regions in which they grow. phrags are found primarily in central and south america, as they need warmer temperatures to survive. this one was cultivated by jason fischer. for some reason he called it 'miami beach.' a deficit in originality, but to each his own. nevertheless, the flower is a particularly beautiful specimen. well done, jason.

so that everyone knows, kristen escaped her terrifying car crash with only a few injuries to her left arm. the woman who crashed into her was driving a much bigger car, and actually rode up over kristen's car, smashing the windshield, then took to the air and came back down on the back of the smaller, more vulnerable honda. anyway, aside from being a bit shaken up and sore, kristen is doing remarkably well, and we are all thankful.

dear kristen.

two of my dearest friends, stuart and kristen west, were married earlier this year. stuart called me tonight from the hospital saying that kristen had been hit by a drunk driver in a head-on collision. he said she was stable, but they won't know the extent of her injuries until the morning. i pray she's alright.

the senselessness of this astounds me.

Lord, have mercy.

holy ghosts and orchids.

i'm going to start inserting an orchid with each entry as i blog. enjoy.



this is a ghost orchid. i believe it might be the most beautiful of all flowers. it is incredibly rare, and extremely difficult to grow anywhere outside it's native habitat. it is commonly called the "ghost" orchid because it's roots blend in, which gives the flower the appearance of floating in the air without stem or stalk, like a ghost. the lower lip, a unique petal in all orchids, has become something singular and breathtaking in the ghost orchid. the lip divides, and spins slightly downward, as if it has grown a pair of short legs. the ghost is an epiphytic orchid, meaning that it has roots which anchor to trees, allowing the plant to grow without ever touching the ground. epiphytic orchids are never parasitic. they have special roots, encased in special velamen, which absorbs moisture and other elements from the air and rain. the existence of such a beautiful flower boggles my mind. i have never been privileged to see a specimen in person, but one day... sigh... perhaps.

i've been having a few email conversations with my dad and my cousin andrew. i thought i'd share some of the content of the exchanges here. some of the discourse was born from a short book on prayer that i've been reading, and some from my work experience of late. enjoy.

"...Anyway, I think he's saying that as created, material beings one of the unique ways that we can know and bless God is through and on account of the material creation. Hence many great hymns and psalms extolling God for the wonders of creation, or "beauties of nature", and the sacraments, and again, Jesus. The resurrection of the body says that the body is important to God, and knowing/ experiencing/blessing God, at least in part, through our bodily senses is again, an essential part of his design and desire. The material, created order is important to
God - especially human beings. We aren't just spirits trapped in decaying bodies that one day we will shed for a purely spiritual existence. Jesus came to redeem our whole selves. Hence we say in the Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body."

"I often feel exhausted, whether I've slept a lot or a little, whether I've worked twelve hours or six. Nevertheless, the last month I have felt happy. I made a decision to read more, to take care of myself spiritually, to serve, and to do things I love. I dive fully into experiencing God in a number of ways, and I'm thrilled that I'm not simply a 'trapped spirit.' I love to love music and mountains and waves and flowers and books. Everything I do has become spiritual to me, like a prayer. And I love it. It's like my life is a song, and when I'm happy and doing things i love, i'm like one worshipping. It's a never ending cycle of blessing: God blesses me by presenting me with opportunities to love certain things, and I respond by enjoying them. And I love it, because I feel this blesses Him, like we're enjoying each other.

"I guess I've written all this to say that this attitude is helping me cope with the stresses I face as a social worker, and I suppose I didn't realize it until now. It's hard for me not to internalize things and make my client's problems my own. I wake up dreaming about kids and parents, about their livelihoods and futures. I think being intentional about enjoying life, as well as being life to those around me, has helped me immensely.

"I've been given so many gifts, and I've squandered so many chances to be thankful. I don't fully understand why God chose to bless us and give us things and people to love, but it's so beautiful, isn't it? That he would create each of us with a precise disposition, to love and enjoy certain things. These thoughts make me happy."

indeed they do.