Butterfly for Breakfast

This morning I tossed my hot raisin toast on the plate, and voilà! I noticed I had created a piece of accidental art.  I’m glad it didn’t fly away before I could eat it!

Be of good cheer,

Sister Olive

~♥~

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Insect Armageddon

I’m in Tennessee now and it’s stinkbug season…I used to think I could be a naturalist, but one problem always prevented me: INSECTS.

I wrote an essay about this problem during graduate school.  We were discussing nature writing, and I decided I would try my hand at it.  My mentor loved this piece entitled “Insect Armageddon.”   I hope you enjoy.

Peace,  Olive Twist!!

~♥~

C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist, believed that animals go to Heaven when they die, because Isaiah the prophet speaks of the Holy Mountain being inhabited by more animals than humans.  Someone once asked Lewis, “If animals go to Heaven, what will become of the mosquitoes?”  Lewis replied that “A heaven for mosquitoes could be combined with a hell for man.”

I can attest to the fact that such a place already exists, where men are tormented for their sins and insects have dominion: the state of Florida.  Many northerners have discovered this punishment at the time of their retirement, having thought they were moving south to tropical paradise and Jimmy Buffet songs.

I will not even embark upon issues such as the relentless heat and no seasons, the hurricanes and power outages that follow every storm, the wharf rats, the stinging jellyfish, the rabid raccoons, or the water moccasins that lurk in lakes, awaiting some brazen tourist who might decide to skinny-dip.  I will tell only of that which I despise the most: the bugs. I have always despised bugs and regard them with a mixture of contempt and dread.  Every autumn, I begin to pray for a winter harsh enough to send them all into early graves.

One summer my sons and I moved to Oregon, because most of our relatives live on the west coast and the weather is milder.  After about two months there, I asked my young sons what they missed the most about Florida.  My six-year-old quickly replied, “I miss the giant rhinoceros beetles that crawl around the parking lots, and those big locusts that are green and yellow and orange with zebra stripes on them.”  His big blue eyes were glowing with purity.

“You miss those?” I asked, trying not to look disgusted. “Not me.”  I mumbled a prayer that we would never go back, but we unfortunately did.

As we drove back into Florida, I opened the car window and could hear the cicadas chirping loudly in the trees.  They’ve been waiting for me, I thought with horror.  They are like giant flies that are naturally attracted to long hair, and nothing is worse than trying to shake one out while it rattles like madness in your ear, and you shriek and do a nerve dance until it falls out.

But the great demon of the south is the roach.  Some of them fly, such as the giant palmetto bug.  Once I lived in an old two-story house with a group of friends, and a man was cooking spaghetti and garlic bread in the kitchen. He had a neat stack of bread on a corner of the table and we noticed a huge roach on the ceiling several feet away.  Its antennae were shaking excitably, and it suddenly did a sky dive with no parachute and landed perfectly on top of that tall bread castle, where it seemed to be quite content with its plunder.  I did not eat that night.

Most roaches crawl with wriggling hungry antennae in garbage cans, on kitchen counters, and through windowsills and crevices.  In the middle of the night, when you go to the kitchen for a cookie and milk and you turn on the light, they flee like desperate soldiers behind the fortress of the stove.  When you open a cupboard in the daytime, one might rustle behind the sugar bag, or you might spy their eggs like tiny white bullets in the corner.

Once I was lying in my bed, and I heard a sound as soft as silk slippers on the venetian blinds over my head.  I leapt from my bed and cut on the light, and was amazed that I had even been able to hear it.  The roach, I mean.  My ears are ultra-sensitive to insects, especially roaches.  I wake up everyone in the house for such occasions, and won’t let anyone rest until the skirmish is finished and the culprit has met his demise.

The pest control man can’t stand me. I laugh with victorious delight whenever his Ghostbuster truck pulls into the driveway with its giant canisters of poison and ammunition. I call him any time I see one bug, and I make him spray the whole house again, since it is included in my service agreement.  Though most people have switched to annual pest service, I expect my house to be sprayed once per month inside and out.  I let him know when I think it’s time for more bait behind the kitchen drawers and under the sinks.  I know he gets sick of dealing with me.

I can’t leave out the termites and giant ants. I called the termite man to come and tell me about a tree that looked like it was dissolving to sawdust all by itself.  He looked at it and said, “I can’t do anything about that tree, because it is within three feet of your house, and we don’t do indoor service for you.”  So I called the pest control man, and he says, “I can’t touch that tree because it’s not part of the house.  So the bugs have all figured out where the no-kill zone is, and they continue to prosper there and raise their families. I once thought it would be funny to put up a “roach crossing” sign in front of our house.

Should I embark upon the subject of mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis?  Or have you ever awakened to find a tick burrowing in your flesh?  How about those wasps with great stingers and long legs that hover around the eaves looking for a victim?

Once I had a crazy dream that I was looking with curious disdain at a display of insects in some laboratory.  As I analyzed one big furry bug with wings pinned to a board resembling an insect Hellraiser, the bug suddenly squirmed and opened its eyes and started talking.  I jumped back in horror, as it told me about the injustice and misfortune of its life and how it ended up being nailed by some entomologist. It was like a horror movie scene and I woke up sweating and feverish.  I wondered if I was like Hannibal Lechter to the bug world.

As I sat shaking on the edge of my bed, I thought:  Perhaps I have misjudged these little creatures.  Perhaps they are only innocent civilians. Perhaps they are really cute and cuddly if you get to know them.

One tiny baby roach wriggled on my dresser.  I grabbed my hairbrush and smacked it into eternal bliss.  No, even my Quaker beliefs must be suspended for this war, this enmity.  I cannot love these hellions in paradise.

