The Courage of Mushrooms: Nita Gilger

I have needed the courage the mushroom, earthy brown with slender stem, growing from the damp in difficult times, and saying: "I am small, but I am here. I choose life."

How to stand tall in adverse times? Is it not to choose life, for others as well as ourselves, knowing that we are together in our suffering and in our desire for the common good?

Is this not what life is about? To lie in wait with the mushroom: to trust and look and arrive, when the rains come. And aren't the rains a kind of grace, maybe even divine?

- Jay McDaniel

The Courage of Mushrooms

Nita Gilger

What is it that you most need courage for in your life? We all face uncertainty in large and small ways from time to time. Illness comes. Relationships fracture, become distant, or struggle. Loss happens. Faith gets shaken to its core. I have a list. I bet you do too. 

On my morning walk, there were some mushrooms that had popped up in the most unlikely places. Around them and underneath them was unfriendly ground with a scarce amount of dirt. It is rough terrain. Yet, these delicate, beautiful mushrooms had tapped into the recent rains enough to find and give life. 

Courage can be fragile and ever so strong simultaneously. Courage is not necessarily the absence of fear. Rather, it is a kind of perseverance that allows us to withstand difficulties to step forward anyway. Courage is the tiny voice inside me that says there is still love to be found and possibilities just waiting to be discovered. Courage allows me to embrace life no matter the challenges and current frustrations, sadness, or setbacks I may be experiencing. I do need a source for courage. I need God's presence in my life like a spring that does not run dry. I may be as fragile as that little mushroom at times, but God's love and sustenance is the fertile ground I can depend on to find life and the courage to carry on and thrive. 

Nature teaches me over and over that life finds a way against all odds. It also teaches me that there is so much to embrace and celebrate. The possibilities for joy and grace are endless. My task is to be aware, surrender, and soak in all those merciful gifts that may seem hidden or delayed but are there just waiting to grow. 

Ode to a Mushroom

Oh, you tiny, fragile beauty
What is it you want to say?
When the rains came so did you.
You were lying in wait with courage
Simmering in the particles of dirt.
I did not know you were there;
I did not expect your surprising arrival.
Maybe that is true courage--
The patience to wait, trust, look, and grow.

Nita Gilger

The Mushroom

Emily Dickinson

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants -
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -

’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler -
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!

Fungi: A Biological Approach

from BBC

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss fungi. These organisms are not plants or animals but a kingdom of their own. Millions of species of fungi live on the Earth and they play a crucial role in ecosystems, enabling plants to obtain nutrients and causing material to decay. Without fungi, life as we know it simply would not exist. They are also a significant part of our daily life, making possible the production of bread, wine and certain antibiotics. Although fungi brought about the colonisation of the planet by plants about 450 million years ago, some species can kill humans and devastate trees.

With:

Lynne Boddy
Professor of Fungal Ecology at Cardiff University

Sarah Gurr
Professor of Food Security in the Biosciences Department at the University of Exeter

David Johnson
N8 Chair in Microbial Ecology at the University of Manchester

Producer: Victoria Brignell