7/6/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

There are three houses in a cluster that all have “water features” here on my road.  One home has a pond out back complete with a shooting fountain and small pier, as well as a full size in ground pool with its own pool deck.  But as far as we can tell, these folks are never outside to actually enjoy these things.  We have seen them in their pool once in the last three years, and have never observed them fishing, paddling, or even sitting around their pond. 

Then there is Marty and I with our pond and our hot tub.  We love to watch the pond from our screened in front porch – but only if it is not too hot or too cold outside. The hot tub on the back deck is perfect for soaking aching muscles after a day of yardwork, but only when the mosquitos are not out. 

Finally there are our neighbors next door.  This young couple is facing what so many Gen Z couples are facing: a huge house payment for a little tiny house. Their “water feature” is a bathtub size blow up pool in their back yard.   It is a small thing, just barely big enough to hook a water hose into, sit down in together, and lean back with cold drinks, but it is plenty big enough to laugh in… and talk in…. and laugh hysterically some more and squirt each other with the water hose. I know this because they are in that pool ALL THE TIME. From the time it is warm enough to put it out in the yard in the spring until the last fading light of autumn, they are in that little blow up pool every single weekend and sometimes daily in the kind of oppressive heat we have right now.

A casual observer on our road might get the impression that the more one has, the more one wants…but the more one has, the less one actually uses it.  Something to think about.

Grace and peace,

Beth

6/22/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

Way back in the day, Marty and I took a group of youth and sponsors from FCC to Koinonia Farm, the community established by Clarence Jordan in Americus, Georgia in 1957.  This Christian intentional community was established specifically for the purpose of living counterculturally as a mixed-race community during segregation. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, this community continued their mission of service to all people and was the think tank that designed Habitat for Humanity. Today this Christian community continues to be service-minded and community focused. When we visited it was during one of the hottest heat waves to hit southern Georgia in recent years, and the unairconditioned guest rooms were on the second floor directly above the community’s … … kitchen.  Yes, you read that right.  We stayed in a cinder block building with no air conditioning on the second floor directly above an industrial sized kitchen. Think stove heat rising up at the same time the sun’s rays of southern Georgia were boiling down. It was so hot that week a cold shower was a blessing.  Angie and Katelynn had the hottest room in our block, and Angie didn’t sleep a wink the first night until we could get to the Walmart in Americus the next day for high powered fans! 

Today if you visit Koinonia you will find a new visitor’s lodge complete with air conditioning and little soaps on your pillow when you arrive.  This is all thanks to the visionary leadership of Bren Dubay, whose first week on the job as Koinonia’s director was ironically the same week we visited. 

We remember Bren as a quiet thinker, a deep listener, and a deeply compassionate person.  Recently she published this meditation from Koinonia, and it is so beautifully written I am offering it to you here today.

“Put Your Energy Where the Light Is”

By Bren Dubay

Koinonia Farms, Americus. Georgia

February 28, 2026

We live in a time when problems travel fast. 

They arrive on our phones before breakfast. 

They greet us on the radio in the truck. 

They sit waiting in the quiet corner of a conversation: Did you hear about…?

And most of the time, the problems are real.

War is real.
Loneliness is real.
Poverty is real.
Division is real.

Pretending otherwise does not help anyone.

But something unhealthy happens when we fixate on the problem. It begins to take up all the oxygen in the room. Before long, it feels larger than life itself.

And then we begin to feel small. Helpless. Tired. Angry. All the time.

It is easy to spend our energy describing what is wrong. The world supplies plenty of material.

But the people who quietly change things rarely spend most of their time doing that. They name the problem, yes. But then they turn their attention somewhere else.

They turn toward the work.

The old desert monks used to say that when darkness fills a room, you do not wrestle the darkness. You light a candle.

That is a small act, but it changes the room.

At Koinonia, we see this every day. We know the problems. Anyone paying attention does. But instead of trying to solve the whole world before supper, we try to do the next faithful thing.

