Abundance flows in your steps

All of these look to you
to give them their food in due season.
You give it, they gather it up:
you open their hands, they have their fill.
Ps 104:27-28

Four years ago I planted three (3, yes 3) small thornless raspberry canes in my backyard along the edge of a raised bed. This year, they've taken over both beds and the aisle between them and Math Man suggests we won't be able to get out the back door soon. But we have raspberries, an abundance of raspberries. Starting last weekend I could walk out (barely) the back door and fill my bowl for breakfast. They were ripening almost faster than we could eat them. Then yesterday I took my bowl out -- to find none. Not one red, ripe berry to be found. "A break," I thought, "tomorrow, there will be even more." Except there weren't. The birds have found the feast. And they have their fill - as the psalm says.

I don't mind sharing, but I'm having a hard time watching all of the berries go to feeding the multitudes. I can hear my Carmelite friend's voice: "Having issues with detachment, my dear?" Or is my berry desire a "disordered attachment" to use Ignatius' language?

I think it might be time for some netting, that's what I think! Then I, too, might have my fill.

Abundance flows in your steps... (Ps 65:12)

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No column this week, the Catholic Standard and Times is on their summer schedule.