Category: Reflection

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May 7- Holy Ground

My father, Reverend Dr. Felix Haynes, Jr., shares his sermon from a few weeks ago, as he reminisces about Holy Ground and his Holy Land travels with my late mother, Miriam, where they walked the streets of Capernaum. They traveled with members of their church to the Holy Land several times, most recently when they lived on Hilton Head Island, SC in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Capurnaum
ON CAPERNAUM 

The setting of today's sermon is Capernaum, a very strategic location for travelers in Jesus’ day, always bustling and busy. It was a well-constructed city built 200 years before Jesus’ birth. The structures were made of unique materials, stone and plaster. Capernaum is situated on the picturesque Sea of Galilee. Just to the north, an easy walk begins the grassy slopes of the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus said, “Consider the lilies of the field…” 

I remember well our visit on tour. As you enter, you see tall trellises with Bougainvillea growing in splendid floral beauty. Miriam walked over for a close look at the deep red and purple blooms, her eyes sparkling in complete wonder. Laurie Atkins, a member of our church traveling with us, joined her and pondered the amazing beauty. 

As your walk the cobblestone streets, you observe the archaeological structures and artifacts that tell a story of rich biblical history. Capernaum is an education in the ministry of Jesus. 

The two most striking sites are the synagogue and the ruins of the home of Peter’s mother-in-law, where Jesus healed the palsied man. There is a bench on which Jesus probably sat when he taught at the synagogue on that memorable day. The flat roof was made of a sturdy mud-cement compound. This would be a “patio” where on warm evenings one could catch the sea breeze. 

Holy ground!

Jesus considered Capernaum a “home base.” The house is a three-room structure, one for sleeping, one for cooking and eating, and one for animals. There was also a courtyard. Today, a church has been constructed over the ruins of this house with a centered glass floor area where you can look down and see the interior where Jesus healed the palsied man. When my colleague, Woodrow Hudson, and I entered that church, we had forgotten to take off our Atlanta Braves caps. The monitoring priest smiled and tactfully reminded us to take off our hats. 

Holy ground!

I did a short message on the four friends who brought their friends to Jesus to our tour group. 
We moved about reflecting, remembering, and privately worshipping. I joined my dear wife who said, “This is one of the most beautiful and sacred places I have ever been.” 

Holy ground. 

And I stand there again every time I remember Capernaum.

We got on the bus to travel north toward Mt. Hermon. This scene remains vivid in my mind: Laurie Atkins looked out the window at the flowers in the field on the mount of the beatitudes, still struck by the Bougainvillea of Capernaum and musing.  Mr. Laurie Atkins was the town engineer of Hilton Head, responsible for irrigation and all the lovely landscapes in the main streets of Hilton Head Island in those days. He said to me, “I wish I could get truck loads of dirt from this place to take home with me.” 

Holy ground! 

I have truck loads of memory from Capernaum, …the most beautiful and sacred memories…”
Bougainvillea at the entrance to Capernaum, the Town of Jesus

I do not own the rights to the video below.

Joy Gardner sings Holy Ground in The Holy Land
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May 5 – Purple Martin Mansion Mosquito Control

Assembling the Purple Martin House

One of my 2023 goals is spending more time outdoors, taking more notes in nature observations, and learning more about the ecosystem and the creatures that do jobs I never fully appreciated until I became a little more educated on their roles in this great universe. A couple of days ago, I shared the plans for our bat hollow. Our first bat box has been installed, with more to follow. Today, though, is about another mosquito controller. Purple Martins, like bats, are environmentally-friendly critters who help control mosquito populations.

We weren’t sure how “involved” it would be to assemble a purple martin house. These houses are generally either a string of gourds hanging high, or a house reminiscent of a high-dollar condo situated on one of those tropical islands where the drinks all come with those little umbrellas and everyone wears floppy sun hats and sunglasses with cat-eye bling that sparkles as they sit back and sip in the breeze. Gourdless, we bought the high-dollar condo for them and discovered the pole was the same price as the house (12-20 feet in the air these places must be), AND has to be cemented into the ground.

So we took the unopened box camping with us one weekend, grabbing a multi-tool as an afterthought in case we needed a Phillips Head screwdriver or something. We found it remarkably easy to put the house together, and while we needed more than two hands, much of the structure was tabbed and punched so that it didn’t require a tool except on the roof. We put it together and brought it home. My husband fought mosquitoes with his bare hands while using post-hole diggers to set it deep in the ground, and then dumped a bag of Quikrete in to let it set overnight. We raised it to the heavens the next day, and now we await the migration that has, probably, mostly already happened. The late stragglers will find a vacancy in the inn…..we hope.

