A BLOG THAT MAY WELL SEEM TO BE ONLY ABOUT GROUNDHOGS BUT IS ALSO ABOUT FINDING OUR WAY TO FORGIVENESS

The electrical vibration of the planet continues to rise. We live on a different planet than we did just a few years ago, and light continues to pour in to further transform our world.  What is required of us as we ride our planet on this journey?

We must accommodate vibrational changes in our own electrical systems so we stay in sync with our planetary home.  The rising planetary vibration is a gift to us, but it does require our attention. Much like a stock pot coming to a boil with scum that needs to be scooped off, we have to appropriately handle the stuff that comes up as our vibration rises.  That is why I feel so passionately about Flower Essences.  They support us in a total and effective way to shift our vibration upwards and benignly release lower vibrations, and they do so with no side effects except more happiness.

Before I share the season’s new Flower Essences, I would like to mention two groups that need our particular loving focus and Flower Essences right now.

Our BELOVED DOMESTICATED ANIMALS greatly benefit from Flower Essences.  Animals are as affected by the rise in energy as we are. For domesticated animals not only must they make their own adjustments to the vibrational shifts, but they work tirelessly to help those they live with to raise up their vibrations.  This leaves many of our beloved companions stressed and overwhelmed by a very big job.  

Were our beloveds to live in the wild, they would find places in Nature that hold just the right balancing vibrations to help them accommodate the higher energies.  However, they don’t live in the wild, and most do not have a choice about where in Nature they are free to roam. One solution is Flower Essences.  Flower Essences bring the balancing vibrations of Nature right to the animals in our lives.  The high vibrational energies the animals would seek in Nature are available in our Flower Essences specifically the Animal Wellness Collection.    So many of you share how your animals greet the Essences arriving at your door then wait for you to share the Essences with them.  Every time you offer your beloveds a Flower Essence, you help them in a way they cannot help themselves. Additionally when you take the Flower Essences along with them, this lightens the load your animals carry.

Another group much in need of the support of Flower Essences is YOUNG PEOPLE.   They must blossom in a very challenging world.  Take just one thing they face; social media. Most of us grew up in a world where social media was not front and center.  We can put it aside because we still remember life without TikTok or Instagram.  Young people have come into an earth immersed in a blanket of social media and the unreality of the world portrayed there.  Not only do they need our support to find a reality outside social media, but they need help from vibrational tools like Flower Essences to rise above the destructive pull of these fake worlds with their invasive and dissonant vibrations.  Any naivete I still have about the damage social media causes is daily eroded by emails from you about the challenges young people you know and love face. Please, consider offering the young people in your life Flower Essences.  Like the beloved animals, they know what they need and will get so much from these tools.

If you want to gift Flower Essences to a beloved but aren’t certain what would be useful, we are here at allofus@greenhopeessences.com to answer your questions.

One Essence that is almost always helpful is Golden Armor.  Because everyone on the planet is called to raise their vibration, there is a lot going on energetically just about everywhere. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where there is so much negativity being released that it is hard for us to hold our energetic boundaries.  Golden Armor was created to help us with this work.  Your energy system and that of beloveds in your lives are meant to be pristine and free of other people’s energies.  The Sovereignty Set was also created to help with this work of energetic sovereignty.  Young people deserve this. Animals deserve this. You deserve this. 

THE NEW 2024 FLOWER ESSENCES in brief with longer descriptions to follow.

Bees in the Plume Poppy– Unity Consciousness

Black Beauty Lily– Finding a safe inner space to heal our deepest wounds and let go into forgiveness

Corn Cockle– Loosening the bindings that keep us from forgiveness

The Eight Garden– Trusting the Flow

Lavender Rose of Sharon– Self forgiveness

Rock Fumewort Unleashing the inner capacity to forgive no matter how barren and disheartening the circumstances

Yellow Rose from Toledo, Spain– Moving through betrayal, reversals of fortune, loss and grief to a freedom to accept what is and a freedom from expectation. Finding the loyalty of the eternal self which is the real beyond the mutable

This year’s new Flower Essences offer support for forgiveness among other gifts.  As you will read at the end of this, forgiveness has sometimes been a challenge for me to the point where I often call forgiveness the f- word.  How glad I was that forgiveness was this year’s focus!  The Angels and Elementals gave me some interesting in-services on the topic, but more importantly they brought forward a number of Flower Essences to support what they call the mysterious alchemical process of forgiveness.  

