Aug
13
2014
Wild Things
Posted in Evangelism 6 Comments
As we drove through the Irish countryside, I was struck by a comment.
A woman noted that, they do things so different here.
She wasn’t talking to anyone in particular.
She was commenting, as much to herself as to anyone who might be listening.
And listening, I was.
She walked over to one of the many stone walls that scatter the countryside.
The stone walls that are functionally built.
The ground is extremely rocky.
When the ground is cleared to farm, the rocks that are collected must go somewhere.
That “somewhere” is a pile.
That pile becomes a wall.
The beauty of the thing.
Instead of ugly piles heaped over the landscape, there is precision, order, and beauty.
There is also certain wildness.
Along the precise stone walls of discarded rocks, there is wild growth.
There is ragweed that resembles the gold boliauns in Clever Tom and the Leprechaun.
Beautiful, yellow, poisonous to animals, and wild.
There are flowers that are weeds, yet are so lovely as they poke through the rocks.
Splashes of color seemingly disrupts the order.
We would get rid of this at home, the woman mused.
She is right, we would.
We would weed-whack the wild beauty away.
We would eradicate any semblance of wildness.
We want our order and our precision.
We want things to look nice and neat.
Oh, what wild beauty we miss!
I often felt odd when I enjoyed the yellow dandelions on my lawn.
My husband would dutifully go out and walk back and forth.
Back and forth spreading the powdered substance that would kill the weeds.
Kill the weed and the splashes of yellow that went with it.
I always liked the purple violets that grow in the grass.
They are one of the worst spring weeds and toughest to get rid of.
But the color, the beauty of the purple, the wildness of the thing.
“…And the walls became the world around…”
“And he sailed off through night and day. And in and out of weeks. And almost over a year to where the wild things are.” (Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak)
I thought of that children’s book, the one I read to my own children over and over.
The wild things were here.
They grew uninhibited through tiny spaces in rocks.
They grew in what was not soil but rocks, abundant, ever-present rocks.
They do things so different here.
They do indeed.
I thought of the tenacity of the weed as it grew in between the rocks.
I thought of the unfriendly conditions in which it thrived.
It grew despite the fact that it should not grow.
Its stubbornness was to my advantage; I got to experience raw beauty.
As we visited cities like Waterford, Kilarney, and Galway I noticed it.
Rows of homes, identical in their design yet unique in appearance.
The one thing they could change, they changed.
The color of their doors.
Bright yellow, brilliant blue, cranberry red, hunter green greeted anyone who knocked.
What could have been rows and rows of sameness were houses unique as a fingerprint.
Warm, inviting, different, and wild.
Not at all like the row houses in our cities that stand incognito against the skyline.
We tame our wild things.
We like to keep our order.
We would rather have things neat and tidy with a safe sameness.
We don’t like things different, individual, with a bit of wildness peeking out.
We weed-whack away the whimsy.
We walk back and forth in our rows, eradicating our weeds.
We pull splashes of color up from the roots.
We get rid of this at home.
I thought about sharing the Gospel.
I thought about formulas and doing “what works.”
I thought about weed-whacking our evangelism for the sake of order.
I thought about going back and forth in rows spreading a prepackaged message.
Where is the wildness of the thing?
Where is the growth that thrives in unfriendly conditions?
Where is the tenacious messenger that spreads the Message among the rocks?
Where is the expectation of growth when growth seems impossible?
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor Me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to My people, My chosen, the people I formed for Myself that they may proclaim My praise. (Isaiah 43:18-21)
Streams in the wasteland.
Growth among the rocks.
Tenacity of the message.
Spreading beauty with an everlasting wildness.
A, we do things so different here, kind of evangelism.
Not formulaic, not pre-packaged.
Unique.
A wild beauty that grows where it should not grow.
Gina,
You have a unique insite, somewhat like Georgia O’Keefe’s. And so you record the
things in your last visit to a new place on our sphere…………………and may you continue the exploration so we can see things you have discovered in your own vision.
RM
Renee,
Words seem so inadequate when you try to describe such beauty. Simple beauty that we tend to miss but is all around us, waiting to be seen. I am delighted that my words even begin to convey what I experienced. There are such wonders to be seen.
Gina
Dear Gina,
This is simply beautiful in insight, an image to keep and be molded by. Thank you.
Michelle,
You’re welcome, friend.
As much as you needed to read it, I needed to write it.
Gina
This reminds me of a Georgia O’Keefe quote on why she painted flowers so large–“people don’t notice the small things–I paint them large so they will”. I agree with you– God created the wild plants (and animals) to be enjoyed by us. Who decided which plants were “weeds” anyway? I had an art teacher years ago who set up still lifes of grasses and wildflowers. She taught us that there was great beauty in them, (and also that they don’t last long–we had to paint the entire painting that day, or they would be gone). God gives us lots of life lessons in His natural world, if we will just LOOK.
Sue, you and I are kindred spirits.
You LOOK and paint.
I LOOK and write.
Such beauty to be seen and shared with others.
Gina