Rent-Free Purple Martin Condominiums, Johnson Funny Farm, April 2023
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May 4 – Lonesome Bee Haven

Johnson Funny Farm bee haven, April 2023 – baby bees at top right corner and entering bottom left tube

Forget Lonesome Dove. This one’s all about the lonesome bees – and putting food on Earth’s tables. One of my 2023 goals is spending more time outdoors, taking more notes in nature observations, and learning more about the ecosystem and the creatures that do jobs I’ve taken for granted. A couple of summers ago, we bought a bee house to provide safe spots for solitary bees like mason bees and leaf cutter bees to nest. These pollinators help plants like fruits and vegetables thrive. We have enjoyed watching the little bees come and go – they’re so cute – and so helpful! In rural areas like ours where agriculture is the name of the game, bees matter! Help with pollination – NOT PESTICIDES! We are doing one small part to make a difference – and watching it happen thrills our souls!

Lonesome Bee Haven

lonesome bee haven
apiculture hideaway 
pollinator post

baby bees buzzing
busy building businesses~
hungry world feeders
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May 3 – Our Bat Hollow ~ ~Free Housing for Chiroptera

Aidan enjoys helping us outdoors when he comes to visit the farm!

One of my 2023 goals is spending more time outdoor, taking more notes in nature observations, and learning more about the ecosystem and the creatures that do jobs I never fully appreciated. Both my mother and grandmother, avid gardeners, died of Parkinson’s Disease, a neurological disease that has been linked to pesticides. If my fish are not wild caught, I don’t buy them (my takeaway from Silent Spring). I’m doing all I can – one small part in a big world – to make a difference where I can.

I was driving along our rural highway last week and felt tears well up when I saw a sign advertising 52 acres for sale. I drove back around the loop, looking at all the trees – all the homes where right now, there are baby birds and deer and foxes and squirrels whose homes will be felled with the blade of an ax when the money changes hands. It hurts my heart for them.

We have been considering ways to control our mosquito population (quite possibly the only critter in the entire universe I would vote to eradicate), and one of our ideas is installing a bat village. So this past Saturday, I raised my husband and grandson up in the tractor bucket to install our first bat house. We’ve seen bats out by our driveway for the past several years, and we hope we can attract them to the bat houses from wherever they are living (we checked the barn and see no signs). We’ll add to the village over the next couple of weeks, even though the boxes should have been up by now since they are more likely to be inhabited over the summer when the bats emerge from hibernation in the spring, according to Google. I read somewhere that the occupancy likelihood is only 35%, but we’re going to give it a go since we know we have them nearby.

Plus, Halloween. It will just feel a little spookier and more seasonally festive when the pumpkins frost over and moon shines through the trees. We’ll enjoy batwatching almost as much as birdwatching! 

~~Bat Hollow ~~

house installation
erecting a bat hollow
mosquito control 

spooky October 
Loblolly pine neighborhood 
for night flight critters

vampirish creatures
welcome wagons circled up
upside-down hangout!
My husband takes direction on the exact placement of the box, which should be at least 12 feet off the ground.
Bat Box #1 being installed
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May 2 – And Just Like That, A Miracle is Taking Place

The first of the three bluebird hatchlings; one did not hatch.

I’ve spent the months of March and April writing among friends, celebrating the Slice of LIfe Story Challenge and #VerseLove – – and spiffing up my bird and butterfly garden. Each year, we discard any cracked feeders and add a couple of new ones so that we maintain the work that began in spring 2009, shortly after we moved to the Johnson Funny Farm on New Year’s Eve 2008.

I caught butterfly garden fever from my mother. Throughout her years, she planted fennel as host plants for butterflies to lay their eggs. Every summer, her fennel plants would sag with the weight of the caterpillars, each happily munching away to becoming a chrysalis before emerging as a black swallowtail. She also threw out rotting fruit for them to feed on, and taught me to do the same. She had attended a butterfly gardening workshop with one of the leading butterfly garden experts in Georgia and learned that butterflies like to feast on urea. So if you ever see an upside-down garbage can lid with rotting oranges and a wet sponge in a garden, you can bet that someone knew to invite their little grandson to go tee-tee on the sponge to make the butterflies happy. Mom grew nectar plants nearby, such as butterfly bush, azaleas, lantana and coreopsis. Every once in a while I can keep a flower alive, but it takes a modern-day miracle to make it happen.

A miracle. That’s why a week ago Thursday for the Open Mic, I changed up my whole reading plan less than an hour before the long-awaited event started. I’d stepped outside to toss a lemon rind out and to fill the bird feeders and birdbaths and check the bluebird house (again) to see if the eggs had hatched. I could see a tiny notch in one egg, and I knew the hatchling’s head would emerge within the hour if all went well. I waited awhile, watching from the front porch, and when I could see that no parents were coming and going, I returned in time to capture the moment of wonder! Watch the video at the top, if you haven’t already.