Alchemy is described as a seemingly magical process of transformation. The Angels explain that emotions like anger, hate and bitterness can logjam our electrical systems and affect our health and wellbeing not to mention our overall vibration when they get stuck in our energy systems.  These stuck energies transform to love when forgiveness flows. While the energies of the rising planet support and make necessary the alchemy of forgiveness, many things inhibit this transformation process.  The Angels wanted to take on these roadblocks and help us dismantle them by bringing forward helpful Flower Essences.  Each of the following Flower Essences support us to release inner roadblocks so we can fully embrace the transformational flow of forgiveness. May this group flood you with love, forgiveness and the bliss which is our natural state of being.

Bees in the Plume Poppy– (Macleaya cordata)  Unity Consciousness

In the late summer garden, there is a very loud hum of bees in these towering Flowers.  The diversity and abundance of bees working the Flowers with great concentration and harmony became the energy of this Essence which is imprinted with both the vibration of bees as well as that of the Plume Poppy wands of bloom. One roadblock to forgiveness is that the illusion of separation is so strong on the planet that it is hard to imagine the truth that we are all one.  If we truly understood our oneness we would experience anger at another as something like our right hand being mad at our left hand.  The Angels suggested we make a Flower Essence from this moment of bee harmony in the gardens as it gives us the vibration of oneness to inform us and help us towards an understanding of oneness. It can offer us this vibration because the bees live this oneness so they carry this vibration.  

What the heck will unity consciousness feel like? This Essence gives us an example and a role model for stepping into this state of being. Bliss is the way the bees describe it.

I AM Bliss.

Black Beauty Lily– (Lilium “Black Beauty” ) Finding a safe inner space to heal our deepest wounds and let go into forgiveness

When a wound is very deep, it can be challenging to bring it forward into our consciousness. We need to feel safe to do this arduous work.  By creating a vibrational space of kindness and safety, Black Beauty Lily helps us come to terms with our wounds and feel safe to release them.  If anger has ever been a tool we’ve used to feel safe and defended in the world, gently and without judgment this Essence offers an alternative that serves us better.  We are supported to feel the embrace of a loving universe. We are supported to feel safe to let go of our grievances. The sweep of curved petals on this deep pink and speckled Lily resolves into a soft center of healing green and so too this Flower Essence brings us to a place where it is safe to resolve and release deep wounds.

I AM safe. I can resolve and release my deepest wounds.

Corn Cockle– (Agrostemma githago “Milas”)  Loosening the bindings that keep us from forgiveness

Sometimes our experiences tighten the warp and woof of the fabric of our hearts until we are closed off and unable to move from where we are.  Corn Cockle helps loosen the threads, softening this warp and woof so love and forgiveness can enter the picture. Like water flowing through the tiniest of cracks, Corn Cockle finds the small places where love and forgiveness can seep into us. With this trickle we begin to move towards forgiveness and love with a feeling of flow. Not only does this flow release us from the energetic burden of a closed heart, but it restores great energy to our systems as the bindings of our heart require so much energy to maintain. A delicate soft purple Flower on a willowy stalk with intricate markings in deep maroon, this gentle but determined Flower friend helps us experience the flow of love. 

One tool Corn Cockle uses is humor.  In fact, I call this Flower Corn Cackle. Here is an example of Corn Cockle’s gift of humor. As mentioned earlier, groundhogs are the stars of this blog because an enormous coterie of groundhogs have been running the show here at Green Hope Farm.  They have been a problem I could not solve and one that tightened my heartstrings into a knot of resentment and irritation as they outsmarted me at every turn.  However, the energy of Corn Cockle entered the picture and helped me to loosen up my heart until I found the whole situation silly.  This transformed my summer into a funny story.  

