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| Daffodil ~ "Tete-a-Tete" |
Lent is the Church's Springtime. Might we be close observers of the season and discover its spiritual content. This daffodil has been given its clever name because a tete-a-tete is a face to face private conversation between two people. Notice how the flowers point in different directions, as if speaking deeply with one another.
We seem to have been made for this kind of intimate conversation. But did we spoil such a good thing? "The man and is wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But God called to the man,"Where are you" he asked. Genesis 3:8. We're the ones who create alienation, suspicion and even paranoia.
But Jesus heals this. "You are my friends...I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father. You did not choose me, no, I chose you...My command to you is to love one another". John 15:16.
And there is that beautiful face to face conversation Jesus has with the alienated woman at the well in John's Gospel (4:6-29). Jesus shows us how to do it; sitting with her for an intimate, soulful, good-news conversation.
We might sit with this daffodil photo above and have a think on the nature of our own conversations and communications. Listen to some folks - their blaming, panic-ridden, suspicious, angry, nasty talk. You'd think there was nothing else to live for, as if God had made a terrible mistake in creating them - rehearsing every victimizing wound of the past. Rather than inhale the terrible atmosphere they create, we can distance ourselves.
These Tete-a-Tete daffodils, close to the ground at only 6 inches high, carry a bright yellow, up-lifting, animated happiness. O Jesus, might they teach me today.
We seem to have been made for this kind of intimate conversation. But did we spoil such a good thing? "The man and is wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But God called to the man,"Where are you" he asked. Genesis 3:8. We're the ones who create alienation, suspicion and even paranoia.
But Jesus heals this. "You are my friends...I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father. You did not choose me, no, I chose you...My command to you is to love one another". John 15:16.
And there is that beautiful face to face conversation Jesus has with the alienated woman at the well in John's Gospel (4:6-29). Jesus shows us how to do it; sitting with her for an intimate, soulful, good-news conversation.
We might sit with this daffodil photo above and have a think on the nature of our own conversations and communications. Listen to some folks - their blaming, panic-ridden, suspicious, angry, nasty talk. You'd think there was nothing else to live for, as if God had made a terrible mistake in creating them - rehearsing every victimizing wound of the past. Rather than inhale the terrible atmosphere they create, we can distance ourselves.
These Tete-a-Tete daffodils, close to the ground at only 6 inches high, carry a bright yellow, up-lifting, animated happiness. O Jesus, might they teach me today.