Someone repairs a broken step on a porch. 
Someone sits a little longer with a guest who needs to talk.
Someone washes dishes that were not theirs. 
Someone plants a pecan tree that will not bear fruit in their lifetime.

None of these things appear on the evening news, but they are solutions.

The truth is that most of the good done in the world looks like this. Quiet. Local. Unimpressive from a distance. Yet over time, these small acts change the climate of a place.

A meal shared slows down anger.
Honest work restores dignity.
Listening softens suspicion.
Hospitality turns strangers into neighbors.

None of this fixes everything. But it fixes something.

And the surprising thing is that when enough people begin putting their attention there—on the work of repair instead of the endless analysis of the damage—the world begins to tilt ever so slightly toward hope again.

Not because the problems disappear. But because light multiplies.

There is an old wisdom that says: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

It does not say the evil is imaginary. It simply says that good must have the final word.

In the end, most of the good done in the world is not loud. It is patient. It is steady. It is the quiet decision, made again and again, to do what helps.

To mend something.
To welcome someone.
To tell the truth kindly.
To keep going.

The world does not turn toward healing all at once. It turns slowly—one small act of goodness at a time.

And good does not spread by argument nearly as well as it spreads by practice.

So yes, name the problem.
But do not camp there.

Instead, look for the place where a little light can be made.

Mend what is in front of you.
Welcome the person who has arrived.
Do the next honest piece of work.

The world has always been changed this way.

Not by those who spend all their days railing against the darkness, but by those who quietly carry a little light and set it down where they stand.

Rail if you must. There is much to rail about.

But then stop.

Put your energy where the light is. 

You may discover that the smallest candle you carry is exactly what the room was waiting for.

Thank you Bren - 

Grace and Peace,

Beth

6/15/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

“I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

            We have now arrived at the point in the Christian year when we celebrate Jesus’ ascension into heaven; with these words Jesus promises to be present with us both throughout this age and into the age to come.  For Jesus, these two times are the two dimensions of life. “This age” is the age we live in now, the one he references in Luke 20 :34 (”Those who belong to this age”) and Matthew 13:40 (judgement at “the end of this age”). The “age to come” is the age that leads into eternity, or simply “life” as Jesus indicates in Matthew 19:17. This is why in Matthew 24 the disciples ask Jesus “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” because they had been taught to think about things in this age and in the age to come.

            Knowing that there will be the return of Jesus and judgment at the end of the age leads us to often refer to these two ages “this world” and “heaven”.  But if we are not careful, this description causes us to begin to think of heaven as a place “out there” somewhere, a place totally separate from earth. But this is not the understanding with which Jesus leaves us.

            Instead, Jesus teaches us to pray for the time when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. He tells the disciples that the end of the age will come when the good news of God’s kingdom is proclaimed throughout the world, the time when he will return to earth to claim his throne before all the nations and separate the sheep and the goats.  At this time, the sheep will enter the age to come by staying with Jesus here on earth and the goats are the ones who are sent off into a different place, a place outside the presence of Jesus.

            Now it begins to make sense when John the Seer tells us the new Jerusalem descends to earth and becomes the place where God dwells directly in the presence of His people:  the time when heaven and earth are the same place. This is extraordinarily important because when you begin to think heaven is a place “out there” you begin to assume what happens on earth doesn’t matter,  because we won’t be here anyway. But when you believe heaven is the ultimate fulfillment of creation, and time in heaven is time when sin and oppression are healed and the earth returned to harmony, then we begin to take very seriously our role of caretakers of this world until Christ returns.

            In Genesis, God creates the world in a series of events in which each day is different from the day before, and each day has a plan and a purpose. Then God invites the newly created man and woman to join him in the act of tending and caring for the world he has created.  When we practice honest business practices, welcome the stranger, practice medicine, make a home, teach, garden – we are doing more than just “good works,”  we are actively participating in the ongoing work of creation, co-creating with God in these creative, purposeful tasks that signal our desire for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Taking heaven seriously, then, means living into it here in this age: taking the struggles and the sin of this age seriously enough to fight against them as a statement of faith in what the future will look like and as a way to actively participate now in the life of the age to come.