I AM flowing love.

The Eight Garden– Trusting the Flow

This is the third time we have created an Eight Garden and an Eight Garden Flower Essence.  The first time was 1993 when the Eight Garden with its immense energy of manifestation helped us launch Green Hope Farm to a much wider audience than before.  Since then descriptions of the Eight Garden Flower Essence have emphasized using the Essence to manifest our dreams and bring Divine healing energy into our lives. The second time we planted this garden, the focus was on the same gifts.  

With this Eight Garden the Angels encourage us to consider ALL the directions of flow in the figure Eight.  In particular the Angels encourage us to consider how we can use the Eight Garden energy to flow INTO the Divine as well as receive gifts FROM the Divine.  When we let go into this spiritual current, we are washed free of all sorts of limitations and bindings. Yes, we may well want to send love and gratitude into this flow, but we can also release our toughest nuggets of pain, sorrow and bitterness, those muddles that have clung to us like burrs.  The Divine will take it all and wash it clean. And then, the flow of the Eight naturally loops around and our energy flows back to us cleansed, refreshed and pure. 

This is a big reframing. As an energetic exchange of giving as well as receiving, we can give our mixed energy, understandably confused by the challenges of earthly life, into the flow of the Eight and have it returned to us in its purest vibrational form of love.  When we give ALL of ourselves, even the messy bits, into this flow of Divinity, the flow naturally returns us to ourselves in a more enlightened, less burdened way. 

To share ourselves in this continuous flow serves everyone and everything in our lives, because we flow into our highest possible self.  In concentrating on how the Eight calls us to let our energies flow into Divinity, we let go of a focus on what we do and don’t manifest and simply trust the flow to bring us everything we need in its own time and way.  

This third Eight Garden design once again had a path of pine needles in the shape of an 8 as the central element of the garden.. Flowers primarily in shades of red and purple including Corn Cockle, Ultraviolet and Black Gem Bachelor Buttons, Tobacco Chocolate Chip and Cranberry Isles, Love in a Mist, Heliotrope, Cherry Brandy Rudbeckia, Bells of Ireland, Seeker Purple Statice, Asian Gardens Celosia, Purple Strawflower, Sweet Alyssum and Ageratum Red Bouquet encircled the outside of the Eight with the outer edge of the Eight composed of Teddy Bear miniature Sunflowers, Mehera Marigolds and White Snapdragons. The two center circles of the Eight were planted with Chianti and Rouge Royale Sunflowers, Benary Giant Wine Zinnias, Amaranth Oeschberg, Lion’s Ear, Rubenza and Cranberry Double Click Cosmos.

Lavender Rose of Sharon– (Hibiscus syriacus) Self forgiveness

One way we stop the flow of healing love is by believing we don’t deserve this love.  Our patriarchal culture teaches us we must be “perfect” to deserve love.  Lavender Rose of Sharon breaks down the illusion of duality with its ideas of good and bad.  It anchors us in our hearts where we can be available to the truth that no matter what has happened to us, no matter what we have done, no matter how long we have held a grudge against ourselves, we exist in an ocean of love, and all is forgiven.  Lavender Rose of Sharon supports us to unburden ourselves of everything but the healing flow of this love for ourselves and love for all the circumstances of our lives.  

I AM the imperishable bloom of love.

Rock Fumewort (Corydalis lutea) Unleashing the inner capacity to forgive no matter how barren and disheartening the circumstances

Sporting abundant yellow Flowers from early summer through late fall, this exquisite plant grows in barren ground, rock crevices and other places where there is no nutritional support. Sometimes it can feel that there is no external support for what we need to do. Rock Fumewort Flower Essence helps us tap into our inner resources so we can confidently bloom in extremely challenging even desolate terrains.

While the ways Rock Fumewort Flower Essence can support us are many, as far as forgiveness work goes, the Angels note that when we find the possibility of forgiveness an unlikely prospect, Rock Fumewort helps us find a way even in the most unpromising of situations.

