Worth a Thousand Words?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but I am again finding that a picture is about a thousand times as much trouble to put into a book as the words.

The text of my”life story” is in its first complete draft and is being looked over by a good friend and editor. Meanwhile I am trying to make up some picture pages to support the rather large mass of words. Matching of words and images has been a large part of my life, so I really want to have pictures in there. But it’s a huge task to select them, clean up colour slides with half a century’s dust and fungus on them, and scan and process them to fit the page.

However, if the whole book project does nothing for anyone else, it has certainly done a lot for me. From the more dispassionate distance of decades, I have been able to see myself more as others would have seen me at various times. It has not always been a pretty picture. In a recent church service I was shown again how easy it is, in a moment of evangelical passion, to give the wrong emphasis in a sermon or conversation. I often failed there.

But I have also been reminded of quite a few good and worthwhile times and projects. I have continued to discover how much I have to be thankful for in family and friends and a calling that always went far beyond just an occupation.

In a week I have another blood test to see if the latest extra medication is slowing the growth of my prostate cancer. It might or it might not. But, either way, I have no sense of unfinished business in this life. I am looking forward to the future with anticipation especially as we celebrate our Golden Wedding in the next couple of months. And perhaps I will even have to write another chapter for the book and – oh, really? – struggle with some more photos.

And, yes, the title I hinted at in July will do: “In and Out of Sync”. What do you make of that, I wonder?

Rhodo time again!

It’s a bright and cheerful sunny morning here but of course it’s midwinter. And we have sure known that in the last few days.
Nevertheless, in the midst of the gales that have thrashed Northland and the month’s rainfall that we had in less than a day, one of our bush garden rhododendrons has burst its first buds. Right on time, second week in July, year after year.
But not both bushes. Another, apparently identical, will open its first flowers twelve days later.

How do they do that? What tells them that storm or sun, freezing or burning hot, today is the day to start opening up? And how is it that these two otherwise identical bushes are on different time schedules?
The natural world is full of such mysteries and we fail to see most of them. This tiny splash of colour outside our lounge window each winter reminds me of the mystery of my own living and dying. I am invited to open up my life and to celebrate my being and to invite others to do the same.
I’ll go out on the deck and see if I can get you a photo. Celebrate your life!