Tag Archives: Ohio

The Happiness One Suffers

20 Friday Apr 2012

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White lilac blossoms

The tentative newness of early Spring blossoms in Ohio is transforming now into early summer leaves.  The heavenly scent of lilac mingles… with the wild garlic and dog shit… up and down the drive where I find myself walking.  It reminds me that we are much happier in life if we can accept those two things simultaneously and with equal gratitude.  One cannot exist without the other.  Lilac without dog shit?  For example, if I smell the lilac once it is so delicious I want to take a bite of the blossom, but if I smell again very quickly it is not quite so intense, and if I have the blossom in a vase next to me, pretty soon I don’t smell it at all until I leave the room and come back again.  So, one must experience the lack of the scent (or another contrasting one) so that the perfume of the flower can be experienced.  Of course I struggle with this concept as much as anyone else and have had many opportunities in recent times to examine both sides of the coin.

If all the colours are bright, there is no brightness. – Henri Robert

Wild violets

Joni Mitchell sang… “I’ve looked at Life from both sides now, from win and lose and still somehow, it’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know Life at all”.  I guess I don’t agree that I don’t know Life at all, but I would certainly agree the more I learn the less I am certain of!  Still, occasionally I do have a new insight to add to my short list of ‘Things I know for sure’.  Many of those insights have been a result of people who have influenced my life.  Today came another insight, by way of a friend who shared with me an apt quotation to describe this dichotomy in life, that moment when we realize that what makes us happy also has the power to make us sad, and vice versa.

Pink Dogwood blossoms

Of course it is we who ultimately have the choice of how we react to the two sides of everything.  We can succumb to misery in a difficult moment or we can feel the truth of it and know that without it we would not know the beauty of its opposite.

A happiness that one suffers, a pain that one loves – Amalia Rodriguez

The Church in the Wildwood

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

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“The Church in the Wildwood” is a song that was written by Dr. William S. Pitts in 1857 following a coach ride that stopped in Bradford, Iowa. It is a song about a church in a valley near the town. The first stanza goes like this…

“There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood
No lovelier place in the dale
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale…”

The Bible Chapel, Hamersville, Ohio

The church is no longer in a wildwood, nor is it brown, or even located in Iowa, but it has been a favorite hymn of the parishioners of the Bible Chapel in Hamersville since I can remember.  As I sat in the pew on Easter Sunday 55 years of affiliation with this church were brought back to me. Growing up in Bethel, Ohio, a town of 2500 people, and no less than seven churches, one might wonder why we drove 8 miles away to a tiny little country church in an even smaller town. The reason, I have recently learned, is because about 75 years ago the church, in an even smaller town of about 100 people, closed its doors, and the vestments were moved to the little Bible Chapel in Hamersville. Because my mother’s family was from that tiny town, named Point Isabel, they, too, migrated with the vestments to the little church at Hamersville. She and my father were married there over 60 years ago. Their three children were baptized there, and later married there. It seldom has more than 30 people in attendance on a Sunday and has been like that for many, many years. Nevertheless, the church continues to be the well-loved, iconic, country church filled with the good people of the local farming communities.

Lou and Ula 1951

Though I am not religious, I do consider myself spiritual and that I have a personal ‘connection’ with a force higher than myself. I honor my own past within that church and when I visit my parents I attend services with them. This particular Easter as I sat in the pew, my mind contemplated my religious views. Communion was served but I didn’t partake. It didn’t seem relevant to what I believe these days. I thought probably there would be a few eyebrows raised, or at least a big question mark over me but it was more important to me that I be true to my own beliefs. Much as I have enjoyed the genuine fellowship and affection of the people of that church, and others I have attended over my lifetime, my true relationship with God has been forged from my own life experiences and from what lay in my heart. This morning I received a beautiful writing from a friend, penned by the poet and philosopher Rumi (http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Rumi) It really brought into clearer focus those thoughts I had on Easter Sunday.

White Dogwood blossoms

I tried to find him on the Christian Cross, but He was not there: I went to the Temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere.

I searched on the mountains and in the valleys, but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him. I went to the Caaba in Mecca, but He was not there either.

I questioned the scholars and philosophers, but He was beyond their understanding.

I then looked into my heart and it was there He dwelled that I saw Him: He was nowhere else to be found.

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Springtime in Bethel

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

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I confess the inspiration for this post is from another blog I follow called ‘Becoming Madame’ (becomingmadame.wordpress.com/).  She writes about all things French, and particularly Parisian.  If you are a Francophile, or just an armchair traveler, you will enjoy it.  However, I have just taken an afternoon walk on a gorgeous Ohio spring day. It may not be Paris, but it is no less magical.

Flowering Crabapple

Blossoming cherry and pear trees hummed from bees stealing their share from nectar filled blossoms.  Local inhabitants echoed the busy bees, matching their industrious buzzing with droaning lawn mowers. The smell of freshly mown grass made me ‘heady’ as if I’d just drunk some magical elixir meant to help relive a perfect spring day from childhood. (All you skeptics may say it is the high pollen count, but leave me to my own delusions).

Poplar Ridge Drive

I have flown from halfway around the world so that I could visit my parents and walk the lazy lane from  their house, curving toward the highway, in the glory of Spring.  Robin Red Breasts bounced along in front of me, looking for earthworms and other tasty morsels.  Jonquils, daffodils and tulips nodded their greetings to me as I meandered along.  Red bud trees and weeping cherries modeled their Victoria’s Secret lacy apparel on the runway of Poplar Ridge.  Optimistic August lilies  pushed through the earth toward their flowering mission late in summer.  An uncontrollable urge paused me for a few moments in the storm of snowing petals, and I rejoiced in their satin softness in my hair and on my shoulders.  It is a fairyland.  Perhaps the contrast to the dusty, red arid climate in which I live has magnified the experience, but who cares?  Every texture and color conspired for equal attention to inspire this artist’s creative urges.

Cherry blossoms

And if there was any doubt that spring was truly here, the little squirrel that scampered across the road and brought my eyes to rest on the man mowing his lawn confirmed it.  He was dressed in jeans (the man, not the squirrel!), a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap and t-shirt!  The beginning of baseball season is the surest sign of spring known to a girl from Southern Ohio!!

A sprig of pink tinged Viburnum from the yard adorns a bud vase beside me. Its spicy, intoxicating perfume nearly overwhelms me, alluring, no, mesmerizing me into a kind of spring fever haze (ok, coupled with remaining effects of jet lag!)  I feel almost giddy!  If only someone could bottle this! No wonder so many songs have been written about Spring time.  Join me in celebrating the affirming rebirth of Mother Earth, one of life’s true joys.

(And anyway, here is the chainsaw sculpture of Charles de Gaulle that resides here on Poplar Ridge, so really, what has France got in Springtime that Bethel hasn’t?)

Chainsaw sculpture of Charles de Gaulle by Ralph Silvis