Prompt thought of the week:
We too often look for security (love) in powerful figures, sure that they can “fix” things for us. It was no different for the people of the First and Second Testaments. They were looking for Kings, Saviors, and Liberators who would offer peace and security in uncertain times. And they often looked “in all the wrong places.” The Pharisees just can’t believe that this trouble-maker, rule-breaker named Jesus is the One, the Son of God and Savior. Time and again, Jesus uses the metaphor of a Shepherd to teach us how we ought to love and care for each other. No wonder; the Shepherd does what is needed when it is needed, regardless of the “rules.”
LOVE IN THE FOREST
I knew Skyline Park in Napa on foot very well. I walked all the trails for years from the mid-1970s, more after retirement in the early ‘90s, until various orthopedic procedures put an end to hiking in general. I was so comfortable on the trails there that I boasted that I could be dropped into any spot in those 800 acres and I know where I was and how to get back to the trailhead.
At a spot past Lake Marie where two trails cross there was a tree — two trees, actually — growing as one. One deciduous and one conifer. I wish I could give you a better description, what kind of trees they were, but the two grew as one. I assumed that a seed had fallen into the crotch between two branches of the deciduous base where water pooled and the seed had taken root and prospered so that in the end two very different trees melded into one entity. I saw the tree in all seasons of the year — winter when the deciduous tree was bare the conifer dominated and in the spring and summer when the deciduous tree was in full leaf and the conifer was almost invisible in the green blanket.
There was a feeling very much like love when I saw the tree and was in its presence. I haven’t thought of it/them in years, but as I write the feeling . . . the emotion . . . is here again. The tree spoke to me of unity and interdependence. The conifer was not a parasite in the way mistletoe takes nourishment from the host. These two grew together and somehow, together, they were stronger and more complete than they could be as individuals. I know that. I am one of a mated pair. In a forest of individuals there are not many mated pairs. I am blessed to be one.
Michael Herzog