Wasteland Pictures

Not so long ago, I published a post entitled Wasteland. I thought it might be neat if you got to see what I saw, and so here are some pictures from the very wasteland I was writing about:

Some grapes growing next to a cable supporting an electrical line...

Some immature raspberries... Today I see that some of them are ripe and that they are plump and lovely BLACK raspberries, and that many have been eaten by the little critters who live here.

And a funny bug on milkweed blossoms:

May your day be equally full of beauty in unexpected places.


P.S. I have replaced the picture on this blog of 'St Kevin's Chapel' with a picture of a grasshopper, as perhaps more appropriate. The insect in question was only briefly held and released back where it was captured. No grasshoppers were eaten or harmed in any way in the production of this blog.

Wasteland

...
Railroads are by their nature surrounded by wasteland.

Their roadbeds are not usually considered pretty, their switching areas, rusting signals and overhead electric lines are eyesores, and the trains that travel them are loud, discoraging the close encroachment of the neat lawns and dwellings of residential suburbia.

And the odd angles that the rail-beds make with roads, property lines, and each other create wedges of land that are virtually impossible to put to any use, even if someone wanted to do so.

And so they are left fallow, ...and life finds them and springs up.

The odd-shaped wedge behind the train station where I wait in the morning teams with life and is laden with ripening wild fruit;

raspberries and blackberries and grapes and choke-cherries, rose-hips and milkweed, and wild herbs and seeds - eaten by silly baltimore orioles (singing 'oh-boyeee!') and robins and sparrows and mocking-birds and chipmunks. ...and these are likely just the bold ones, who dare show themselves while I am there.

The amount of life per square foot is amazing. And to create this beauty, we just had to give it space. We abandoned it. We ignored it. We left it alone.

This was a waste-land, useless.

Sometimes we feel that way about ourselves, about parts of our lives, about people and places. But perhaps they need just a little space, some light, and a bit of water. Just a wee opportunity for growth and creation; time and space for God to enter in, and fill the wasteland with life.

May God enter all the abandoned places in our lives, all our waste-lands, and make them bloom and be fruitful.

And may we be wise enough to allow space for life, to leave spaces for the wild magic of God to take place.

Love,
Locust Eater

Related:
Wasteland Pictures
Seeing Truth in the Wasteland
God’s Sheep are Confused