Harvest Moon Coneflower And Milkweed
"Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul... but I must confess that I love you only because you are a prelude to my beloved October."
~Peggy Toney Horton
This is another gorgeous flower I spotted the other day, among the spider webs and Milkweed. I loved that three little pieces of the Milkweed are poised on the petals of the Harvest Moon Coneflower, they remind me of when I was a little girl, and a small fluffy weed would float by in the wind, and my friends would discuss whether it was good luck, to catch what we all believed was a random fairy, on their way to somewhere important. It was quite the debate among my fellow kindergartners. I didn't take a position, my ideas floated on the wind, just like the little weeds I thought were fairies, then one day my father sat me down and began to teach me critical thinking, and that is the day I began to grow up.
Dad said...
Look at life from as many different perspectives as possible, and then make up your own mind, based on the information you gather. Know all the sides of an issue, so you can debate them with confidence. Play devil's advocate from time to time, so you can better understand the other guys perspective. It's work, but when you do make the really big decisions in your life, you will be more at peace with it, if you know you did your best, based on the information available to you at the time.
I'm paraphrasing, of course, but his advice turned out to be the best advice ever given to me. Lord, I don't think he saw this time we are living in coming, how could he? But I know he didn't really think the world was going to get any easier, when it came to politics. Although, when he passed away in 1995, he was very happy with Bill Clinton as president, and thought we were on the right track. He never really paid attention to the personal lives of presidents, he taught me that when you vote for a president, you aren't voting for a moral leader, you are voting for a politician.
Dad was right... and that's what I have done most of my adult life, but it's difficult to not bring my values into the political mix, when you have the evangelical community supporting someone who couldn't be farther from representing Christian values! I never gave Bill Clinton a pass for his skeevy behavior, but with Trump we are definitely in dangerous, uncharted territory, so my values are tested daily, and sometimes hourly. Sometimes I don't know what to do on the inside, when he scares me the way he did yesterday!
Hide? Pray? Get drunk? Close my eyes and pretend it's 1995, and speak to dad as if he were here? Yesterday, Trump gave an 88 minute rambling press conference, that was about as batshit as it gets. And all anyone could do was ride it out, and hope it would eventually end. And thankfully, it did, and without his beginning WWIII, but as I sat there praying for the presser to end, I realized the one thing I resented about dad teaching me critical skills, is that I know we have a dangerous president in the White House, and there seems to be no one who can stop him from acting on any impulse he has, no matter how dangerous that impulse might be.
I love, and miss my dad so much right now!
#6 Leaf Of The Day
September 27th, 2018
Cull Canyon, Ca
~Mood: Sad
~Me
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