Lessons from weeds
Wednesday June 29, 2005
Weeding life’s garden
If “survival of the fittest” is the world’s organizing principle, then I predict that weeds will eventually dominate the earth.
About a month ago, Joan and I planted our garden seeds – squash, beans, peas, onions… Then the rains came. The garden turned into a sea of mud. And before long, a sea of green. Weeds, mostly. If we looked closely, we could see an occasional bean tendril waving desperately above the waves of weeds like a swimmer going down for the third time.
Then last week the sun came out. The mud dried. We got into the garden on our hands and knees, pulling weeds.
Learning on the job
It was an instructive afternoon. Weeds and I do not get along, mostly because I don’t know which green things are weeds, and which aren’t. My traditional test is to give them a tug. If they uproot easily, they were garden plants.
Weeds have tougher root systems.
Life Lesson One: It’s harder to uproot our faults than to harm our better qualities.
This time, though, I had a small advantage. Having helped to plant the seeds, I knew approximately where they should be coming up. If I saw a row of similar-looking leaves, I could assume they belonged there.
So I started pulling everything else.
“Be sure you get the roots,” Joan warned me. “Don’t just snap them off, or they’ll just come up again.”
Life Lesson Two: When combating sins of omission or commission – and as poet Ogden Nash once observed, most people are more likely to regret things they didn’t do than things they actually did – get the roots. Eliminating the visible evidence of one’s faults and shortcomings accomplishes little if the roots of that behaviour still lurk just below the surface.
Getting dirty
I found that the weeds came out best, roots and all, if I was patient enough to pluck each tiny stem one at a time. Weeding was least productive when I got greedy – or impatient, although they’re pretty much the same thing, both in weeding and in life – and tried to pull up a handful of weeds at once. That’s when fragile stems snapped off, and left the hidden roots harder to dig out.
Life Lesson Three: It’s probably more effective to conquer one’s flaws one at a time, and make gradual but confident progress, than to attempt a wholesale conversion of one’s personality and keep slipping back.
Finally, after an afternoon on my hands and knees, I had black earth under my fingernails, caked on my knees, clumped on my shoes …
“Go wash!” commanded our daughter, visiting us that week. “Use the tap out in the yard.”
I scrubbed. And scrubbed some more. My arms and legs came out pink and shiny.
“Wash me,” wrote the psalmist (Psalm 51), “and make me clean.”
Life Lesson Four: I’m sure he was talking about his relationship with God, not with gardens. But the message is the pretty much the same.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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PROMOTION PLUGS
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