14th August 2014

I achieved maximum Brownie-points this year when I planted a herb garden for my wife; and every day that the garden stays alive, the points accumulate and yield their dividend. For one whose thumb is only green by imagination, I’m quietly chuffed. The parsley is prospering, the mint is multiplying, and the thyme is growing like there’s no tomorrow!

The garden has given me occasion to study some herbal facts and figures, and the facts are indeed fascinating. Methinks however that some of the studious papers give too much credit to the little plants. Like this one about thyme, where the claim is made that it is a veritable panacea. A cure-all. And the list of things that it can cure is….. well…..exaggerated. The healing power of herbs is impressive, and there is admittedly still much to discover about their medicinal properties. But to claim for them, what only something else can do, is not sagacious.

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”. And it might said in a complementary way, that we are not to fascinate over that which can cure the body but cannot cure the soul. There is but one cure for unhealthy hearts, and it is not sold by the vial, nor traded for any number of Brownie-points, nor cited in The Old English Herbarium, but found in the veins of him who once was thought to be a gardener.

DM 14^th August 2014