I’ve been doing battle lately with invasive plants that are
taking over a park near my home. Mile-a-minute, or Asiatic tearthumb, (Persicaria
perfoliata) is an annual vine with beautiful blue berries. Back in the 30s, a grower
in York (two counties west of me) planted some holly seeds from
Mile-a-minute is prickly (hence the name “tearthumb”), but
with gloves, not too hard to gather: it pulls off easily, and can be
rolled into a ball. The difficulty is that it climbs over everything, far into
trees, over bushes, out of reach of diligent weed warriors. Once it’s seeded,
seeds fly off when the vine is disturbed. Despite the efforts of a faithful
band of volunteers, in Exton Park and areas beyond it
seems to be winning.
Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) is the other thug
we’ve been battling. It has beautiful flowers, butterflies love it, and it
blooms for months, which is why it’s still sold as an ornamental except in
states wise enough to ban it. Some loosestrife is marketed as “sterile,”
suggesting it's okay to plant, but researchers have shown that the so-called
“sterile” plants are as prolific as their peers.
The problem with loosestrife is that, grown on a continent
where it has no natural insect predators, it takes over wetland habitat. It
spreads from its roots, a foot a year in every direction, and seeds so
prolifically (two to three MILLION seeds a year) that in just a few seasons
there’s a solid mat of purple haze. It crowds out everything: native grasses,
fish populations, wetland birds. And digging it is hard, mucky work, since its
roots are huge and it grows in wet spots, often under water.
The Synchroblog topic this month is “Parable: Small Story, Big Idea,” and
as I’ve been thinking about parables, it’s occurred to me that quite a few are
about seeds. In simple stories, Jesus catches the complexity and
challenge of seed, and the interplay of natural forces, human effort, inherent
risk, distant reward.
Maybe the most familiar of the seed parables is the story of the farmer sowing his seed in good soil, rocky soil, hard soil. The seed on
hard soil is eaten by birds. The seed on rocky soil grows fast, but dies
prematurely. Some young plants are strangled by weeds, but some seed finds a
home in productive soil and grows to produce good fruit.
I’ve seen firsthand how easily young plants, even trees, can
be strangled by weeds. One of our weed warrior jobs is to chop back invasive
vines that threaten the health of older trees, bend saplings into strange, contorted
shapes, weigh branches toward the ground.
I’ve also seen firsthand how troubles and temptations
strangle faith, which is probably closer to the point of Jesus' story. I’ve seen even mature believers sink under the weight of
tragedy, or snap in the stranglehold of unattended sin. For young faith, the
hazards are many, and it takes real care to help roots grow deep enough to face
the pressures that will come.
Another parable is about enemies who come to sow weed seeds
in a farmer’s wheat field, and the farmer instructs his servants to let weeds
and crop grow together, rather than disturb the wheat by pulling the weeds. Both
will be harvested when fully grown: the weeds bundled to be burned, the wheat
stored in the farmer’s barn.
I remind myself of this parable when I fall behind in weeding
my own small vegetable plot. But I’m fairly sure Jesus wasn’t advocating sloppy
gardening, but rather reminding his listeners: it’s sometimes hard to see
what’s a weed and what isn’t. It sometimes takes time and patience to recognize
the good from the bad, the helpful from the harmful. And sometimes we aren’t
wise enough to know. And sometimes it isn’t ours to judge.
A third seed parable is so short I can quote it here in
full: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took
and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when
it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the
birds come and perch in its branches.”
Wrestling with purple loosestrife this past week, I found
myself reflecting on the growth of the mustard seed, and Jesus’ mention of the
birds perching in its branches.
The mustard we know (Sinapis hirta
or Brassica juncea) doesn’t grow into trees. It’s
an annual plant that grows three or four feet tall. Sparrows or wrens might
land on mustards, might even pick at the seeds, but you wouldn’t call it a
tree, and a bird would have trouble perching.
The mustard seed of the Middle East
(Salvadora persica) grows into a small, multi-branched tree, with edible seeds, shoots that provide nutritious forage for camels, sheep and goats, and sweet fleshy fruit that can be eaten raw, cooked, or dried: great habitat for birds, and a welcome food source for a wide mix of hungry creatures.
In Jesus’ very short, simple story, I hear the resonance of
the green equity I wrote about last week: God’s kingdom, as it becomes visible,
is good news not just for those who follow him, but for all creation. As his
restoration and goodness become evident, it provides space for even those
creatures we’ve ignored, or crowded out.
The challenge is to sow seeds of the Kingdom, and provide space for them to grow.
The challenge is to sow seeds of the Kingdom, and provide space for them to grow.
We are constantly sowing seeds, sometimes wisely, more often
foolishly.
And the impact of those seeds, while felt by us and
those around us, is often multiplied in the natural world.
Mile-a-minute, purple loosestrife, kudzu, norway maples,
Japanese honeysuckle, oriental bittersweet, Phragmites australis, the list goes
on and on of plant species introduced in expectation of beauty, pleasure,
financial reward. The harm to humans is sometimes in time and effort trying to
control the runaway invaders; the harm to birds, insects, fish, habitat is far greater,
pushing some species to the edge of extinction.
I’ve had the good fortune to hear Doug Tallamy speak at a
nearby arboretum about the interplay of plant, caterpillar, butterfly, bird,
and the danger to the ecosystem when native plants are replaced with plants
from other places. He and his enymology students at the University of Delaware
have done years of research on the feeding habits of insects, and have found
that very few non-native plants provide essential food for the biodiversity
essential to a healthy ecosystem.
We’re often so busy sowing seeds that suit ourselves (the
biggest flowers, the longest bloom) we often lose sight of the larger system,
and the seeds we sow crowd out the rarer butterflies, the song birds dependent
on bugs for food. And as some of those seeds become invasive and spread, they
threaten the biodiversity, beauty, and function of the natural world.
But Jesus’ discussion of seeds was not so much about
physical seeds as about the seeds of the kingdom of God
And those seeds are strangled even more by the patterns of
our life together: unabated competition. Constant judgment of those around us. Unrestrained
consumption. Insatiable hunger for success.
The seeds we sow scatter far beyond us, rooting deep in our
communities, carried along by social media to communities far beyond our own. Daily
I find myself struggling to root out attitudes and ideas that have taken hold
that have no place in the kingdom
of God
And daily I ask God to teach me to sow wisely: seeds that
will bring nourishment, beauty, places of rest, not only to the people I love,
but to the larger world beyond me.
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| Photo by George Tallman, an Exton Park weed warrior, 2013 |
Your thoughts and reflections are welcome. Link to "comments" below.
This post is part of the August Synchroblog: Parables: Small Stories, Big Ideas. Other posts:
Jesus’ Parables are Confusing? Good! – Jeremy Myers
Parabolic Living – Tim NicholsParables – Be Like the Ant or the Grasshopper – Paul Meier
The Parables of Jesus: Not Like Today’s Sermons – Jessica
Penelope and the Crutch – Glenn Hager
Parables and the Insult of Grace - Rachel
Changing Hearts Rather Than Minds – Liz Dyer