I AM the imperishable strength of my inner self.

Yellow Rose from Toledo, Spain– made by Sarah Porter, Green Hope Farm beloved 

Moving through betrayal, reversals of fortune, loss and grief to a freedom to accept what is with a freedom from expectation. Finding the loyalty of the eternal self which is the real beyond the mutable

Part of forgiveness involves mourning. It involves facing that what we hoped would happen did not happen.  Experiencing our grief frees us to let go of what was lost so we can see what remains.  Losses can help us find the immutable inner reality of our eternal self.

Here is a tiny example of this process from my summer.  I planted a vegetable garden that I wanted to reflect at least some of what I’ve learned about raising vegetables during the last 45 years.  Kindness of the local groundhogs, I got a wasteland. Six string beans anyone?  I needed to accept the reality of this, mourn the loss of my dreams and then forgive myself for my difficulty letting go of my dreams while also forgiving the world for not fulfilling my dreams.  When we do this work, we are left unburdened by expectations. This is a great freedom.  While I wanted vegetables this summer, my harvest was an experience of knowing I was okay even with a crap garden.  I found a freedom to laugh after I had cried, a freedom to know it was just an experience and didn’t define me.  

This brings me to Toledo.  The history of Toledo includes the rise and fall of many different groups of people that flourished then were crushed in a dizzying series of events. At one point, Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities shared the city in a harmony so great one would have hoped it would prevail for all time, but it didn’t.  Forces dismantled this tolerance with events like the Spanish Inquisition. Throughout Toledo’s history, any confidence that something external would endure was eventually destroyed.  Now a Unesco world heritage site, Toledo’s ancient mosques, churches and temples  are not so much a testament to a prevailing worldview, but a testament to our ability to survive and move on when our world is dramatically altered. When institutions failed the people of Toledo, they had to depend on their own inner resources.  The city is now a testament to this inner resolve, and the vibration of the city is not so much the bitterness of defeat but a calm resilience and acceptance of an ever changing world and the knowledge that events can neither diminish our eternal selves or define us. 

So why in this forgiveness collection have the Angels called me to a Yellow Rose Flower Essence made in Toledo, Spain?   This Rose helps soften our way through the process of losing our dream, accepting and making peace with what is. It also encourages us to go within to the healing anchor of our own inner self, a self that can console us, hold us steady during upheavals and be loyal to us even when the world has proven false or unfair or just simply moved on from our point of view. 

This Rose Flower Essence helps us heal the wounds when the external culture cannot meet our needs.  Born into the care of others, we are hardwired to look externally for caregivers in schools, hospitals, religious organizations, governments and other institutions that play caretaking roles in our lives. But organizations can’t always care for us in the ways we need.  When we are let down and our innocent expectation of care shattered, be it by our original parent caretakers or later by institutions, our disappointment and loss gives us an opportunity to find a more complex understanding of the world. We can rage against these forces that have disappointed us, or we can mourn then turn and go within to our inner self, infinite and eternal, a self that is truly and completely loyal to us. This Rose Essence offers both a balm to our wounds of betrayal and also helps us turn to the infinite resource within us.

Roses hold an energy of Divinity which is a bridge taking us to the eternal within us.  Yellow Rose from Toledo, Spain helps us ground in our eternal self which rises above the mutable into the real and imperishable.

I AM anchored in my immutable self, eternal, loyal and true.

The F word

In the early years here, the wild animals left the gardens in peace. Deer stood at a respectful distance at the fringes. There were NO groundhogs!  Insects never damaged any crops. If ants strayed onto kitchen counters, I would ask them to leave, and they would depart post haste.

This was in the beginning of my partnership with the Angels and Elementals when stunning results from our co-creative endeavors helped cement my commitment to our joint work and partnership.  Following my guidance as precisely as possible brought dazzling gardens of mammoth produce in a sea of Flowers. I planted, dug and weeded in a glow of wonder and happiness. Any roadblocks I encountered were solved by my Elemental partners. Their surprising but flawless advice saved me from a zillion garden and life problems I had no skills to handle alone.  With my Angel partners I felt loved and protected.  These partners ushered me into a charmed life, and I loved every minute of it.  

