There is no God?

As a young girl lost in the world of books I would, ever so often, come across ideas and thoughts expressed so beautifully that I thought they were perfect. That no one would ever be able to improve upon them. So I would write these ideas and thoughts down. Many of them were about friendship (so I could have something unique to write in my friends' slam books, although they weren't called 'slam books' in my time) and love (because I was just waiting to fall in love with MY guy and I wanted to have all the right words ready).

In those days I was a voracious reader of Readers' Digest and in one of the issues I came across this article by Jim Bishop, titled "There is no God?" Need I say that it swept me off my feet with the power of its words. At that time I was neither religious nor spiritual nor anything (which is pretty much what I am now) and yet I took the time to copy the entire article down. I forget which issue, which year. I guess what appealed to me the most was the manner in which the author had both begun and ended the piece - the same sentence, one a statement, the other a question.

Over the years I forgot where the article was but from time to time I would make mention of it and wonder how I would ever get my hands on it again. To my surprise, I recently found it while searching for something. I decided to type it out and keep on my computer and so, today, I'm posting this article for which I claim no credit, other than endorsing the idea that this is what is meant by a thought PERFECTLY EXPRESSED!!

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There is no God?  - by Jim Bishop

There is no God. All the wonders around us are accidental. No almighty hand made a thousand million stars. They made themselves. No power keeps them on their steady course. The earth spins itself to keep the oceans from falling off towards the sun. Infants teach themselves to cry when they are hungry or hurt. A small flower invented itself so we could extract digitalis for sick hearts.

The earth gave itself day and night, tilted itself so that we could get seasons. Without the magnetic pole man would be unable to navigate the trackless oceans of water and air, but they just grew there.

How about the sugar thermostat in the pancreas? It maintains a level of sugar in the blood sufficient for energy. Without it all of us would fall into a coma and die.

Why does snow sit on mountain-tops waiting for the warm spring sun to melt it at just the right time for the young crops in farms below to drink? A very lovely accident.

The human heart will beat for 70 or 80 years without faltering. How does it get sufficient rest between beats? A kidney will filter poison from the blood, and leave good things alone. How does it know one from the other?

Who gave the human tongue flexibility to form words, and a brain to understand them, but denied it to other animals?

Who showed a womb how to take the love of two persons and keep splitting a tiny ovum until, in time, a baby would have the proper number of fingers, eyes and ears and hair in the right places, and be strong enough to sustain life?

There is no God?    
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Gardening and me...

"What the hell do you do in that garden for so long?" a friend of mine recently asked me. Every time he called or came online to chat I would be in the garden or going to the garden. Yeah...most people who knew me as a child would be stunned, more than anything else, to discover that the adult me is an avid gardener.

In fact, only yesterday I had a conversation with my dad who asked me whether I remember a child of his who would be forever down with a stomach ache or a head ache the second my parents (avid gardeners themselves) would announce the mandatory 'garden time' on weekends!! God, there was nothing I hated more than gardening then, especially when it meant that I had to pull my nose out of a book and get into a place that was full of creepy-crawlies and dog and cat shit and horrible kid brothers who would be scampering around and knocking you into rose bushes and bougainvilla pots. Sure, I loved watering the flowers ONLY. I couldn't be bothered with weeding and turning the soil over and manuring and anything else. Yet, like everything else in my childhood, it wasn't without its fun moments. How can I ever forget my mom, a botany teacher, hopping around like mad after realising that she had just picked up a long juicy earthworm with her bare fingers while loosening the mud around the marigolds?? As you can imagine, after having a hearty laugh at her hopping around in her nightie and screeching all sorts of gibberish, it was the only excuse I needed to put down my own trowel and get back to the arms of my pirate in Daphne duMaurier's Frenchman's Creek.

Marriage brought me to a house with a large garden space. My father-in-law had planned to build a second house in that space for his younger son (my husband) and had, in the meantime, begun a nice vegetable garden. Before his dreams were realised his time on earth was up and over the years that space had been used on and off by the many tenants who came to occupy the ground floor house. After my marriage I found this large space, that was both dumpyard and sometime garden, and was bitten by the gardening bug.

Gardening was tough, especially since my new-found passion was shared by no one at home. My husband and his older brother had none of their father's interest in gardening and all my mother-in-law did was reminisce about how her husband had grown truckloads of vegetables all by himself. In fact, my brother-in-law would make it a point to come and stand on the balcony every time I was weeding the wasteland (as I called it) and encourage me by saying "Its very difficult ya. What you are pulling out now will grow back again in two days. Its a waste of time." These very soothing words ended one day when I lost my temper and told him "If you can't come and help me at least don't discourage me ..."  

In those early months of marriage my husband would, after much cajoling and begging and pleading, endeavour to show his love for me by helping me out in the garden. After exactly thirty seconds of weeding he would ask me "Baby, can you get me a stool? My knees are aching." After a few minutes he would want me to come and wipe the sweat off his brow. After another five minutes he would want me to come and clear the few weeds he had uprooted from near his foot. After ten long minutes of back-breaking labour he wanted some cool lemonade to quench his thirst. Well! needless to say I stopped him from helping me out in the garden as it was much more work for me having him help me garden. And yet, after all these years I'm left with the niggling suspicion that ... maybe, just maybe ... it was a brilliant scheme hatched by my husband to be let off the hook for the rest of his life!!  

Finally...

Well, here it is!! I've finally taken the plunge into the ocean of blogging. Today I find myself in a terrible place...teetering on the brinks of a depression, yet again. I go into terrible zones, the dankest recesses of the mind from which return seems almost always impossible. But then there is something irrepressible in the human spirit, in MY spirit, and, as my dad puts it, I "bounce back." Yet, the time spent in those zones take a toll on me and those around me. So, to save everyone and myself a whole lot of bother I finally decided to use the magic of words to wrest me from the desolation that threatens to envelop me. Its late at night, so I guess I'll let this suffice for now.