My flower,

If you were a nasturtium, there would be no problem. I would look at your leaves or your buds and if they were not blooming as they should or a little misshapen or not full color, I would determine that something was wrong. I’d take a sample of the soil you were growing in and check it with the flower book and find the optimal ph balance for you and alter the soil with one thing or another until I’d achieved that balance. And after I did this, I might look you over for bugs or fungi or other parasites that were hindering your growth, and find ways to gently remove them. As likely as not, with a little work, I could make you into a fine nasturtium and you would bloom in my garden and make me happy. You would do the thing a nasturtium was created to do: you would reach your leaves to the sky and praise God with your loving blossom and bless every one who passed you by.

My little flower girl, you are not too different from the lowly nasturtium, only very much more complex. You have a thing called desire that is under your control. The nasturtium just has a programmed desire that tells it to be all that it can be, but your desire is confused with longings you can’t explain, appetites that plague you and prevent you from blooming.

Very much like the flower, you have an optimal ph balance, and when you achieve it, your body will normally respond and heal itself. Customarily, because of the typical American diet, our ph tends toward the acidic. You know because you can feel it. The nutritional input needed to correct it is alkaline. Alkalinity is achieved by eating all the good things your mother and grandmother told you to eat: your fruits and vegetables, and the good grains. The citrus, especially the lemon, are acidic in their natural state, but when your body metabolizes them, they become alkaline. Acidity is caused by those rapacious desires: coffee, alcohol, sugar, meat, refined foods not natural.

The biggest problem is that thing called desire. We can know exactly what we need and continually do the wrong thing. Isn’t that awful, this human condition that separates us from the flowers? Those who love us and care for us tell us about our desire and how we must overcome it. Those who do not love us, prey upon this desire and sponsor it and take opportunity of it.

So, little flower girl, here is another loving urging. I want you to be happy and healthy so we can be happy together. You need to adjust that ph balance as best you can and determine your needs with another mechanism beside the desire inside of you. You need to choose the right foods based on knowledge and wisdom and not on what you feel like eating.

It’s not really so bad. All the good things we need to eat are just that, truly good. They taste wonderful and are sweet and sour and tangy and delicious. They are just not what we are used to. We pick up a cracker or a chip because it is easy and fulfills that desire. We order a tempting lasagna instead of eating the goat cheese salad. We slug down a soda instead of enjoying a good glass of pure water with a squeeze of lemon in it.

After quelling this thing called desire by making good choices for a while, we become used to our new diets and our cravings adjust. It becomes the good things we want to eat over and over again. It also helps to not feed the old desire with pictures and programs. And in the right ph balance, our body responds. Ailments fall away and we wonder what happened. Our strength is renewed and our joy restored. The effort is certainly worth it.

Sometimes people cannot overcome their desires even when they know all about them. We call them addicts and say tsk tsk when we hear their sad story. But the reality is that it isn’t easy to overcome some things which we are very used to doing. But there is help. There is a flower book for people with all the necessary ingredients, including dietary, for a full and purposeful life: it is called the Bible. And there is One, even Jesus, who promises to help us to overcome those desires that hinder us, and to understand and to accomplish the purpose for which we are created: to lift our hands and praise God and to bless others who pass by us.

I love you, little flower face.

Your Grandpa Larry

– Larry Berger, Hashtag #114. June 2019.