The nurse at the MRI place said my roommate's procedure would take twenty or thirty minutes.
But after sitting on those hard waiting room chairs for just five minutes, I knew my back would never make it.
But after sitting on those hard waiting room chairs for just five minutes, I knew my back would never make it.
So I stepped outside with my camera to see what I could find to keep busy. The tall, bronzed glass medical building sported a tiny lawn out front with a half dozen palm trees and two eucalyptus trees, and I set to work. (And it's a good thing, cuz it took well over an hour.)
As I set about looking for photos to shoot of these rather ordinary subjects (much to the curiosity of the many passers-by!) tonight’s blog began to stir and swim and form in my mind.
I’ve always been fascinated by the bark of trees. All kinds of trees.
And as I walked slowly around the larger of the two eucalyptus trees, observing, touching, caressing it, oblivious to the world around me, I was soon draw out of myself to find two little girls (ages about four and five) following me around the tree, touching and observing and examining as well, and following my actions carefully.
Their mother called them away from the crazy tree lady in a strong Spanish accent of southern Central America. They reluctantly left their examination of the tree, trailing their fingers to the last moment possible before they let go.
And I turned my focus back to my trees.
At first glance one of the palm trees looks like just a run-of-the-mill palm. Tall and slen- der with long fronds umbrella-ing out atop. But at closer look, ahh,…the texture!
And where the branch falls off as the tree grows taller, it leaves a scar of sorts behind. Something you just take for granted on a palm. But look at it from another angle, and it becomes a work of art.
Turn the lens skyward, and the rough, fibrous bark becomes ringed layers of burnished silver filigree.
It's all in how you look at things. Just as life. So much of what we perceive in life depends on what we as observers bring to the table. You get out of it what you put into it.
I am certain that nobody today enjoyed those trees as much as I did.
And to think that I too, would have missed out on the beauty but for the terrible pain I've had all week in my back! All because I couldn't sit still any longer on those hard waiting room chairs!
And to think that I too, would have missed out on the beauty but for the terrible pain I've had all week in my back! All because I couldn't sit still any longer on those hard waiting room chairs!
An incompletely torn off palm branch leaves an interesting flaw.
Something that a finicky gardener would never have left behind. But I found joy in the flaw.
A similar flaw, from a different angle, in more direct sunlight gives a much more dramatic flare, and a whole different feel to the photo.
The rough, chaotic bark of the nearby eucalyptus tree, in com- parison to the very staid and stately palm, looks like the flotsam on a beach after a hurricane! It looks as though the poor thing has been ravaged.
But this scraggly, rough bark of the eucalyptus hides the silky, soft under bark of the tree that in our part of the world comes in soft military camouflage colors.
And in other parts of the world, it often comes in even wilder colors!
How can anyone think such a thing of beauty can be just an accident of nature?!
Surely 'Someone' painted this work of art by hand! Or created the DNA code that would paint this beauty just for our pleasure.
Around the corner from the palm and eucalyptus trees was another tree. I'm not sure of the name of the tree, but it has large, palmate leaves and I've seen it (in much smaller sizes) as a house plant. This one had lost a limb.
From the size of it, it was a good sized branch at the time of its amputation. The tree appears to have worked hard to heal itself. To grow back over to cover its bare, vulnerable spot.
Of course, it never could grow back to its natural form any more than we can. But it did its best, and it attained an interesting replacement form. People are like that. We pick up scars as we have our major pains and losses in our lives. And just like trees, sometimes we are more successful than others at recovering from the catastrophes or heartaches that help form our lives.
I remember so often, as a child, coming across trees with scars left by having to grow over barbed wire thoughtlessly attached to the tree. It always made my child-like heart ache so - almost like a physical pain - to see scars like that.
It all makes me marvel eternally at how fortunate we are to have a loving Father who knows every scar from every last palm branch, every amputated branch and every carelessly placed piece of barbed wire in our souls.
And only He can heal the impurities and imperfections in our lives and in our hearts.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds. Psalms 147:3
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