Growing near the compass at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, at least 3 feet taller than I, covered with fine white hairs that give it an icy look, thorns like fence posts emerging from webbing that grows from the stem, I don't know what it was called, couldn't find a label, but I would certainly call it the Ice King.
Icy like the man blowing the leaves from the entrance who glared at me because I was in his way as I waited at the guard's post for the rest of the children to catch up, icy like the gardener who fussed when I stepped on the dirt in order to see the label on a beautiful banana tree, cold as the bus driver annoyed that I hadn't folded up the stroller before getting on the bus. I was tired. He at least did not seem to indulge in his annoyance as much.
I'm hoping that I've passed a threshold wherein I see those whose hostility prickles as suffering also, lashing out in their suffering, it always seems to be some one else's turn, on and on. Jacob Boehme, a persecuted man, wrote that life is a bath of thistles and nettles. At times, it is also a bath of milk and honey, but maybe those sweeter dips are few and far between for many. How much more sorrowful then are those who find themselves somehow unable to drink when a cup of nectar suddenly appears before the lips.
1 comment:
I will now call you a big poopyhead to demonstrate the depth of my suffering.
Now don't you feel guilty?!?
Jesus had it right on the cross: 'Forgive them Father for they really have not a clue.'
That's you and me He was talking about, and He had a point, but then the Bible doesn't include the scene where Jesus got his ass whupped by some broad with a buncha kids on a hot day when He admonished her for disturbing the prayer corner in the garden of Gethsemane.
Man's got to know his limitations, or at least the relevant movie quote.
sprefla
a wisp of hair plastered to the forehead by annoying sweat, that no upward puff of lip-blown air will keep out of your eye.
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