Cause and Effect

It was an early morning, running out the door to get my daughter to a 5:45 departure time for a track meet, I nearly ran into someone who'd pulled into our parking lot and ran my next door neighbors house. As I'm driving I'm thinking to myself - I hope Marcie (my neighbor) hasn't gone into preterm labor. When I arrive back at my house Marcie is walking to the car and I ask her if she's o.k. - you don't usually see your neighbors getting in a car before 6 a.m. on a Saturday. She laughs and says they're headed to a shrine sale and would I like to come ...

Quickly, I dashed inside, grabbed my bag and I was out the door. I love shrine sales. It's that quest for a treasure and the curiosity of looking at items that are so different from anything you would ever find  back in the states - wondering "what exactly is that?" - that I find so much fun.

This is my third trip to this particular shrine sale but I still find something new each time I go. This time I found a gentleman who was selling little bags of balls that were made out of scraps of kimono fabric. I had thought I would make these myself but when I saw him I quickly snatched a bag. What exactly do you do with these?

Lotus Pods
I purchased some lotus pods back in the fall, I was intrigued by their shape and the unusual holes that are left by the seeds. Since then I have seen the pods on display in various shops with colorful little balls of fabric tucked into the holes left vacant when the seeds drop out There's something about them that makes me happy. Maybe it's all the different colors of the fabric - a rainbow of colors that transforms something natural and organic into something whimsical and fun.

You see the lotus flower all over Japan. There's a beautiful pond in Kamakura at one of the shrines that has lotus flowers that bloom in the summer that even with the sweltering heat I cannot wait to back and see. The lotus flower has the unique characteristic that when it blooms it also sheds it's seeds. Within the beliefs of Buddhism, the theory of karma states that our lives are made up of cause and effect - like the lotus flower that blooms and shed's it's seeds.  Every cause - be it thought, word or deed - will have an effect that can be seen now or in the future. What appears to be past it's prime - the pod - finds new life with the addition of scraps of fabric into a visual treat and becomes something inspiring.