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Seed or Weed
I never wanted to be in a garden club. Ironically, I became addicted to gardening in Uruguay and competing in horticulture shows. I even became adamant about pulling weeds, snapping off deadheads of flowers, pruning dead roses, keeping things in some sort of order. And there was a small benefit: weed pulling was good for the waist line. Mowing the lawn to rid of weeds was a sweaty activity. That was before the modern noisy grass cutting machines called weed eaters that look like a golf club gone wild and for which one needs ear plugs. Usually it misses any kind of weed growing crazily up against something.
 I often stood by my window boxes filled with geraniums, impatiens and begonias, dead-heading them and pulling weeds nuggets as I chatted with some visitor. I couldn’t keep still when I saw a weed. But I had to agree that sometimes, actually, the forgotten weeds could produce a tiny flower of a sort. I learned that in the enormous, glorious gardens of the great British horticulturists, that a skilled island gardener could turn the worst weed into a showy spectacular highlight of her giant beds of flowers and shrubs and that would win prizes.
Who knows. Maybe some of us are weeds. Nuisances, actually. We get in the way of the straight and narrow. We don’t go with the flow, but have a different view of what is worthy and do-able. Maybe just by being outside the model, we have some use in society, or at least in the garden club. I don’t consider us evil, but just someone with weird ideas about gardening.
Perfection is a tough thing to carry around all the time. Nothing is really perfect. So many of us are hanging on with a finger trying to be what we are supposed to be, but are constantly fighting against who we are, which isn’t so bad after all. Sometimes we weeds can be the savior of the glorious flowers, the fruits, the baby spinach and new breeds of broccoli. How perfect does the ground have to be for something to grow? I guess it depends on if one is trying to earn a living in the plant world, or just fiercely preparing to win best in show at one of the garden club extravaganzas.
My garden club days thrived in Uruguay. It was the best way to meet the heart of Uruguayan women. And, even though I had to learn and take tests in Spanish, I reached the honor of being a garden club judge in both horticulture and design. I loved giving blue ribbons as much as possible. A group of us traveled every 3 years to the WAFA (World Association of Flower Arrangers) expositions that took us to Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, (I missed Japan and Pakistan) then Boston, the first in the USA, where I was a judge. I retired after that but wish I had been able to visit the 13th WAFA this year which was in February in India before the virus. My design days are over, as life has simplified.
But flowers and weeds and soil and arranging were a great learning process not only in awakening more to the glory of God’s earth creation, but more important, making friends world-wide. I may have been a “weed” with heart, but the best moment for me was becoming a friend of the greatest ever flower designer who really got that hobby off the ground - Julia Clements, OBE, who died in 2010 at 104 years old. I wrote a praise for a booklet of stories to commemorate her. When she was already in her late 90ties, I’d meet her for tea in London’s splendid hotels. It amazed me that she arrived alone by taxi, even though she was almost blind, and was extremely independent and gracious. When she traveled far and stepped out at all the WAFA Shows that existed while she was alive, she blessed and graced them with dignity and humor. She thought every weed had its form, style, glory just as any other growing horticulture in God’s gardens. She would often send me notes on her antique typewriter, and sometimes she wrote by hand, although it was hard to read, and she was just plain an elegant angel who looked with great determination and detail at each and every design in those monster-size shows.
In the times of Jesus, I don’t know if flower arranging was a hobby or a decoration. There were no churches or cathedrals then to decorate altars for weddings, worship, burial. I guess other things were more important. In Matthew 14, Jesus’ gave a lesson on seed types. All have some value. His parable sort of points out that someone who sowed good seed in his field, was able to go home and sleep without worry, not thinking that an enemy, awake all night, I guess, would sneak in to sow weed seeds around the good seeds. Apparently, no one knew until the wheat grew and bore grain and simultaneously weeds appeared healthy and dancing in the winds. Everyone in this picture was shocked, wondering how the weeds snuck in. The master said the enemy did it - remember the devil made me do it? - and just wait till harvest time so as not to upset the good wheat. They could both grow together, but in the end, the weeds of the enemy have to be burned.
This happens symbolically, in the end, in the last days when the angels reap the good harvest and the weeds are thrown into the furnace of fire, where things are pretty awful - that famous weeping and gnashing of teeth. Here, in this parable, Jesus is very adamant about good and bad and nothing in between. It should be bothersome to us who sway from one side to another - one day a rose, next day a weed.
But in the long run, in my heart, we need to give the weeds a chance to know God and the beauty of all He does on earth. I won’t give up on anybody, and I trust God doesn’t either. God’s son, at the moment of this parable, was trying to teach and guide a group of young men who were to carry His word into the world. I suppose Jesus didn’t think the disciples were firm or strong enough at that point to be able to mess with weeds, the tough products of a possibly evil person.
Sure, the world is still filled with evil ones trying to pull us away from the beauty and glory of God. Sometimes if one can grab those weed seeds early on, and show them about hope, love, belief and beauty, they can be diverted from their negative ways. At least, this is what we hope, and what I’ve tried to do because God saved me from being a weed, not necessarily being evil, but was, at one point, taking the wrong road to holiness. It happens to all of us who are ordained. No one is perfect. Some of us are weeds just needing some fresh air and water so we have a chance to join the good seeds.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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