Yes, I am from the south where the oozy sweetness in tone, comment and action can easily be misused to be a sour experience and possibly filled with unkindness. That is not what Paul meant in Galatians when he explained the fruits of the spirit. He listed 8 attributes which over lap and reflect the love of God. Many times in scripture there are attributes listed with Love being the key one, after all God is love with all of the other attributes reflecting love in a different way. And with the different types of love, the ways of showing love grow exponentially. But when I take what I feel are the 4 top types of that love that radiate from the heart [ Eros – passionate love, Storge – Family love, Philia – Friendship love and Agape – Selfless/God’s love] they reflect all of the combining fruits of the spirit [Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Goodness, and Self Control]. But to me you can not have any of these without kindness. Kindness is a deliberate act by an individual to behave in such a manor that the recipient can feel the genuine love of God from the individual or at least be confused by the behavior as it was not deserved. For instance, if someone says or acts mean toward you and you choose to still be kind, it can diffuse a volatile situation or at a minimal create an opportunity to open a door for you to explain why kindness is so very vital. But if the door does not get opened, still continue to be kind. Kindness eventually wins when it is honest from the heart.
All we need is a little kindness
True heartfelt kindness should be spread wherever you go. It doesn’t cost anything but your time and willingness to share it. So this week I challenge you to think about being kind to a friend, a stranger or even to an animal.
Canning is a process of saving wonderful foods from the garden and preserving them for use all winter long…but it was never in a can.
Yummy Chow Chow
When I was growing up, we always made pickles, chow chow, chili sauce and various flavors of jelly, jams or preserves but they were always in glass jars, thank you Ball jar company. And the sad day was when the jar was empty and you know it was the last jar.
There are many ways to use “can” as it’s a noun or a verb. You can have a fictitious Can of Worms or a fictitious train that told everyone “I think I Can”.
And with different products found in or behind glass, I offer you the wonderful candles I have burning almost daily around my house. They help hide the occasional “just came in from outside dog smell” that Mimi has for about 10 minutes until my nose adjusts, especially when raining.
As I remind myself on every post, and hopefully remind anyone that may read, always be kind. Its the best attribute you can reflect. I know you can’
There have been so many fabulous pictures of doors that I thought I would take a different angle but still show a door. In tapping in with Norm’sThursday Doors I ask the question -how about the forgotten doors, the lost doors or the doors no more. Doors are a portal into another world with each room has its own history. Then when economic doom ascends and robs the life of the room and causing forever closure. The sadness replaces the coming in and going out through the door and the life it once knew ceases to happen. Then the history gets replaced by cold loneliness. Ah, the stories the rooms could tell.
Forgotten and over grownFilled in doors & windows never to be opened again
Abandoned due to the sword of progress.
Progress is a doubled edge sword as it bring in the knew and throws away the old. May we as people never become so cold and callous that we too can become abandoned and lose the wonderful stories we could tell.
Always think of ways to be kind. Kindness is a gift of God.
Have you ever thought of how you treat others as producing fruit? Think of how you feel when someone is rough with you. It hurts like a barb from a pine cone. If you are not familiar with that analogy I promise its no picnic. Then in the opposite direction you have someone who is over sweet in action but you can tell its not sincere, I smell a rotten orange here.
I find it interesting that there are 27 references in the bible (old testament and new) that compares how you treat others as ‘bearing fruit’. Fruit, back in biblical times, was probably not as abundant as it is today so it made a good reference to help people understand the sweetness of following God. Galatians 5:22 even list the Fruits of the Spirit – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Love, I believe is listed first as this is the binding agent of everything we do. All of these fruits overlap at times but consistent use of them only strengthens our trunk. Colossians 1:10 tells us to bear fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. And Matthew 7:16 reminds us that by their fruit you will recognize them. And Jesus also reminds us in Matthew 12:33 “Make a tree good…for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”
We are God’s tree and must strive to only bare good fruit. Do we slip up and and produce rotten fruit periodically? Yes but God’s grace plucks that bad fruit and tosses it in the nearest trash can, pruning that branch to strengthen it where good fruit will again be produced. It’s a process that we must cultivate and fertilize daily.
Of all of the fruits listed, my favorite is kindness. Even when you are hurt or angry and in a dark place, if you can pull kindness from your tree, the rotten fruit trying to sprout will not be allowed to fester and grow. Sometimes your kindness may be all that is needed to break the ice of a frozen pond of fear and rejection.
