Sunday, May 31, 2009

My Cherry Tree and Joycie

I have a cherry tree in my backyard, and we planted the tree out there so long ago I cant ever remember looking through my window and not seeing it. It was a gift from my godfather Uncle Jerry and I dont even know if he expected me to still have the tree. Well some time last year I realised that a parasite was growing in the tree, in the world of parasites I suppose this one was pretty bold it bloomed flowers and the leaves were noticeably different from those of the cherry tree. so one day after the whole tree looked to have been taken up with the parasite my father decided to go "clean the tree up". The one day project took 2 weekends and only left me with one branch on my precious chery tree. Now that I think about it I have to laugh... aah bwoy.
A couple weeks ago it began raining for days on and off but consistantly the tree would get some rain water. Then I realised that all these new branches started to push out from practically nowhere, and the one branch that was left originally left is so laden with cherries that it almost looks like the tree is toppling over.

I recently learned my grandmother has breast cancer, and a part of me is scared shitless to say the least. It was just last year January that I buried my grandfather and even though we weren't so close I took comfort in knowing I could reach him when I wanted to. My relationship with my grandmother is the opposite I see her atleast 3 times a week now that I'm working with my aunt, and before that you can bet we were eating dinner at her house for Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, Her Birthday, Father's Day, and alot of the time we'd gather for no other reason than because we can.

Our family is so close its often hard to tell how distant a cousin is because no matter how far a 4th cousin you are, you were at those gatherings and it all seems to revolve around my grandmother. It's easy to tell that she is the anchor in the McKenzie/Barnett family.

She doesnt know it but she is my inspiration ( I suppose one day soon I'll tell her, definately before they start radiation treatment). Her sheer determination to make something of herself led to her going off to teacher's college (which I will be doing in August), writing so many Math books that sometimes I felt scared to fail Math throughout prep school and into the first parts of high school simply because I could find the answers in one of the books she wrote. Among other things she managed to raise her 6 children who all did well, helped raise her grandchildren and now is helping with her great grandchildren she did with and air of youth i suppose, because it was not until my cousin gave her her first great grandhild was I free to call her grandma because pre-greatgrand children grandma made her sound old, " Look child call me Aunty Joyce".

She doesn't even seem phased the strength of this woman. She goes to the doctors' offices and take the tests then goes rigth back to her school.

Somehow I know my grandmother and my cherry tree have the same spirit (if you will allow yourself to believe cherry trees have spirits). They'll take what they need to take off her, cut away the bad parts and then the rain will fall and she'll flourish and be so full of life she'll seem to tilt.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Thoughts provoked.

Young and naive,
thoughts reversed:
I suppose I should be careful now...
Now that I no longer believe in the fairy tales.
I should take extra care with things as delicate as these.
These broken things;
and though I hope there is still beauty in broken things,
I still pray my own delicate pieces dont fall apart,
or even worse allow this new light to shine through the cracked spaces.
thoughts wayward...
There is some patience, wisdom maybe ( I am hoping to discover in myself)
that will prove to help me rise above the "eggshell" footsteps I've been taking.
thoughts, hopeful?
There is a strength I will need to,
to possibly look pass the imperfections,
my inperfections,
even through my thoughts of perfect.
There is a slow strength, a kind of vision perhaps, to approach without hesitation (life)
To recover from being young and naive...
thoughts eternal.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

"Though I speak wtih the tongues of men and of angels, If i have not charity I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains and have not charity I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth me nothing

Charity suffereth long and is kind, charity envieth not charity vaunteth not itself , is not puffed up

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, not easily provoked thinketh no evil

Rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth

Bareth all things believeth all things, hopeth all things endureth all things

Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there are tongues they shall cease; whether there is knowledge it shall vanish away

For we know in part and we prophecy in part

But then that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away

When I was a child I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things

For now we se through a glass darkly, but face to face; now I know in part but then shall I know even as I am known

And now abideth faith, hope and charity these three but the greatest of these is charity"

I Corinthians 13 .



My favourite bible verse, if I were to get married I would want it read. I had to recite it often as a child and at the time I didn't realise that these words would guide me through life, thus far anyway. Charity has many definitions and among them is love. Its funny because even as I type I realise that if all this is true I have never known love. Not the love it describes anyway, a love that is non judgemental and unselfish. Maybe this love is only of God.

God is such a sensitive topic for me, I see his hand in my life but often wonder that it could possibly be that he has been preparing me for... all these lessons, and failures, for what?

Back to love...
I have been in something that resembles love before, my thoughts seemed incomplete perhaps if somehow they didn't concern him. I promise never to love like that again. And now I find myself slipping slowly, and with much fighting and screaming, into something new. Where I have to acknowledge flaws especially my own... the way I viewed people and the situations I thought I'd never get into and my way of passing judgement without even a hint of what was really going on. Ignorance, I guess. But in my something new I find myself trying (actively) to break habits I formed over time that totally did not work for me, habits that were ultimately the reason the something that resembled love really wasn't love at all...
But I want that love they speak about, the one that endureth all things. I'll whisper a prayer.