Freedom - We Do Not Have What We Fail To Use

 Walther kidnapped Bishop Stephan at gunpoint
so he could become the pope of the cult.

I have always been puzzled by my peers acting as if they are locked into place, as if in a prison, in their pathetic, failing synods. The clergy are the worst, of course, because they feel tied down by the golden chains of salary, benefits, housing, and health insurance. Yes, the synods are more powerful than God, because those poor souls will starve and huddle naked outdoors in the snow and sleet if their anti-Luther sects desert them.

These prisoners are the worst kind of chess players, because they play the players, not the board. That means everything will go their way if the others perform as they hope. The rest of them are the same, so the ones who become district presidents and professors are the same who made the right guesses for the moment.

The chessboard, my analogy du jour, is the Word of God. One does not trump the Word of God by schemes, clever strategies, and a thousand deceits. The result of trying to defeat the Word is a bunch of timid clowns hoping they can get by with their plans.

I know this from talking to the worst of them. When they are caught in their lies, they are terrified and look for help or cover. If their little foam castles are threatened, they respond with angry tirades.

The Gospel means freedom, so clergy and laity are not bound to those gilded chains - they only appear golden. The family objects? Jesus asked "Who is my mother, my brother, my sisters?"

Matthew 12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.

47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.

48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?

49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

If people want me to stick with an abusive anti-Gospel sect, they are themselves abusive and anti-Gospel. They may not see this until later. There is certainly evidence that Jesus' mother was in company of the Apostles (Acts) and that His brother was also an early leader (James). 

Some clergy leave one system of dictatorial abuse and join another one, comfortable in being told how to think, dress, and vote. Perhaps they dream of being that dictator one day, as Walther did. Every Ft. Wayne seminarian seems to have a bishop's hat in his briefcase: McCain, Webber, Cascione, Heiser, and the Preussian Union. They are all self-appointed bishops.

No other era has been so free for believers and so full of potential for those who want to enjoy that freedom. Clergy can start a congregation without a mission board, a million bucks in debt, and all the strings attached thereto. Laity can gather and call a pastor, without begging and waiting years for Holy Mother Church to respond. No one has to bend the knee to Thrivent, Jeske, and the Wolf of Wall Street.

Fun with Pollinators in the Creation Garden

Sassy wants her morning walk by 7 AM, and I finish a mug of pour-over coffee by that time. She interprets certain signals favorably, such as donning socks and speaking certain words, such as go, walk, and morning crunchies.

We inspect the rose garden at the same time, for different reasons. I look for the latest blooms. She noses about, looking for signs of wild life.

On Friday I wonder about what will be blooming Sunday morning. In hot weather the new rose blooms appear rapidly. If I want more roses,

1. I prune mature rose flowers, 
2. look for death stars (blooms with no petals, ready to develop hips), and 
3. cut away dead wood. 

All three suppress new blooms, so I follow John 15 and cleanse the fruitful to make them more fruitful. But Sassy is a busy executive, with people to meet and places to explore. She hurries me along with some happy barks. Pruning waits for her permission, later.

I am watching the plants I obtained for pollinators. At Almost Eden, that word came up often - pollinators. That includes bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. The gardening sites all work very hard at exploiting those categories, especially butterflies and hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds love three plants I am promoting in the rose garden:

• Hostas - for their trumpet flowers;
• Bee Balm - for their trumpet flowers;
• Trumpet Vine - for their trumpet flowers.

The common factor seems to be...Bueller, Bueller, anyone? anyone? Worth mentioning is the hummingbirds' need for tiny insects. Hummingbird feeders offer sugar water, but flowers offer nectar and tiny insects.

Hummingbird flowers will also be popular with bees, and I like having a constant cycle of blooming, which start with early spring weeds, mints, and dandelions.

Butterflies seem to need a specific plant for each kind:

1. Milkweed for the Monarch eggs and caterpillers, 
2. Parsley for the Black Swallowtails.

I am working on Butterfly Weed (related to Milkweed) now and Milkweed for next year.

Teeny-Tiny Insects
Joe Pye and Mountain Mint draw groups of tiny insects and butterflies. I wondered why they sold a small version of Joe Pye called Little Joe. Now I know why. My mature Joe Pye is ready to bloom and almost 6 feet tall.

Likewise, Mountain Mint is so tall that people ask what it is. Do not laugh, but I have made three attempts to divide and replant some. I missed the one day of spring for that, and the roots are welded to the clay soil for now. Laugh all day - I have Mountain Mint and most people do not know how valuable it is.

 Cletha - aka Summersweet aka Sweet Pepperbush, etc.
Poke a bloom and see a tiny insect cloud.

But I also like the tiny insects that do so much to attack insect pests. Their small size contributes to overlooking their value. If I wiggle the right plants, a tiny cloud of them will take flight and settle down again - quite a sight.

About Clethra - From Gardening in Tune with Nature

If I had space in a small garden for only one woody plant, I would grow summersweet.  I’ve always grown it and frequently written about the heady perfume of its summer flowers and its unique brassy yellow autumn leaves, but its status as a “must have” plant for the garden insectary was secured last August as I stood among a colony of the cultivar ‘Hokie Pink’ flowering in Marjorie’s Garden.  I recalled the summer day ten years earlier when we knocked each of the five small plants out of its one-gallon pot and planted them around the bole of the old white pine growing off the porch steps.  A decade later, as I twisted my way into head-high branches crowded with racemes of soft pink flowers, it was impossible to say where one plant stopped and another took over.  Even a chipmunk has a hard time weaving through the interlaced stems to reach the base of the pine.

Carefully moving branches aside, I positioned my legs and those of my tripod in the middle of the summersweet colony and waited for the wake of my disturbance to settle.  Soon the spikes of flowers, only a few inches from my nose, were crawling with bees, wasps, hoverflies, beetles, and several insects whose images remain on my computer desktop, waiting to be identified.  Bumblebees of all sizes and colored markings outnumbered all other insects.  A lonely honeybee joined the symphony of buzzing, along with several small native bees, some metallic green, others gray or black.  Two distinctly different hoverflies tormented me with their inability to settle down long enough for a photograph, but a tachinid fly obliged, stopping in its frenetic foraging for nectar long enough for me to get a decent shot.  (Both hoverflies and tachinid flies are predators of herbivores such as aphids and various leaf-munching caterpillars.  Hoverflies feed on nectar and pollen as adults, but their larvae feed on other insects.  Tachinid fly females lay their eggs on other insect adults or larvae.  When these eggs hatch, the tachinid larvae bore into the host’s body and slowly consume it.)

In terms of diversity of insects attracted to a single plant in bloom, nothing in my experience compares to what I witnessed on that August afternoon.  Through the tangle of summersweet branches I could see the vegetable garden a hundred feet away, the bright orange squash flowers beckoning.  When a bumblebee in my viewfinder took wing and disappeared, I knew where it was heading.

More about Clethra from another writer. I have two mature Clethras.

Where Yah Going on Vacation?

I am there.