215 Tree

215_Tree

There is a tree in the Garden that doesn’t know one day it will pass. Is this only because it is tied in knot weed? Or do all trees pass? The most adaptive trees live to a ripe old age, but it is true even trees are ephemeral, but compartmentalize, disease, dead wood, and rot.

There are five reasons trees die: harmful insects, so they bleed, a catastrophic environmental event in which case they are uprooted, diseases, starvation, and of course harvest. So, when we harvest them, we are doing the best for them, to live to a ripeness ready for construction and to re-plant a new sapling.

Proverbs 3

Proverbs 3:13-18

Blessed are those who find wisdom,

         those who gain understanding,

for she is more profitable than silver

        and yields better returns than gold.

She is more precious than rubies;

        nothing you desire can compare with

               her.

Long life is in her right hand;

        in her left hand are riches and honour.

Her ways are pleasant ways,

        and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who take hold

                of her;

        those who hold her fast will be blessed.[i]

Our mothers and partners, and all ladies, straight and lesbian, and feminist, are trees of life, as we see in the Mother Mary from the Bible here. So, the tree of life, brought Adam, the first man, and in turn from that tree came the first woman: Eve. And the serpent ready to poison, read the table, so while Adam stayed righteous, the first woman is said to have sinned first, and eaten the apple, to get pregnant by Adam, and enticed him in! Maybe this is the beginning of provocation in an innocent child Cain and later Abel, with more children to come, until the lineage many generations later came Abram!

The woman was led to wisdom by the serpent and similarly admonished with the pain of giving birth, also found wisdom in good and evil. Do not forget, this all happened to allow them to see, before clothed in skin, like two spiritual beings in the World, to begin a quest of staying on the righteous path.

‘Operation Margarine’

To instil into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it. . . . first lavishly display its pettiness, the injustices which it produces, the vexations to which it gives rise, and plunge it into its natural imperfection; then, at the last moment, save it in spite of, or rather by the heavy curse of its blemishes. Some examples? There is no lack of them.[ii]

Barthes, here: plays a game with the Church and Army, that they are so strict and narrow-minded, yet lay down the law for salvation, and forgets their own faith in buttering themselves through a quality of discernment for the power of defences against evil, when the evil is the margarine itself, not the butter of Church and Army. Neither militant, yet militancy is margarine!

And so, deep faith comes from the Tree of Life.

Some thoughts on love:

Question: What is love?

Something blue, something you forget so easily: an explanation and colloquy of the right setting, time & place. Something unrequited, a dart on bullseye, a win, a find, or discovery. In the Lord Jesus the source of all our love. Love is a calm and serenity, sublime bliss, where your loved one reads your mind. Love is something smooth that finds no obligations, no obstacles. A little lack of order, a little madness. Not rinsed, but ‘hot’ and bothered. A bit of a daydream; in reality. The beloved cannot let go of you. Love is a calamity to be repaired.

State your destination, where do you want to be taken. There has never been a greater emotion known to mankind. Earthbound. Organic styles for our communication. Cosmic signs got me earthed by the forces of nature. Hidden between lines. We infiltrate minds entwined. With breaks and bass lines. While we travel time.[iii]

Amen.

Love, AB, x.

Thanks be to God.

©

[i] Today’s New International Version, The Bible, International Bible Society, UK, Hodder, 2007, p. 607.

[ii] Barthes, Roland, Mythologies, London, UK, Vintage, 2009, p. 39.

[iii] Bukem LTJ, Constellation featuring DRS, UK, Good Looking Records, ℗ 1998.