Planting flowers

Everyone loves a pretty garden, right? One that looks loved, and looked after, and full of greenery and colour. I get that some people hate spending time in gardens because of their allergies (grass, pollen, bees, etc.), but who doesn’t at least appreciate looking out of their window and seeing beauty like that?

With the drought of last year, and the increasing dryness over the past 3-4 years, my garden has slowly been dying. Sadly, my attempts at quick fixes have made things worse - my grass now looks less like a lawn and more like a few strands of grass with lots of bare ground. Being someone who has always taken pride in growing things, and who loves nothing more than spending time in a beautiful, green space, this slow death of my garden has caused a concomitant death in my soul. It got so bad I wanted to keep the curtains closed, so I would have to look at it. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Earlier this year, though, as I stood contemplating the disaster of my garden, and feeling thoroughly depressed that I would ever have the type of garden I wanted, I felt God speak to me about it.

“What do you really want out of this garden?”
“I want to look out and see something that invites me to spend time in it, something that looks beautiful, something pretty.”
“If you want flowers, you have to plant flowers.”

That made me think. As a gardener, you have to plan in advance. If you want spring flowers, you have to plant bulbs in winter. If you want more fruit off your trees in summer, you have to prune them in autumn. When you plant something, you have to picture it as a fully-grown plant, to ensure that the spot you choose will have enough space for it to grow into. You are constantly thinking ahead and planning for the future. It takes time, effort, and seeing the big picture.

As a gardener, you are also constantly battling the forces that would seek to destroy your beautiful creation - pests, diseases, weeds, overgrowth, climate. That too takes persistent work. You can’t take a holiday from caring for your garden, because then something will get a foothold and before you can say “make lemonade from lemons”, all your hard work has been undone.

If I want a beautiful garden, I can’t give up. I can’t hide behind my curtains and pretend the garden doesn’t exist. If I want a beautiful garden, I have to put the time in. I have to plant the bulbs that will give me the spring flowers. I have to mow the lawn every week or so so that the grass is encouraged to grow horizontally to fill the gaps (rather than vertically). I have to turn the soil to improve aeration (my garden sits on koffieklip, so one rain and my plants are growing in rock again). I have to add fertilizers regularly to improve the nutrient quality of the soil (I have a layer of sand on the koffieklip) so that things actually grow. I also have to choose my plants more wisely - choosing fynbos over tropical beauties, because they are better adapted for my garden conditions (which will save me money in the long run). As I contemplated all this, God took it a level deeper though.

“What do you really want out of your life?”
“I want to know Your thoughts, to hear You speaking to me, and through me so that I can speak into the lives of those around me, to draw them to You. I want a life of significance.”
“You want the flowers.”
“I do.”
“Then you have to plant flowers.”

Wham! That hit me right between the eyes. If I want to know God more, then I have to spend time with him. I have to plan to create times and spaces to meet with him. I have to put in the time and effort. I also have to actively spend time dealing with the spiritual pests, diseases, weeds and other things that would seek to distract me (at best) and tear me away from God (at worst). If I want the spiritual rewards, then I have to sow the spiritual seeds, plant the spiritual bulbs, and plant the spiritual flowers. I can’t give up when things get tough - like with gardening, it’s when things are difficult that my plants need me most to protect them and provide for them. When things get spiritually difficult, that’s when I most need to lean in, to press into the spiritual disciplines even more.

I have been living with this since the beginning of the year, and I won’t say I’ve got it waxed, because I don’t. But I can say that I am moving in the right direction. Eugene Petersen (one of the modern-day giants in Christendom) wrote a book entitled “A long obedience in the same direction”, about living the Christian life in our modern world. This is what it is about. We live in an instant society, but real life isn’t lived instantly. Real life is a long, slow journey, and as Christians we are constantly heading in the same direction - becoming more like Jesus.

So, my motto for the year is that if you want flowers, you’ve got to plant flowers.

Value added

I recently attended the Global Leadership Summit, but via videocast here at home. There were lots of take-home points for me, but I'll share one with you now.

How can you add value to other people's lives?

I was struck by this simple idea - starting every day by thinking and praying through all the meetings I would have, people whose lives I would touch in some way, and thinking about ways I could add value to their lives. (Obviously, the point is then to act on whatever you have thought about!)

Since then, I have made this our nightly opening question at the dinner table. How did you add value today?

Some days it has been easy to answer. Other days, it has been nigh on impossible to think of how I have added value. Whatever the outcome though, I have found the process of reflection eye-opening. I'm not so good with starting the day with reflection, and planning ways I might add value. That's something I am working on though. However, the nightly reflection is starting to affect my daily routines.

Today, instead of giving up on a particularly difficult student who messed up yet again (which is what my natural inclination was), I found myself able to reflect in the moment on my own behaviour and choose a different response that would be more helpful to the student. I found myself able to engage in conversation that, I hope, added value. For me, that's quite a milestone.