I don’t have a nice camera but the one on my phone does pretty good. So while the color brilliancy doesn’t match what I saw, there is still beauty here. Today is a gorgeous fall day with cool temps(long sleeve) but not cold. The sun warmed me nicely as I ran errands and admired the foliage. Some people think the cemetery is a creepy place but I think it it has a beautiful tranquility. The hardwoods there are really pretty right now. I will have to post some pictures from there when it snows as the evergreens there are old and massive.
Peaceful sleep as the season change
Most of the yellow just turn brown and falls off the trees here but the reds do show off a bit. Hope you enjoy looking through these as I did taking them.
The berries on these trees are brilliant red.
Heavy with berries
In reminder as the season as our Thanksgiving draws closer(and Canada’s just finished), it brings to mind of how we need to be kind, especially to those who are hurting in various ways.
Random acts of kindness may be the one thing to change the world for that day for one individual being, whether it is man, animal or plant. Always be kind.
You can change your hair, change your clothes, change your mind, change your attitude, change your ways, change the world, make change, create change, love change or hate change. Change can be a verb or a noun depending on how you use it and it can be good or bad. But regardless of how you use it, change is constant.
I tie in with Debbie Smyth’s pictures on Change for Good saying this is an excellent use of the word change. Her word for One Word Sunday was blue and I didn’t have any pictures of anything blue but instead I had pictures of red leaves, so there you go. There are many ways your pocket change can benefit where ever you are in the world. It can benefit locally, regionally or across the globe. So be kind and remember those less fortunate.
Coming home from church I noticed how the leaves were beginning to change color showing the change in the season. That is a good thing and a bad thing. It is good in that we are through with the heat but it is bad as soon it will snow. Matter of fact it snowed on Thursday – didn’t stick but it still snowed. Change.
I am partial to the reds in the leaf color as they change. If I remember from my science teacher in high school correctly (back in the stone age) when chlorophyll is no longer being made which makes the green, you are left with the sugars? of the leaf…or something like that. Guess that is why I went towards art instead of science. Bottom line, when the green is no longer being produce a beautiful change occurs that we all enjoy.
It was cloudy today so you can not really appreciate the beauty of this tree against a bright blue fall sky. If the sun is out tomorrow, I will retake this and show you just how beautiful it is. I love the reds because they don’t just have red. They hang onto traces of the green, mixed with a touch of yellow, then darker reds before they turn brown and drop from the tree. And all of those colors radiate against a blue sky when hit just right by the sun. But I wanted to take these today because cloudy skies are kind of a norm once summer is gone for this area and I wanted others to enjoy at least the idea of fall. I imagine the leaf color in the northeast of the US is fabulous. I have never seen it but the pictures are amazing.
We all love the beauty of spring with its flowers blooming and new growth everywhere but each season has it own beauty. The warm energy filled days of summer, the relaxing and slowing down of fall and the sleeping days of winter help rejuvenate everything so that when spring returns the new growth will be ready to produce.
Life is very much this way. Whether you look at on a yearly basis following the natural weather seasons or if you look at the full span of your life. It starts with youthful newness like spring, then the young adult years of summer energy followed by the understanding years of middle age autumn ending with the teaching years of winter so the the follow generations of spring can learn from your wisdom of a life well lived of loving and learning.
And we have to mention that sometimes change is not good. When people change to the point that they forget how to care for each other, that is when evil steps in and the path to destruction becomes a slippery slope down a dark path. Change then needs to come in the order for to change the footing to get back onto a level non-slippery path. It can be hard work but well worth the effort.
So as we go through the season of the year and the season of our lives remember the many changes, to enjoy them, be watchful that the changes are uplifting for you as well as others and to help those who may temporarily step on a slippery slope and may need your help in getting back onto level ground.
And in closing, I remind myself as well as other to always be kind. Let the water drops of kindness roll of of you as water rolls off of a duck.
Dock swimming in the rain
And if that statement only make sense in my quirky mind, just remember to be kind.
In the south(Ga, Fla, and such – Texas is not south. It a country all it own) of those in my generation, we use precious as a term of endearment when someone does something well out of the norm to help during a difficult time.