            So how then do we enter heaven if heaven is the new age here on earth?  C.S. Lewis described the age to come as “further up, further in” meaning all the good things about this world grow into maturity in the age to come, leaving behind the sin of this age. When Jesus emerged from the tomb on Easter morning he emerged into this new age, and opened the way for us to enter it as well – beginning now, and then at our death, going “further up, further in.”

            This is why, when he ascended in order to go further up and further in, he left us with these words:  “I am still here.”

Grace and peace,

Beth

5/25/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

            Today I am remembering and giving thanks for all the members of the armed forces who left loved ones and the comforts of home to go out into the unknown to protect our country and our way of life.  I am remembering that the freedom to govern ourselves comes at a great price.  I am remembering each one of us has the responsibility to insure the continuation of our democracy by putting the greater good of our country ahead of our own wants and desires. 

            French philosopher Alex Tocqueville predicted the ultimate demise of democracy as a viable form of government because he believed people would always vote for what is best for their pocketbook rather than what is best for the people of the nation as a whole - he called it the tyranny of the majority.  “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom” he wrote. 

            To prove him wrong, it is not enough to bow our heads in remembrance of the dead one day a year.  We must honor their ultimate sacrifice by learning how to use our freedom - making the small sacrifices of being politically informed, voting, and ultimately being willing to sacrifice our money and our time in service of the greater good.  

            In their honor, let us all pause to remember.

Grace and peace,

Beth

5/18/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

At the time we thought we would never forget.  The anxiety of an illness called COVID-19 that became a worldwide pandemic resulting in the deaths of an estimated 7.1 million people;  the images of bodies being loaded into refrigerated trucks outside New York City hospitals;  the sounds of Italians singing to each other from apartment balconies across empty city streets.  

It was a time when we learned far more about transmission rates, tracing disease outbreaks, breath versus fluid transmission and how vaccines are developed than we ever wanted to know.

As the year passed by, as a congregation we worshipped in the parking lot in our faithful attempt to not spread this disease.  We had miniature advent wreaths on our dashboards, passed out Easter eggs, and enjoyed a food truck at homecoming.  We started worship with shouting “Good Morning First Christian Church” into the microphone, listened to the Parking Lot Band play our favorite hymns, and honked our horns. 

And we vowed never to forget.  Never again to take for granted the simple blessings of being able to worship inside on rainy day, holding hands while we pray, and singing at the top of our lungs without worrying about airborne pathogens. 

But time marches on, and it has been 6 years now since the first Pentecost in the Parking Lot in 2020.  Enough time for anxiety about hugging and shaking hands to fade; enough time to begin again to take the simple blessings of worship together for granted. 

And yet the preacher’s job is to stir the memory – to tell the story of our faith and the ways God has acted and is acting in our lives.  So every year since COVID-19 landed us in the parking lot I have insisted on returning there at Pentecost to reenact those days – Pentecost specifically to remember Peter preaching in the streets, the parking lot to remember the time we worshipped during uncertain days in a place that was a constant visual reminder that this world is not our home, we are only “parking” here temporarily. 

Until this year.  Until our church board gently reminded me of how much more enjoyable worship is on the front lawn instead of on the pavement, and how “Pentecost on the Patio” can still have much of the same effect while also allowing us to sing together with the birds. How Peter preached in the streets on Pentecost and traffic going by sees the church of God clearly in worship instead of just a bunch of parked cars with a loud sound system. 

So this year we are celebrating Pentecost on the Patio!  With a picnic no less! But… just so you will know…  no matter where we worship, I will always draw it to our attention how blessed we are simply to be able to be together. 

