Beautiful Poison

I noticed this plant earlier this year, and as I usually do, let it grow until I could know what it was. Yesterday, when I was weeding in my garden, I started to pull out the vines which have beautiful, tiny purple and yellow flowers, and wide, heart-shaped leaves.

I stopped, thinking about how beautiful a vine it could be if I just let it grow on my fence. I decided to get an ID before ripping it all out. It turns out it is woody nightshade, a close relative of deadly nightshade or belladonna. While not as deadly as the more familiar belladonna, it is also toxic to humans and animals. When broken, it weeps a sticky, smelly sap. It has medicinal properties which have grown out of use.

As long as it is not eaten, it is safe. For a brief moment of insanity I considered leaving it, even knowing that it has the habit of overtaking gardens, simply because it is so pretty.

How the Internet is Ruining the World

And I'm not even going to talk about spelling and grammar.

More and more people are not only expressing their opinions, but doing so in a harsh, threatening, or violent way. People seem to think less and less of threatening a person's life because they are racist, or against gay marriage, or FOR gay marriage, or baptizing proxy for someone's deceased family members, or for participating in a group of people that also includes someone else with any of those qualities, or any number of opinions that are repugnant to them.

You see, anyone can have opinions nowadays, even about things that don't really affect them. Just the other day, I was solicited to sign a petition for something in an entirely other state. Which I refused because it's none of my business what another state decides to do with their law.

But that's just it, people think everything is everyone's business. Not only do we disrespect privacy, we actually castigate people who refuse ideological exhibitionism.

Being a Lady

Although I used to have no time for such silly nonsense, I have developed an appreciation for courtly graces (as in courteous graciousness).

For example, I was at a singles event not long ago, and there was a point at which tables and chairs had to be folded and put away. Although most of the women moved to the sides and let the men handle the "hard labor," I helped without thinking much of it. This is pretty typical for me, and I have observed a few different reactions by the men.

Some don't notice. Fair enough.

Some rush over and grab the whatever out of my hands and do it themselves. Thoughtful, but certainly not courteous.

But this last time, one man came over and helped me fold up the table. Every time I grabbed a table, he grabbed the other end. I would thank him, and he'd wheel the table away while I started folding up another one. By about the third table, he grinned at me and said, "You really shouldn't be doing this, you know."

I said, "Yes, but I'm not the type to sit on the sidelines and watch other people work." And he just smiled again and nodded agreement. He didn't try to stop me, but he was aware and courteous enough to assist me.

This is the essence of grace.

Now, I could choose to be all offended and see his assistance as a message that I can't take care of myself, or that I'm weak. But even if he had been one of the ruder examples above, it would be demonstrating extreme gracelessness on my part to choose offense, especially when the offender's motivations would be trying to be thoughtful.

I have found myself being less gracious lately, and I want to change it. There is no benefit demonstrating my irritation with certain things, and every benefit in accepting things that are less than ideal with poise.

This goes for things in the Church as well as in my own personal interactions. Sometimes Church leadership deals with things in ways I don't like. But that is no reason to grump around at people and make my opinion known. I really, REALLY want to work on being more gracious.

So that's my spring resolution. Now I just need to figure out how to do it.

Conditional Love

A discussion over on FMH really got me thinking about some of the choices I've made in the last decade, as well as how relationships and love work. They began talking about unconditional love in conjunction with some discussion on marriage and divorce. Some thoughts came to me which I felt were worth reproducing here.

Everyone’s love is conditional in one sense or other. True unconditional love in the sense that most people mean it—that I can do anything I want and not suffer loss of intimacy—CANNOT exist. That’s one thing I learned from my experiences in my marriage. I stayed with my ex-husband through some pretty scary times over the years because I believed in unconditional love like that.

But true unconditional love does not exist without boundaries or limitations. Conditions on love are different than boundaries. To set a condition on love means, “I will only love you if you do this.” That was something I experienced up close and personal in my marriage. Unconditional love really looks like, “I will always love you, but I’ll not be close to you if you engage in behavior that is destructive.”

I still love my ex, in the sense that I want what is best for him. I would love it if he would repent, become a good father and maybe even a good husband some day to someone else. But to the extent of my power, I will not let him hurt me or the children any more.

So I love him unconditionally, but I will not stay close to him unconditionally.

I think most of us have a pretty twisted sense of what real love is. I imagine this is what makes it hard to understand a God who wouldn’t just forgive all and let us all come back to live with Him no matter what we do. We conflate love and intimacy. I imagine that God will always love us, but we cannot be close to Him if we engage in destructive behaviors.

What is Tolerance?

This is an absolutely amazing discussion on political correctness and tolerance. I am intrigued and slightly jealous: I wish I had written it! Please read and comment there.