When asked to make Flower Essences, I jumped in without even knowing what they were.  I was on a magic carpet ride.  If my partners wanted me to make Flower Essences from the farm’s Flowers, I was all in.  Our years creating shimmering, light filled gardens gave me confidence I could do anything as long as I listened to my wise friends, I trusted our creation of Flower Essences would be a joyful adventure.  It has been that and more.

I remember talking to one of you dear people when all was perfection in the gardens, and you said, “Ahhhh the honeymoon phase”.  I was a little shocked at the suggestion this period of my life was going to end.  Yet deep within me, I knew you were right.  We all know honeymoons have to end, and this one did with lots of interpersonal drama and more complicated lessons.

Another one of you asked me this summer what did it mean that in the beginning the gardens were flawless and now almost forty years later, the main vegetable garden has been so demolished by the resident groundhogs that one might be hard pressed to call it a vegetable garden. I thought a lot about this question as I unsuccessfully skirmished with wily groundhogs who nightly found ways to chomp through netting, dig under fences, make den after den in the center of the main garden and dine out on every vegetable I’d tenderly grown.  

And here is my answer. Somewhere between early gardens of fairy tale beauty and the triumph of the groundhogs, I came to realize that the challenges were as much gifts as the earlier successes. I didn’t always see it that way in the now, but when the dust settled, I could almost always discern a timeless harvest no matter the ups and downs of the season.  My job was to trust that difficulties were gifts even when I couldn’t understand what the gifts were.  And over the last 37 years, I have begun to do this. 

Lessons have to shift if we want to be in our purpose.  The honeymoon is a beginning, not an end, and even during the honeymoon, the selfless honeybees stung us when they needed to and every Rose had its thorns.  I just didn’t see the vital complexity because in those early years I was building confidence and trust in my partners.  This necessitated astounding results to convince me my partners were real, and I was hearing them correctly.  One experience at a time, I learned they were with me completely in this endeavor.  

With this trust came the freedom for the Angels and Elementals to send me the lessons that would serve my eternal self the most, not the experiences my personality enjoyed most. While once I thought of success as things going well, the Angels and Elementals brought home the wisdom that the messiness of life is the divinely ordered stuff too and often serves us more than our personality’s ideas of success.  This doesn’t mean it is fun, but I am grateful that I was moved on from honeymoon type lessons to more arduous ones. These years in the garden have taught me that each new challenge I face is perfect, timely and brings me needed lessons for my highest good. I am fortunate to have deer, groundhogs, bugs and beetles ready to help the Angels and Elementals create the lessons. Humans too.  I also know that these lessons will probably rip me apart in unexpected ways. Ego shredding is no picnic.  It is a fire.  AND that is the point.  We have to lose our egos to find our true eternal self.

While this summer’s variations of learning lessons have mostly focused on the full service restaurant I am running for groundhogs, many lessons have been more painful.  They’ve been crushing kinds of things that I worked hard to view as more helpful to my eternal soul than personality fests. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had moments of resentment at what “other people” did to me or problems with forgiving individuals (be they four footed or two) for their part in my dramas.  This is why I am particularly grateful for this summer’s lessons which have been about forgiveness.  This is why I welcomed this season’s new Flower Essences which bring deep and nuanced support for forgiveness work.

When death threats from a troubled brother derailed my family’s life in the early 2000’s, I began to call forgiveness the f word. People aiding and abetting my troubled brother or dismissing his violence as inconsequential spoke often of forgiveness.  This enraged me and left my heart so hardened to this emotion that the word itself became a flashpoint for me.  My immediate family survived more than a decade of death threats and violence, however we lost our sense of safety in the world.  Being disinherited by my mother for involving the police and otherwise “airing dirty linen” was deeply painful.  Many years later, a visit from a key player in the drama, come to apologize for his inaction, brought the gift of me knowing I could feel forgiveness, but his disappearance again after this one visit left me in more turmoil.  I didn’t poke around to find out how I was doing with the f word.  I didn’t want to know. 