Grace and peace as we remember together on the patio this Sunday,

Beth

5/11/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

“Even though he was in the form of God” the apostle writes “he emptied himself, he humbled himself, obedient even to the point of death.  Now.  Let the same mind be in you.”

Let the same mind be in us?  Obedient to the point of death? Wait, we just came through Lent.  We just spent 6 weeks confessing our weaknesses and our shortcomings, the person we need to forgive, the surplus we need to share and the self-pity we need to surrender.  We are in the Easter season now, the Great Fifty Days for heaven’s sake!  Yet here comes Paul, still talking about humility and obedience to the point of death! 

“Let the same mind be in you” the Apostle insists.  You have walked with him through the valley of temptation, watched his life giving sacrifice at the cross and felt the exhilarating joy as life coursed through his body Easter morning.  Now let that same self giving attitude become your own. Humble yourself. 

Humble ourselves?  Quite an assignment for a culture of people who pride themselves on individualism and self-rule. How can we get our heads around this?

Well, the first thing that would help us at this point is clarifying “humility.”Humility is not self-hatred. Nor is humility self-love.  Instead, humility is self-forgetfulness. Standing before the magnificence of our holy and merciful God, our preoccupation with ourselves begins to fade. With our eyes on God instead of ourselves, we no longer feel the need to answer each question, solve each problem, and prove we are capable and intelligent. We are content to listen and learn.  When we do share, it is only for the purpose of discovering truth, not scoring points. 

With our eyes on God instead of ourselves, when asked us to take positions of leadership we lead as a servants, without dominance, without arrogance, without inflated egos. 

With our eyes on God and not ourselves, when attacked, hurt, or rejected we draw strength from the love God has for us instead of seeking revenge.

With our eyes on God and not ourselves, we do not presume to decide who deserves our service and who does not.  We simply serve.

Then, as our preoccupation with ourselves fades more and more, we are increasingly filled with the desire for God’s glory to be made manifest.  

Obedient to the point of death?  Well it certainly won’t be easy. But that is no reason not to train ourselves in humility in order to try.

Grace and Peace,

Beth

5/4/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

The blackberries around the edges of the fields and in the ditches were in full bloom when this cold snap hit, putting us truly in the midst of a “blackberry winter.” The term is one I have heard all my life but have never had brought so closely to my attention as this year.  One day I was wiping sweat and remarking to Marty that the blackberries were in full bloom, the next day I was pulling sweatshirts back out of the closet.

Apparently “blackberry winter” is a term used not just in the south but in the midwest as well for a period of time typically in mid to late spring when winter briefly returns.  I was glad to see it this year because I was already getting out clothes I usually wear in July, and it was just April.

It is fascinating to me that a brief cold snap occurs so regularly at the specific time the wild blackberries are blooming that there is actually a common, well-known name for it. “Blackberry winter” is a reminder that the seasons of Earth are predictably unpredictable. It is also a regular reminder not to plant your spring garden too soon, no matter what the temperature, because we are not out of frost danger yet.  In other words, take each season for what it is, and don’t rush it.  

“To everything there is a season” the teacher Qoheleth writes.  A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.  A time to work and a time to rest. A time for every matter involved in the living of our lives from birth to death and all the stages in between.  A time to rejoice in the coming of spring, and a time for the reminder of blackberry winter that no season lasts forever.

Enjoy the moment, blackberry winter softly reminds.  Live fully in the season you are in.  Don’t look back desperately for what once was, don’t rush to get to the future.  Savor the moment; it will not last.

Grateful to be spending this season of my life with you,

Beth

4/20/26

Pastor’s Pondering

I love the days after Easter.

It is a gentle and easy time, a time of joy and the emerging of deep spring as the first thrill of new green shoots gives way to the steady business of growing and flowering.

After the hard scriptural texts of Lent, after the community services and the special Holy Week activities and the final exuberant push to Easter morning, it is no wonder preachers collapse in exhaustion and spend the days after Easter on the couch. And sometimes while on the couch, I must confess I forget to sing my gratitude song.

