This is a photo of a window curtain in our living room, with the early morning sun behind it casting the shadow of a an 8-ft tall native wildflower, Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium fistulosum) that graces the east side of our house:
It brings to mind some scripture verses from Hebrews 9 & 10:
"The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. . . . For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. . . . Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."
The shadow on the curtain is interesting, but is not as beautiful as the real thing. The shadow is a lifeless caricature of the real thing, which is full of life--buzzing with bees and butterflies that pollinate its airy, lavender blooms. Similarly, all that we know on earth that is good and beautiful is only a shadow of the goodness and beauty that we will come to know in heaven. Our life here is only a shadow of the glorious life to come, made possible by our faith--however tenuous--in Jesus Christ, who is bringing salvation to those who are waiting for him.
P.S. Here are some pics of the living, breathing, pollinating Joe Pye Weed:
Bees--bumble and honey--pollinating a Joe Pye Weed bloom
Tree frog waiting in the Joe Pye Weed for a little pollinator lunch.
I was shearing a large boxwood hedge at the corner of our house recently when I had a little Planet Earth moment. As I reached down to clip some low hanging shoots that rested on the ground, I noticed a striking pattern of small gray-colored balls covering every leaflet of several shoots, actually somewhat suspended above the deep green of the leaf. A tiny pattern of beauty for the eye of whomever would pause long enough, stoop low enough, and look closely enough to see and appreciate it. The pattern extended even to some dead boxwood leaves on the ground and even to a section of rubber garden hose lying in that spot. It was a slime mold . . . one of God’s most ancient and mysterious of creatures . . . part fungus, part animal. Biologists and taxonomists must throw up their hands and classify it somewhere in-between, in the Myxomycota.
Slime molds actually move! Or ooze or flow, actually. Generally unseen, beneath the surface layer of decaying leaves and mulch in your yard, and in wild forested areas all over the world, they scarf up bacteria that are decaying the fallen vegetation. At some point, this gooey blob of ooze dries up and forms itself into little balls of dried spores, like powdery seeds, often climbing onto some vegetation, or even a garden hose, and lifting itself on a home-made stalk to catch a breeze and scatter itself hither and yon to a new spot to colonize. This process has been going on probably for hundreds of millions of years.
My house is quite old, by human standards (especially by Arkansas standards)—a little more than one hundred years old. Julie, my wife, planted that boxwood I’m trimming maybe 20 years ago. Now, at one time, this valley I live in didn’t exist. The tops of these “mountains”—the Ozark Plateau—were actually the bottom of an ancient, shallow tropical sea. Ever since the waters receded and land plants colonized and covered the land here, slime molds have been doing what they do, year after year, over countless millennia. Only recently have me and my boxwood shown up on the scene.
All of this—the beauty, the complexity, and the incredible span of time and years—just reinforces in my mind those same qualities of God which He possesses to an even greater degree. Who or what is older than God? Who or what is more creative, more complex, more full of beauty than the One who dreamed it all up in the first place . . . a long time ago.
I once knew a sharp-minded old-timer that lived way up in the hills around here. He was a retired schoolteacher (from back in the one-room country school house days) named Carl Van Landingham, or simply, Mr. Carl. Talking about how people learn best, he once told me, "Experience is a hard teacher, but she is also the most effective!" I recently came across a similar quote attributed to Vernon Sanders Law: "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."
It reminds me of a story my father told me. When he was a little boy, in the 1920's, he once came upon his uncle hunkered over the engine of a car. As the uncle listened to the purr of the motor, little Charles' curiosity brought him up close. The uncle issued a challenge: "Say Charles, I bet you can't pee on that spark plug--I bet you couldn't even hit it." Well, Charles had undoubtedly spent some time learning to aim and shoot as he relieved himself. So he was up to the challenge. It didn't occur to him that it might matter that the engine was running. He climbed up on the fender and soon summoned a stream which he deftly directed straight onto the target.
He suddenly found himself lying on his back--on the ground. Charles gathered himself and stood, shaking his head in dazed wonder. Eventually the uncle was able to stifle his laughter,and he explained to my dad that cars produce electricity that flows through the spark plug when the motor is running. Little Charles also learned that day that water--and pee--are great conductors of electricity. The spark climbed the stream as his poor little unit completed the circuit. It was "... the test first, the lesson afterwards." I'm pretty sure that my dad never peed on another spark plug in all of his 87 years. He learned his lesson well. I guess he learned something about that uncle as well.
Spring hit here in NW Arkansas, about a week ago--with a wallop! As a nature lover, there are many little signs of spring that are nostalgic for me. Like catching up with old friends. There is something about the predictability and the rhythm of it all. One of the first things is the chorus of Spring Peepers--tiny frogs that come out of hibernation all at once and immediately begin advertising for a mate. It's crazy! It is an amphibian version of a high school prom that lasts for a month. It's a four week spring break at Daytona Beach with males and females clamoring for attention, advertising their wares all night, all at once.