This summer, groundhogs would take me into f word territory and Flower Essences would help me flip my whole perspective and even find a bit of flow in this f word territory. For example, the new ideas about the Eight Garden Essence helped me understand that perhaps I simply needed to give my lack of forgiveness along with everything else to the Divine instead of trying to wrestle these “problems” to the ground by myself.  I could be washed free not through my own efforts but by simply letting go.   

So here’s to the groundhogs out there in the garden being groundhogs.  I have had to learn to accept them in their groundhogness and forgive them for doing what they naturally do and forgive myself for being royally pissed off at them. This has helped me grasp that just as groundhogs are groundhogs, humans are humans. I’ve begun to forgive some humans for being human, including myself.   The humorous quality which groundhogs naturally possess has helped me raise up my energy from anger to humor, alchemy at its best.  The groundhogs also forced me to not take myself so seriously while at the same time taking the Divinity within me very seriously.  All this circles round to the theme of this summer’s Flower Essence introductions.  Thank you groundhogs!  This FORGIVENESS collection is dedicated to you!

And with that, I close by sending all you dear ones love, blessings and hopes that the groundhogs in your life leave you laughing after the tears. 

The news for 2024 is just about ready to roll and I have promised the staff goddesses that I will have everything launched and on the website by next week! In the meantime I have had a morning on email which always helps me learn so much.

I have received a few questions about working with the Flower Essences WITHOUT taking them internally or having them touch the skin.  The good news is that there are many ways to work with Flower Essences that do not involve taking them internally or having them touch your skin.  In fact, the Angels gave me a new suggestion today to add to the methods they had already mentioned!

But first off, let’s consider the question: how can Flower Essences work when they are not taken physically into our physical bodies?
Flower Essences are an energetic tool that brings our electrical system information to raise its vibration. We want to raise our vibrations because higher vibrations mean better health and wellbeing. Additionally it is necessary to raise our vibrations right now because our planet is rising in vibration, and we need to raise our vibrations to stay in sync with our planet.

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Because Flower Essences work with our electrical system, when we take them internally, it is to get their information to our electrical system, not to give them to our physical body.  Taking them internally means we guarantee that they are received by our electrical system but other methods can guarantee this too.

  
Spritzing Flower Essences mixed with water is my favorite way to use Flower Essences. Since our electrical systems extend out from our bodies, we can spritz Flower Essences around our bodies and not even on our bodies and get the information of the Essence loud and clear.  I personally feel this is one of the most effective ways to work with Flower Essences, but there are many others.

Before I mention other methods that do not require physical exposure to the Flower Essence, let me say just a couple more things.
Let’s examine the foolish movie heroine who has ignored all the signs like heavy breathing telephone calls and stayed in the creepy house alone on a deserted road on Halloween? You know how she can feel that the creepy guy with the mask is in the next room?  Her electrical field has bumped into his!  Our electrical fields really are a lot bigger than our physical bodies, and we all have experiences of this.

A situation when I always noticed this was when I lived in a dorm with my husband and forty teenage boys back in the 1980’s. Even in the middle of the night there was an almost palpable feeling of other people in the building, This was caused by their electrical fields.  Then when the students were on vacation, the dorm felt completely different.  We feel people’s electrical systems all the time as well as bump into and overlap with them.

All this means in addition to spritzing, we can use the Flower Essences effectively by putting drops in the bath or as the Angels suggested this morning, by putting the closed bottle in the bath. This also means we can access the energy of Flower Essences just by carrying them in our pocket or leaving them on our bedside table. Why? Flower Essences have an electrical field too, and we can receive their energy through the bottle.