It’s an easy thing to do, after all we live in a culture that many sociologists have called “grievance culture,” or a culture that assigns authority to the person who can demonstrate they are the most victimized or oppressed. “I am so exhausted after Lent” becomes a way to say “You should indulge and honor me for I am exhausted.”

            As Christians we should know better. Our Saviour emptied himself completely in accordance to God’s will, sacrificing all of himself on behalf of others, but he never said “I have suffered more than you so now I have authority over you.”  He said “all authority has been given me - now go and teach others all that I have commanded you,” the greatest of the commandments being to love God and to love others as ourselves.

It’s the difference between saying “Father destroy them for they have hurt me” as opposed to “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

            In my case it is the difference between saying “I have taken up my personal cross and sacrificed so much on behalf of the church and the world” and saying “I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to give all I have to give in service to the Easter Gospel”.  In your case it is the difference between saying “I just didn’t have time to make it to any of the special activities or services this year, besides they are the same as they were last year” and saying “I was there because I am needed and it’s not about me anyway.”

Because it is not about us.  Grievance culture is based on the premise that the experience of the individual is the bottom line. The Christian faith is based on the belief that God is the bottom line, and God does for us things that we cannot do for ourselves. Our response to the first is a sense of personal entitlement - to the second is gratitude. The difference is crucial.

            Easter has passed; church life has slowed down. In contrast to Lent, the texts of the Great 50 Days between Easter and Pentecost are colorful accounts of rebirth and changing lives in the days following the resurrection of our Lord. Just like the flowers blooming and steadily growing in my garden, the Easter texts resound with joy and proclamation as the word moves persistently across the world that in Christ something utterly transformative has occurred.

            I am up off the couch!  I am singing my gratitude song.

Grace and Peace,

Beth

4/13/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

Yesterday was so much fun with our Bright Sunday Holy Humor laughter!  And now I have to tell just one more.

Well, actually I’ll start out with one Rev. Daniel U’Ren told his congregation, Hillyer Memorial, because his is cleaner than mine. (Rev U’Ren even calls the Sunday after Easter by its ancient name which is Risus Paschalis, “Easter Laugh” instead of just straight up “Laughter Sunday” like I do!)

Here’s his:  The preacher's 5 year-old daughter noticed that her preacher father always paused and bowed his head for a moment before starting his sermon. One day she asked him why. "Well, Honey," he began, proud that his daughter was so observant of his messages, "I'm asking the Lord to help me to preach a good sermon." "Well then, how come He doesn't do it?" she asked. (!!)

And here’s mine, which comes directly from Bishop Will Willimon’s book “Stories By Willimon”: 

“My cousin Jim Gibson - you may know him:  a lawyer in Beaufort - says that when he was a boy, he and his daddy were working out in the field one hot, low-country afternoon.  They looked up and saw his older sister running out to the field shouting, ‘Daddy, the preacher’s here, and Mama says to come in and help her keep him company.'

Jim’s daddy hardly looked up, saying to Jim’s sister, ‘Preacher?  What kind of preacher?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘Son,’ his daddy said, ‘go on back to the house with your sister.  If it’s the Methodist preacher, latch the door to the smokehouse.  If it’s the Episcopal preacher, you be sure my liquor cabinet is locked.  If it’s the Baptist preacher, you go sit on Mama’s lap ‘til I get there.’”

“A cheerful heart is good medicine…”

Grace and Peace and Holy Laughter,

Beth

3/23/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

Lent is the season of mindfulness, and the call to move deeper into the practice of picking up our cross and falling in behind our Lord. If we get lazy about it, the Spirit is constantly present to  “stir us up to love and good deeds” (and not just during Lent!)

Several months ago I attended a prayer retreat with a group of about 30 people from our region. At the beginning of the retreat we drew names to be prayer partners during the time we were together.  

