Woodby

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land....Song of Solomon 2:2.

Soon it will be spring. This has certainly been a most strange winter all over everywhere due to the shaking of the nations. Mr. Ron Fraser spoke to this very subject yesterday in services. The changing of the weather daily from one extreme to another. We had snow here on Wednesday last week, temps in the 30's, then we had temps close to 60 degrees the next day. This will eventually effect the food crops Mr. Fraser brought out.

Passover will be coming up soon. It's time to get busy with spring cleaning. Time to begin deleavening. Open the windows up and air everything out. I love the springtime! All the plants and trees begin to bloom and the air is so nice and fresh and not too hot yet. I love to sit outside on my back deck in the spring and watch the sun come up, while I enjoy a cup of coffee and meditate.

In the spring and summer sometimes God allows me to see some deer and other wild critters in the very early morning hours when others are still asleep for the greatest part around me, so that it's nice and quiet. If I'm really still I have seen deer come into my yard from the surrounding tree-filled hills around me. Sometimes I have thrown some food out for them to have just before they show up. 

Cats from the neighborhood come to visit when I sit outside in the spring. They have been outside during the night and they come around for a little human company, I suppose. I talk to the ones that come by the most often, who jump up onto my deck with me. I don't know their names of course, but I give them names of my own choice.

One time God even allowed me to have a friendly carpenter bee visit me every morning for most of the summer. That was THE most interesting visitor of all.  It was a bee.  A large one, for carpenter bees are huge when compared to a normal bee. But I will call it little because it is a small creature compared to the world.  I named him Woodby.  It may have been a female perhaps but I thought in terms of a male at the time. 

Woodby was black and yellow striped.  He would come near to me but not too close and he would hover as if observing me.  So I talked to him in a soft voice for I'm sure that's what most creatures respond to rather than the actual words.  He didn't seem to fear me. I think he realized that I wasn't his enemy.  So I would read or mediate or pray and talk to Woodby from time to time.  Now and then he would fly off but he always returned to be in my company after a short period of time.

One day I was in an especially bright frame of mind and when I spoke to Woodby he seemed delighted and began to turn flips in the air. I wondered if he'd picked up on my happiness that morning? Then he hit into the side of my home, making quite a thud as he did so. I laughed so hard because it was funny to me.  Woodby didn't find it so amusing evidently. He flew a distance away from me as if he might be thinking why did I hit him?  He seemed agitated and he kept rising up and down in the air as he watched me.

I said to Woodby, "Woodby, I didn't hit you. You did that to yourself, poor little guy." Well, he continued to observe me from a distance rising up and down for a long time. It was the strangest thing to see this little creature seem confused.  Who would have ever thought that a bee could have such an amazing personality? 

Woodby kept watching me without coming near to me again for a couple of days, but he finally did get over it and I was so happy to see him one morning fly up to his usual position as before and wait for me to speak to him again. I asked him about his wood-panneled condo which had been an on-going conversation many times. I knew that being a carpenter bee most likely he was drilling into the wood of my deck or some other place to prepare a home. So we discussed his building project and how it might be progressing. 

He and I continued to have wonderful visits together most of the summer. One day near to the end of the summer Woodby appeared in the morning as usual but this time he had a friend with him, another carpenter bee, perhaps his mate. They played together for me and entertained me. I enjoyed the show they put on. But after awhile they seemed to become more interested in each other and their play took them farther and farther away from me. 

I didn't see Woodby as often after that.  It was so amazing to see how God allowed me to feel so close to this tiny creature with a clown-like face, for Woodby had a large black circle on his face that made me think of a clown's nose. That summer was an experience that I will never forget.