 
The fact that Flower Essences can be accessed even when someone doesn’t open the bottle is a good thing, but it also means that Flower Essences need care and protection.  If you leave your Essences in a locker in Grand Central station, they will be pulled on by passerbys and drained overtime of their electrical charge.  Why? Because consciously and unconsciously, we are always seeking higher vibrations. This is why we suggest in our FAQ sheet on the home page and on the one we send to you with your first order that you don’t store your Essences in a place in your household that gets a lot of traffic. This is also why we ask the Elementals to protect your Flower Essences until they get to your door! 

Whew! Hopefully this has answered some of your questions if you want to work with the Flower Essences without taking them internally but aren’t sure this will be effective!  If not, email! I or another of our fabulous staff goddesses will be there!

I am working on the Fall 2024 newsletter in which our garden season is described and the new Flower Essences for the year are highlighted. I always try to get this news onto the blog and into your packages shortly after the Fall Equinox, so I have a bit more time. I can tell you now that the focus for the Angels in new Flower Essences creation has been on supporting forgiveness work. If you’ve read this blog for long you’ve probably noticed that forgiveness has been a difficult challenge for me at times, so much so that I call forgiveness the f-word. In any case, I am looking forward to describing to you my Angelic inservices on forgiveness this summer, because I think it will make you laugh!

As I grappled with describing marvelous new Flower Essences serving a quality I aspire to but don’t always master, I had a thought about forgiveness work that helped me. I don’t think it is going to make it into the newsletter so I thought I would share it here.

Our long time neighbor Teddy Grobe was the reason we came to this property, and she was in the thick of all things Green Hope farm during its first twenty years. Living into her 90’s with joie de vivre, a chic quality indicative of her many lives in France not to mention her passionate love for the Divine, she taught me so much.

Teddy was a fabulous cook, arguably the most amazing cook of my whole life. The first dinner party I was invited to at her house blew my mind. She had an enormous wooden table sourced when she lived in Portugal as a Navy officer’s wife. Because this table was so gargatuan, it took up most of an entire room. At this party and at every Teddy party I would ever go to, the entire table was covered in a lavish array of gorgeous dishes. There were often lobsters harkening back to her childhood in Freeport Maine, but these were always surrounded by so many other exotic offerings that one really didn’t know where to begin.

Teddy made copious amounts of fresh rolls from grains she ground herself and croissants were a staple at her house, so bread at Teddy’s house was never a side but always a sublime front and center treat.

When desserts invariably followed, there were eclairs, trifles, crumbles and pies. No one made better fruit desserts than Teddy, and her hand at pastry was legendary.

She often invited near strangers to her table, but everyone was old friends by the time we rolled out of her house towards our respective homes. Any crowd no matter how dissimilar found common ground over the deliciousness Teddy’s food. This in itself is a reminder how food can move us towards harmonious community. Oh if only Teddy were still here to feed us all!

So here is my funny story about Teddy which ties in with forgiveness work. The ONLY thing that Teddy made that was not delicious was her hummus. Her homemade hummus was quite simply one of the worst things I have ever eaten. I have no idea why, but it was really bad. At one point Teddy got a bee in her bonnet about all of us in the neighborhood cooking different things for each other and sharing our offerings so as to make cooking meals easier for all our households. How I hoped Teddy would pick rolls or pies or her stellar danish for this multiple household sharing but no, TEDDY CHOSE HER HUMMUS!

For way too many weeks Teddy would come by with a tub of her hummus and I would hand over my dish with a smile on my face. There was no way I was going to tell Teddy what I thought of her hummus. Eventually through a decided lack of enthusiasm on everyone but Teddy’s part, the hummus sharing stopped.

Now remembering this has made me smile even burst out into laughter all morning as I made hummus for my family. There was no need to forgive Teddy for making atrocious hummus. Even this nearly perfect cook made mistakes. There was no need for anything at all but humor about her imperfect sharing. Perhaps forgiveness work when it involves people who have truly hurt us could be considered in the same way as Teddy’s hummus. Sometimes our best efforts are crap even when we are doing our best. I am going to try and remember Teddy’s hummus when I am hurt by a mistake someone else made. They are human and something happened to have them hit their Teddy hummus point, and I am best served by remembering everything else about them then quietly disposing of the hummus moment and just moving on.