Did I draw the name of the person I felt closest to, or the one I most admired?  Did I draw the name of someone I knew could use my support, or someone I had taken under my wing to mentor? No. 

No, the name I drew was the one person in the whole retreat who gets on my last nerve.  The one I have to work to find something in common with, the who makes me uncomfortable with their language and their lifestyle, the one I do not choose to sit beside at dinner.

Of course theirs was the name I drew.  Because that is the kind of thing I have come to expect from the Holy Spirit, the Spirit active and present who is determined to keep us growing in our faith and on task in the call to love one another.

It has been a struggle since the very beginning of the church, keeping Christians on task in the call to love one another.  I think about that church dinner in Antioch when the Apostle Paul called the Apostle Peter out for hypocrisy right in front of the whole congregation, including the delegation of visitors who had just arrived from Jerusalem. If I had been the pastor in Antioch I probably would have changed the subject, called on the membership committee to serve dessert, and made a point to not invite Peter and Paul to the same church event ever again.

But that is simply not the way the Holy Spirit rolls.  We are not allowed to rest comfortably in a state of ignoring one another or pretending someone we do not care for is not sitting in the pew right in front of us.  If the church is to be the light of Christ in the world we must learn to get along civilly and respectfully, not snarling at each other, not trying to get other people to join us in ganging up on someone else, not leaving a congregation because there is someone in it who has hurt our feelings.  

And if you ever doubt this, just head over to a prayer retreat where there is one person who gets on your last nerve.  The Spirit will make sure theirs is the name you draw, will look you straight in the eyes, and will say to you “Pray.”

Grace and Peace as our Lenten journey takes us to the foot of the cross,

Beth

3/16/26

Pastor’s Ponderings

I was watching the news when the story broke a few weeks back of the sentencing of the man who murdered Duke graduate student Angela Risi in 2023. The first thing the reporter did was ask Angela’s father outside of the courtroom if he forgave the man who murdered his daughter.

 I struggle with the modern tendency of reporters to ask people “do you forgive so-and-so?”  then turn to the camera and report “victim’s family is pleased that justice was done today but says they will never forgive”, or “victim’s family says yes they will forgive”  –  as if forgiveness is as simple as saying “yes, I’ll take fries with that.”

Forgiveness is not a simple decision of how I feel but a conscious choice of how I hope to act. 

Yesterday I finished a three part sermon series on Joseph and his willingness to forgive the brothers who brutally attacked him and sold him into slavery.   It took three whole sermons because forgiveness is a long and complicated process.  First Joseph was horrifically wronged, and then he was presented with the perfect opportunity for revenge.  As a matter of a fact, Joseph’s opportunity for revenge presented itself in such a way that a lesser mind might have concluded God had actually created that opportunity just so Joseph could take his revenge.  However if he had done so, the future of God’s chosen family could have ended with just a few strokes of an Egyptian sword.  Thankfully Joseph understood he was part of a plan much bigger than himself, and because he loved and trusted God, he chose a more excellent way. 

But look carefully. Do we see anywhere in Genesis the narrative reporting “Joseph forgave his brothers and everything went back to just like it was before they sold him into slavery?” or even “Joseph forgave his brothers, and even though it took a few years, they eventually became the best of friends?” No.  Because it isn’t there.   

Instead, Joseph practiced forgiveness in three ways.  First, when the tables were turned, Joseph practiced forgiveness by not seeking revenge. He did not force his brothers to become slaves as they had forced him, for the simple reason he did not choose to be like them. Second, even while he was a slave and certainly when he rose to power, Joseph recognized God’s presence in his life.  He gratefully saw himself not as a victim but as a person cherished by God.  This allowed him to provide his brothers with food to ease their starvation, not because they deserved it but because he served God. Third, Joseph refused to allow the wrong done to him to pass into the next generation.  This terrible thing could have been the basis of a fracture that passed from generation to generation as children took sides and reenacted the tragedy by fighting among themselves. Instead, Joseph saved the future of God’s people by firmly refusing to treat his brothers with hatred or malice over the remaining years of their lives together.  His decision to be consistently fair and compassionate meant that Joseph became “Uncle Joseph who took care of us in Egypt” rather than “Uncle Joseph who demanded we side with him against our fathers.”

