I’ve been restructuring my garden, and where my flowers are in the old line of fence doesn’t make sense with the new line of fence. So I’m moving flowers, which won’t bloom this year, how sad, and mostly pulling this insidious weed called bishop’s weed or gout weed. The thing just grows and grows and takes over the whole garden if you let it. Where did it come from? Well, when I took plants from my mother’s garden like her beautiful peonies and roses, the gout weed came with them. And it’s been in my garden for over 20 years now, each year I pull it but the roots are so deep up and roaming that they come again and again. I believe that if I could eat it and make it into a delectable vegetable it would be beaten, but the darn thing is not edible. While I’m doing all this hard work, I’m thinking about the news and how systemic racism and violence takes hold of our whole society, and insidiously grows and it’s so difficult to even grasp the full extent of it because we who are privileged may be just beginning to understand, but how do we even start to weed it out.
I was talking to a dear friend the other day, and she got a similar question from her brother, (he was asking, as an agnostic..) to interpret all that has been going on in the country and the world in the past 20 years. A tall order, but here’s what she said:
“I don’t believe this is God’s punishment, for one. There are consequences to human actions and inactions. What I’ seeing are the consequences of hubris and greed run amok, the consequences of a sociopath/tyrants’s (and his minions!) tormenting the flames of deep-seated, centuries-old (millennia-old) racism, fear and xenophobia..We’ve reached a profound and precarious tipping point. I have found in my own life that the questions I’ve asked have been more influential than the answer I’ve been given. Certain questions send me down rabbit hole: for example, why do bad things happen to good people? So, after I have pondered some of those questions for a while, I then consider these questions, to keep me from falling into despair: where can I see glimpses of grace in the midst of the horror/crisis? What can I do, using my particular gifts, to contribute to the healing and restoration of the world? In the words of Fred Roger’s mother, ‘I look for the helpers and try to join them in their good work.’ That also lifts my spirits. One of the reasons I enjoyed teaching on the book of Genesis is its narrative truth-telling about what happens when fear, greed, hubris run amok. The first 10 1/2 chapters are primeval history and myth- - not because the stories are false, but because the stories are pointing to the truths about he human condition. In chapter 6 - when the world is a mess and humanity has plummeted to a profound depravity, biblical writers describe God’s reaction: God’s heart grieves - the verse does not til about Gods’ anger, but God’s deep grief over what’s happening. I also believe this: that there is always a mix of pain and healing, shadow and light - all the time. And though it’s not rational, I still believe that Love is the first and last word. If the God I believe in is not constrained by the human construct of time and space, then the healing of and for All is already in process, even though I may not see it in its fullness, I can see glimpses of it. Even now. And just as there is a life-death-life-dealth-life … I dare to believe that an amazing movement will come of all this. Leaders will emerge, prophetic and artistic voices — they are speaking even now.”
This gives me hope because I also believe that we are made in love, of love and for love. We all have the opportunity to be prophetic, artistic or what-ever-our- gift is … voices for healing, reconciliation and love. The weeds are not the end of my garden, but as I pull them and add them to the compost heap, perhaps they are helping to enliven and enrich the soil so that more flowers and vegetables can grow. Something to think about as I’m weeding.
(The picture is actually from Star’s garden, she has gout weed too..)