On the messy stuff............................

 My Grandmother, Emma Sue, had a garden at her farm in the North Carolina mountains where she grew Jurassic Park sized vegetables.   I asked her one day how she did it.

     "Chicken droppings," she said dryly.  "A garden won't grow right without it."

     It took a few years after that to really enjoy a tomato out of her garden again.  But I never forgot the lesson:  It's the messy, unpleasant stuff that grows a great garden.  Just like sometimes it's the messy stuff in life, the mistakes and wrong turns, that grows a rich existence.  Yet we bemoan every tiny mistake.

-Rev. Susan Sparks, Laugh Your Way to Grace:  Reclaiming the Spiritual Power of Humor