None of these three things mean Joseph loved his brothers as if nothing had ever happened.  All of these things mean Joseph trusted God to guide him to do the right thing regardless of how he felt about his brothers at any given moment.

So here’s my conclusion.  If I ever find myself in the situation of coming out of a courtroom to face a reporter who asks “Do you forgive them?”   my answer will have to be “All I can hope to do at this point is trust God.”

Grace and peace,

Beth

3/9/26

Pastor’s Pondering

The hellebores are blooming their heads off.

I love these beautiful harbingers of Spring with their muted colors and proficient blooms.  It takes forever to get them established, but once they are well rooted they are one of the earliest flowers to bloom, a dependable sign that spring is on the way. 

If you attempt to transplant them into their correct ecosystem, that is. I learned this the hard way.

            When we lived in a subdivision in town I had a beautiful stand of hellebores, or “Lenten Roses” as they are commonly called. When we moved out to Crantock Road I wanted to bring them with us, so I looked around for a shady, protected spot and my eye fell upon an old oak tree with a bare spot underneath - perfect, I thought, for the shade loving hellebores, and a spot that doesn’t even need to be cleared out to be ready for planting. 

            So I transplanted seven of my biggest, healthiest hellebores into the empty spot under the old oak tree. A good friend who noticed my new transplants warned me that planting beneath the oak would disturb its surface feeder roots and possibly even eventually kill the tree.  She need not have worried.

            Maybe city oaks have a problem with cultivation, but out in their own environment surrounded by their full ecosystem intact, oaks are in no danger of death by disturbance.  An oak tree has remarkable defenses and many allies. The clue for me should have been that the space beneath the tree was devoid of vegetation to start with.  It was not, as I assumed, a simple lucky break for a busy woman planting hellebores.  There were other reasons for this.

 First it was the huge crop of acorns that dropped directly onto the hellebores during late summer.  This brought the squirrels, eating and digging and uprooting plants beneath the tree, and then at night, deer doing the same thing - uprooting with their noses, digging with their hooves.   Then just as I had resettled the uprooted plants back into the soil again for the umpteenth time, the oak leaves started to fall - showers upon showers of leaves, smothering anything that lay beneath the tree.  With its acorns and its leaves, the old oak tree protected its own feeder roots by attracting allies to uproot and dropping leaves to smother anything that tried to take root beneath it. 

            I gave it a valiant try for a couple of seasons, resettling the plants after the deer and squirrels each fall and raking leaves out of the bed over and over through the winters, but each year I lost more plants to the uprooting and the smothering. Finally it dawned on me that what I thought would be beautiful – hellebores nodding their lovely heads under an old oak tree – was actually an arrogant attempt on my part to force plants to live together who were not created to share the same space.

            I knew it was time to surrender the spring I hurried over to the tree and saw one lone hellebore putting up two sickly little stems with one frail flower. I looked up into the grand limbs of the majestic old oak, a member of a keystone species of our region estimated to support over 2,300 species of life including mammals, birds, insects, fungi and lichens.  Humbly I thanked the tree for teaching me its valuable lesson:  we are all part of a massive interconnected web of life designed by our bountiful Creator, and it is not our place to march into that web and begin moving pieces around, inflicting our will upon it.  Wisdom comes in understanding how we all fit together and therefore thrive. 

            Today the old oak tree still has that enticingly empty space beneath it, but I know better than to try to plant anything there.  On the other hand, ten whole years of observation and pondering later, in a spot with carefully tended soil shaded by the house, the hellebores are lifting their lovely faces to welcome spring.

Grace and Peace,

Beth