We have three ponds near our house. One is about 150 feet in front of our house; one is a hundred yards behind our house; and another is a hundred yards to the side of our house, across the road. All three sites are crazy with sexual passion all through the month of April. These little guys and gals have been in a self-imposed stupor since late last fall, buried in mud. Suddenly the mud warms, the sun comes out, and buddy . . . when the sun goes down, it's every guy and every gal for him or herself! The males are like hundreds of carnival barkers crying out why they are the best game in town. Check out these links to get an idea of what I'm talking about. To get back to this blog, just keep hitting the left-pointing arrow at the top-left of your screen until you are back to the blog. The first one is poor video, but a good audio of exactly what we hear at 290 O'Neal Lane from three directions every night this time of year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SM6leUVorY
A little later on, we will start hearing a slightly different sound--the gray tree frog (which can be either gray or bright green at any one time). They live in our trees and shrubs and love to "pig-out" on the insects that flock to our porch lights in the summer. They leave frog poop on our front window and air conditioner. I posted a blog article last year on them: http://mandobobsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/tree-frogs.html
Check out this video of a gray tree frog calling raucously for some female company: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k5CTLNw04w&feature=related
As it happens, your landscape and mine are much like the jungles of the Amazon or Congo, or the Serengeti Plains of East Africa, in this: it is a wild, unnoticed drama of sex, violence, and just making a living, being played out in a myriad of connected ways. The same basic biology is happening in your backyard as is happening on those Planet Earth episodes. And if you can swallow one more thing: God orchestrates it all as a testament to His beauty and creativity.
Take notice of the natural rhythms going on around you. It can bring you a bit of peace and connection--even in your own backyard. I'll leave you with a line from T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
Here’s a little ecology lesson . . . It starts with trees and it ends with you. When you look at a tree, realize this one thing: it is not just a tree—it is a community. Kind of a micro-ecosystem. I have a large Post Oak in my back yard that is three feet in diameter! (I measured it …) Periodically, on a windy day, it drops dead stems and branches. They are absolutely filled with a fascinating (to me, anyway) array of organisms. Various colorful lichens and fungi mostly. This is a fungus on a stem from my oak:
But that is only the beginning—a tree is a vast community of bacteria, viruses, mycoplasmas, fungi, lichens, mosses, liverworts, nematodes, mollusks, worms, insects, mites, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles even—my little friends, the northern fence lizards and lined skinks. Here's another shot with three snails crawling over a fallen stem of my oak tree and scarfing up lichens. Can you imagine literally crawling through your salad--head high--as you eat it?
Probably hundreds of species of organisms interact with my Post Oak tree--each with their own intricate associations with this tree. It reminds me a little of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32: “He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” That is, the kingdom of heaven is where life happens, and is a haven for those who need God’s shelter and the community of abundant, spiritual life He provides.
I heard a story recently on NPR (a common opening phrase for me …) about Noah Fierer, a University of Colorado at Boulder microbiologist, who immerses himself into the strange world of bacteria—one of the most primitive, yet numerous life forms on the planet. He is trying to develop a method of using bacterial profiles on human skin to identify criminals for CSI investigations. He made the point that our bodies are huge repositories of bacteria—on our skin, in our gut, our hair, under our fingernails, between our toes, in our mouth . . . shall I go on? He even made the claim that there are more bacterial cells in and on our bodies than there are human cells. Now, I’m not sure how to check on the accuracy of that, but that is a rather amazing—and unsettling—statement. In other words, you are more germs than you are you!
Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, so perhaps this could be true in terms of number of cells instead of volume. [About 500 average-size human cells would fit inside the period at the end of this sentence; about 25,000 bacterial cells would fit into it.] The point is that, biologically speaking, you are not just you. Your body is a community of species—bacteria, viruses, fungi, mites, and mycoplasmas. Depending on where you live, maybe even a few rikettsia, worm larvae, ticks, etc. But that’s okay, that’s the way it is—like a tree or a mustard plant--you are a community.
Here’s a sideline story: A recent study at San Diego State University, funded by the Clorox Co., tested the assumption known variously as the “Three Second Rule” or the “Five Second Rule”. You know: if you drop some food on the floor, you have a certain number of seconds before it becomes contaminated. Pick it up quickly and you can still eat it. Microbiologists tested microbial activity of baby carrots before and after dropping on a tile floor, a kitchen sink, a carpeted floor, etc. Their results? …. Turns out, whatever “germs” (that is, bacteria and fungi) the carrot picked up was picked up instantaneously—it doesn’t take five seconds. The good news is that nearly all bacteria and fungi that occur on your home surfaces won’t hurt you. (the rim of your toilet is another matter). Of the thousands of microbe species out there, your body has the ability to neutralize nearly all of them. Only a very few have developed ways to overcome our body’s natural defenses. In fact, some medical researchers have suggested that young children of overly fastidious (meticulous, easily disgusted, squeamish) parents--who clean their floors and counter tops like operating tables--may be more vulnerable to infections than those whose parents are less hung-up about it. That’s because our bodies develop defenses early-on against most germs. Children who are not exposed to germs don’t develop the defenses. Or so goes the theory. So, make your own judgment on the Five Second Rule.
If there is a central theme to this rambling blog: community is built into the system—to nature, to your body, to the human condition, to Christian believers. Embrace community.
Trained as an ecologist and later as a plant pathologist (sick plants). Worked for years doing research on tree diseases, then plant diseases in general for the Cooperative Extension Service. Then it was the landscape maintenance business for many years, until I left to pastor a church for five years. Now my wife and I are running a dog boarding business called Ernie Boudreaux's Doggie Dude Ranch. We also have HollandWildflowerFarm.com where we sell seeds for native plants. I recently returned to work at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville where I conduct research on soybean diseases. We have two grown daughters and sons-in-law, plus an "adopted" Korean son and his new bride. I play the mandolin among other things.