Normally when we(I) think of something as precious I conjure up things that are cute, cuddly, heartwarming, which usually involves, babies or small children and young animals so I have included some precious pictures, of course one of my grandson.
Precious child with a precious smile
Many things in this world are precious, you just have to know how to look.
We approach preciousness with tenderness and awe…as does the animal kingdom.
In closing on the thoughts of seeing precious pictures, let us remember to always be kind. Show how preciously you can be by being kind.
As I sit here in Iowa, I watch places that I am familiar with being inundated by yet another late season storm. The hurricanes that hit at the back end of the season are always more fierce and this one is still going strong hitting towns I left to move to the mid-west. As the Weather Channel showed videos from St George Island in Florida, I saw water as it moved through someone’s screen porch with the waves slapping against the ceiling. I was heart sick. I had lived through that when young and I fully understand what they are going through. The storm now is moving through my home state of Georgia and family and friends are hiding and hoping for the best.
Mother Nature as we call it can be a beast that consumes whatever it touches. Whether it be from hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms, nor’ easters and even fire storms nature calls the shots and we try as we might to survive the onslaught. Sometimes we don’t survive like we had hoped but at the end of the day if no one gets hurt its a good day. Stuff can be replaced.
So my prayers go out to all the rescue personnel, all the line repairmen, and all of those who endured today and to those still in its path.
And in closing as I always, please be kind to those having difficult days. Kindness during tragedy carries even more weight.
An Ode is a lyrical poem meant to be sung. Why would you do that for a opossum. It such an unattractive creature especially when it opens its mouth.
Vicious looking teeth
Coming from the south there have always been jokes, poetry, stories and even odes to opossums. There is even a country star, George Jones, that had a nick name of opossum. Maybe because he wrote a song about a opossum. And in checking there are numerous odes to opossums on the internet. Again I ask why?
According to research, opossums are marsupials from the order Didelphimorphia endemic to the Americas and the largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere. Shockingly there are over 103 species in 19 genre. Hmm, who’d a thunk?
What prompt my interest in this was one that had been run over in front of my house yesterday as I was heading to church. It reminded me of a conversation with a small child, not mine, but because this child had only seen opossum when hit on the road, he thought that was where they came from and what their purpose was. It was a chuckling conversation.
But the most chuckling remembrance concerning opossums was from Baby Ruth, my Opossum Queen.
Baby Ruth In Va. snow
Baby Ruth was a Black Lab cross that had a thing against opossums. She would go into attack mode the moment a opossum scent cross her nose. I wrote a story and submitted it for publication about her and this obsession and I will attach it here sometime if publication gets declined, its rather a funny story. As you know, opossum are notorious for playing dead in appearance and emitting the smell of death at the same time.
Don’t let appearances fool you
Baby Ruth would capture them, shake them violently, thinking they were dead and then she would prance around all proud like she had saved the world. Thirty minutes later the opossum would be gone but the crown on Baby Ruth would still be intact. All great memories.
When my nephew was young he found a baby one that had been abandoned or lost and raised it until it was able to fend for itself. They are quite cut as babies but then all babies are cute, especially animal babies, so many varieties. They even seem to smile.
Opossum in a pumpkin
In closing I remind my self as everyone else to be kind.
May I be the water drop of kindness that when dropped creates ripples of joy wherever I go – Anita Neal
Sue W gives us a photo prompt this week of finding a work of art in anything you see. There is art all around us in nature from gorgeous flowers to the leaves beginning to turn.
Then, it is fall and those those of us who have been in the automotive industry know that the new cars are coming out. The art mindset they went through to create the new design from paper to model to car. It’s all very fascination.
When I moved here from the south I was surprised to see a large mural on a train overpass that featured sea life. Yes, we are on the Mississippi but we are 1 state below Canada, now where near any ocean.
Reference to how long it is
The opposite side of the artwork had the head of the octopus and this side shows it holding odd objects, like a pencil? Not sure I understand the artist meaning here.
Maybe the Octopus is the artist
But I was tickled most by the small insignificant object that I wonder if the artist did it on purpose or did it just happened that way.
We all live in a yellow submarine….
The Beatles and the art of music, yet another form of the many forms of wondrous art. I close copying the picture from Sue’s post as it is classic truth.
And I fully agree with #3
And I say, as I always do, a reminder to me as much to you, always be kind, it will save your mind. A poet I am not. Have a great weekend.
For the Love of 