I headed out to the poetry reading, leaving my own poems at home, selecting one by by Mary Oliver instead. I stepped onto the stage and read This Morning .

Reading poetry at the Open Mic, 1828 Coffee Company, April 2023

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#VerseLove April 30

Sarah Donovan is our host for Day 30 of VerseLove and our host of this space each month for writers who crave togetherness each month as we come together to celebrate our words and thoughts ~to share the joy of writing. She helps meet a deep need in each of us. I adore the prompt today, and I ran for my journal from 2019 when I saw the topic. I thought back to the first year I participated in VerseLove and looked for that first prompt that changed the trajectory of my life from grief over my mother’s death to connection with others whose pain shone through their heart holes, too, who showed me how to use the sunspots to write and heal. To every writer who shares the journey, thank you for all of the inspiration you bring. This morning, my grandson writes along with me as I revise my first-ever VerseLove poem, Blackberry Winter.

Blackberry Winter, Revisited

It’s a Blackberry Winter I wrote in 2019
beginning a poem about all the good things

later this morning, my first grandson 
               will make elderberry jam toast
                         plus cheese omelettes 
                                   on the Lodge cast iron griddle
   wearing my apron 
         (he doesn’t know about the apron yet)

but first: raindrops on rooftop, fresh coffee,
wi-fi (stronger than coffee, finally), computer charged,
comfy chair, whisper-soft pajamas,

thoughts ready to materialize
three schnoodles tussling on grandson’s 
sleepover mattress as we write together
in the living room

words forming on pages: his pen, my keyboard
to the first #VerseLove prompt of 2019 from Sarah:

….the good things in our lives….

there are those who bring
more warmth than raindrops and coffee,
more comfort than chairs and pajamas,
more joy than words ~ 
   ancestors whose cast iron presence
      and apron strings linger in kitchens
       hugging us tight about the middle

and those we ancestor ~ grandchildren 
who write right next to us
about all the good things in our lives
on this elderberry toast and cheese omelette morning.

– Kim Haynes Johnson, April 2, 2019 and 4/30/2023

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#VerseLove April 29

Our host today for Day 29 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Scott McCloskey of Michigan, who inspires us to rewrite the script of a time we wish we’d given a different answer. You can read his prompt and the poems of others here. 

Kernels of Truth


ten months after

she died

four months after

he died

you asked me

what I thought

of y’all



and I told the truth



you’re nice

she’s nice

but y’all don’t fit



you thought

it was that woman thing

that I 

just didn't like her



you had it all wrong



there were those

I thought would be a

great fit for you



readers

travelers

lovers of wine

whose blood runneth blue



this one wasn’t for you



you’ve held my 

truth-telling 

against me all this time

made me the 

unaccepting one



and now after

seven years

of frustration

figuring out

discovering

you finally realize

all those reasons

y’all don’t fit



so next time I’ll

tell the only truth

you want to hear



marry her



then I’ll go 

make popcorn
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#VerseLove April 24 with Susie Morice

Today is Day 24 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, and Susie Morice is our host. She inspires us to write poems using a junk drawer to determine things about who we are. You can read her full prompt and the poems of others here. I chose to write about the treasure I found in someone else’s junk dogs.

Fitz
These Three Kings

I found three castoffs
betrayed, neglected, abused
I crowned these three kings
Boo Radley
Ollie, “the baby” who is always ready to play
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#VerseLove April 21 – with Darius Phelps

Darius Phelps of New York is our host today for Day 21 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems of grief or disillusionment. You can read more about Darius and read his full prompt here. He mentions that the ancient Chinese believed that by burning the house down when relatives died, it would send the house to the place where they were so they could have their homes beyond this life. I reflected for a while on that idea this morning, even chuckling about the Calgon laundry whitener that I remember commercials for as a child – – an Asian actor would come into the frame holding a box, saying, “Ancient Chinese Secret” when someone wondered about how the clothes got so clean. I think the ancient Chinese had a lot of things right. Come join us and read today’s poems. 

Up in Flames ^ Choose One: House or Legacy? ^


those ancient Chinese

had it right: burn the house down!

strike up the torch flame!



better the house go 

up in smoke than the siblings

killing each other



who gets the dwelling?

who gets the crystal timepiece?

who "gets" anything?



executor’s call:

who gets to make decisions?

who denies morphine?



which one plans all meals?

oh, but NO SUGAR, stage 4

cancer patient fat?!?



what is this fresh hell??

give Mom a damn M&M!

stop controlling LIFE!



inheritance sucks

some get fortunes, some get F(ORK$#)

who "gets" anything??!



those ancient Chinese

had it right: strike the match and

walk in peace from fire