(See Isaiah Chapter 11 and The Problem of Pain, chapter 9)

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Donald Miller (1971- present): Mystical Ringmaster

(Excerpt from “Divine Doorkeepers”)

Donald Miller is a best-selling American author and public speaker from Portland, Oregon. He founded “The Mentoring Project,” a non-profit agency that works with local churches to help fatherless young men. In his memoirs, Miller seems like a literary ringmaster entertaining the reader in a three-ring circus that consists of humor, sensitivity, and spirituality.  In To Own a Dragon, he writes about the emotional problems that are experienced by young men who are raised in the absence of a father figure. He begins by describing a documentary pertaining to elephants in which the narrator describes how young male elephants that lose their fathers become particularly violent and aggressive during their “musth cycle” (puberty):

Occasionally, two elephants in a musth would meet, and the encounter was always violent, going so far as to uproot trees in the fray of their brawl…I couldn’t help but identify…I mean, there were feelings, sometimes anger, sometimes depression, sometimes raging lust, and I was never sure what any of it was about.  I just felt like killing somebody, or sleeping with some girl, or decking a guy in a bar, and I didn’t know what to do with any of these feelings. (32)

Miller juggles sensitivity and humor in this passage, causing the reader to laugh about problems that aren’t innately funny.  He uses the angry young elephants as an analogy for adolescent young men who need paternal care in their lives. He describes how mature male elephants “adopt” young elephants and have a calming effect on them: “The green pus running down his hind leg and his smell like fresh-cut grass alerts an older, fully mature male, that this is a young elephant in need of guidance.  Upon finding a mentor, the young elephant’s musth cycle ends” (33).  Miller then writes of an older male mentor coming into his own life and offering guidance, and extends the analogy into the spiritual realm, explaining that the Heavenly Father can also assume the role of adoptive father and resolve many of these issues for men.

In another of his books entitled Searching for God Knows What Miller describes his own spiritual journey, prefacing the book with a story of being born in a circus surrounded by clowns:

Sometimes I feel as if I were born in a circus, come out of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums…the smell of popcorn in the air…and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings…the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight.

And that is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net…who is going to rescue me? (ix)

Through the absurd he illustrates the fears about life that surround people from their youth.  He creates the sense of terror by depicting the man coming out of the cannon and discovering he has no net to catch him, and wittily embarks upon the subjects of desperation and divine intervention when he raises the question of who will rescue him.  Miller always performs a graceful balancing act of seriousness and humor, making his writings entertaining and yet profoundly meaningful.

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Minnow Paws

Ahem…hey, all y,all fair and tender ladies.  Ah’ve got this friend and she’s having a few troubles, and she ast me to post this here note.  She says she’s goin’ through a phase common to women-folk and she needs to know a few things about what’s going on and what to ‘spect and how long and what to do about this here mess. In recent days, she’s as nervous and wretched as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs. So I know y,all sweet ladies know what ah mean an what ah need to know, so go for it.  But keep it down… Okay?  My friend needs some hep quick!

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Muddled Medical Messages

I’ve been having a few mysterious health problems, and have had some blood work and other studies lately.  I also have a phone service that transcribes my voice mail and sends it to my email.  The transcription service is not the best, but it gives me a good laugh when I need it most.  Here’s one of the messages from a doctor’s office that came to me a couple of days ago:

“Hello, this is Dr. Bishop’s office. If you could please call me back well I can just leave you a message. Your vitamin D level is very low, normal, but he does want you to start on some vitamin D and beach whales. Okay according to your hormone levels you are in the park. Or I could kill you.  Actually, your vitamin D you need to take 2000 units every day and you can buy that over the counter. I’m gonna call you and that to see.”

Wow, he’s gonna start me on some vitamin D and beach whales-  sounds a bit too heavy on the medication! Or they could kill me…that might be the cheapest solution.

Now, here’s a message from another doctor:

“Hello this message is from Dr. Johnson’s office I got your message about wanting your ultrasound results and the doctor has reviewed them and signed off on him and he says there is a small TV down on the ride. I thought your call butter’s okay and if you have any more questions give us a call.”

So I have a small TV down on the ride…that actually sounds rather serious, and I want surgery immediately.  But my call butter is okay- whew, that’s a relief!

Anyway, you get the idea.  I had to call the actual voice mail to decode the messages.

All joking aside, please pray for me and my health, and I will continue to post as much as I can.  I hope all of you out there are well.

Peace & Grace, Olive

~♥~

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Good Grief!!

Calm down, I’m not deserting you!!  I’m just trying to take care of some other things too…wow, I didn’t know this could get so mushy!  I love you too, and all that jazz… (sob)…

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Dear Olive…

QUESTIONS?

Don’t go ’round confused– if you have anything you wish to ask me about my faith, my life, or my statements, please ask me.  I would like to have more dialogue with my readers, and to clarify anything that may be unclear.

If I am able to answer your question, I will do so in the most conscientious manner possible. Be aware that I don’t haggle over non-essential doctrine or anything that might create unnecessary controversy or division in the Body of Christ. We need more unity, and less fragmentation.

Also, it goes without saying-  I don’t know everything…don’t ask me the stuff your two-year old is asking you, like “How did God get here in the first place?” and “How come everything isn’t perfect?”  I might try to answer and make a real fool out of myself, but you wouldn’t want that, now would you?

So now that we’ve cleared up the ground rules, I am going to start a page entitled “Dear Olive,” so you can submit your inquiries using the “comment” link.

Peace Be With You,

Sister Olive

~♥~

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