One of the secrets of adding value is that it doesn't have to be focussed on evangelism and eternal destinies. Opening a door for someone, smiling at someone, making someone feel seen or heard or loved or appreciated - these all add value. Of course, the ultimate value we can add is to help others to make the choice to step over the line of faith, so I'm not discounting that;

But I have found such freedom in thinking about how to add value to the cashier, or waiter, or petrol pump attendant I come across during my week. Of course, Bill Hybels talks about this same concept (albeit using different words) in his book 'Walk across the room', which is about personal evangelism. I know that for some people this stuff is 2nd nature, and I know that this is stuff I have known about before, but for some reason, at this stage and season of my life and walk with God, this concept has become totally fresh for me; revelatory, in fact.

So I challenge you - how are you adding value to those around you (not just your friends and family, although you should add value to their lives as well!) on a daily basis? And how can you get better at this?

Things I have learnt from my tree

For a while I've been thinking about a photo blog that my sister-in-law did - a photo a day of her suburb. I've toyed with the idea, because I'm fascinated with how one can be forced to see one's surroundings in a different light, which reveals surprises one would otherwise have missed. But I'm not sure that I could get a new photo every day from my environment... So instead I have been thinking about what else I could do that could help me to see the world differently.

Over the holidays I've started working on a series of blog posts that I'm entitling: what I have learnt from.... Originally, it was just going to be about what I've learnt about life and God from my dogs (and wow! There's a lot to learn! In fact, I think someone did write a book about just that - Lessons from a sheep dog, I seem to recall it was entitled), but then I realized that I've been learning about stuff from all sorts of things. Pondering that led me to decide to write this series, because I'm a teacher and I love teaching others the truths I have learnt, whether about DNA or matters of the heart.

This first post is not the first one I drafted, but it feels appropriate for today. Not sure why, but it is. So if you want to read the ones about my dogs, you'll have to come back another day.

This is the tree in my garden. When I first saw it, I hated it instantly, vehemently. Why? Because it is a Syringa. Syringas are horrid trees for a variety of reasons - they drop millions of mountains ofwhite blossoms  everywhere; they produce poisonous berries; they drop those berries on the lawn till it looks like a pebble-covered beach; because their pollen makes me sneeze. I was determined to chop it down as soon as possible. 

Twelve years later it is still here, and I have moved from hatred through tolerance and acceptance, to appreciation. (I'm not quite at the love stage yet, but I'm sure I will get there in time.) How was that possible? While staring at it one day, through my window, I realised that this tree didn't ask to be a Syringa. It just is one. It didn't ask to be planted in my garden; someone else made that choice, because they liked it. This tree doesn't choose to produce poisonous berries or drop its blossoms everywhere - it does that as a function of the type of tree it is (which it didn't choose for itself).

As I pondered those facts, I suddenly realized I was willing to give the tree the benefit of the doubt. Weird, yeah, I know. I started to see the things I now appreciate about it - it is a beautiful shade tree; it has lovely strong and spreading boughs - suitable for hanging multiple swings and things from and building a tree house (which is currently still just a dream in my head); its flowers are actually beautiful (and numerous); it is a lovely safe environment for Wit Ogies and other birds to hide in as they flit from tree to tree looking for food; the leaves make a beautiful sound as they rustle together in the breeze.

As I pondered these things I appreciated, I realized that in life, it is the same. We hate or dislike others because of what they are, forgetting that (often) they did not choose to be born into that family, or to be a certain race, or to be rich, or poor, or from a certain nation, or of a particular spirituality, or to think in a particular way. Often, all these things are a feature of our birth - whether genetics or the environment in which we are raised, or a combination of both. Either way, we cannot choose our genetics or our childhood environment. These two things make us what we are, fundamentally. (Of course, we can choose to change, but that requires a certain amount of reflection, a lot of hard work and deep motivation, which many people lack.)

In this extraordinary nation of ours, we celebrate diversity in public, but in private we are frequently much more conservative and exclusive. We love those who are like us and despise those who are different - different gender expressions, or ages, or social-economic status, or education level, or family status, or races, or nationalities, or different mother-tongue speakers, or body shapes, or thought processes, or priorities, or whatever - or we despise ourselves and wish fervently we could be like someone else instead.

How do we begin to bridge the divide? How do we begin to celebrate our diversity in truth, and. It just in name? Looking at my tree, I don't think the answer is in trying to find our commonality, nor to focus on our diversity. Focussing on our commonality denies the value that our differences bring, leads to exclusivity and make us more likely to hide who we truly are from each other. Focussing on our differences and celebrating them because they are different denies our common humanity and leads to pride. I think a third way is a better way.

When pondering my tree I did not look for commonality - my shared DNA (we share a lot more genes than you would think!), or that I am a strong woman (metaphorically) and it has strong branches, or that I shelter my children the way it shelters the birds... - nor did I look for our differences - to celebrate that it is larger than I, or greener than I, or a tree instead of a human. Instead, I looked to see what value it brings to my garden. That value is based on what the tree is - both a tree, and specifically a Syringa. By focusing on the intrinsic value it brings, I learnt to appreciate it. 

I love lying in the shade of my tree. I love seeing the birds resting in its boughs and sheltering in its leaves. I love to see the beautiful flowers it produces. I love to see my children playing on the swings we hung from it. I love the fact that when I drive home along a particular route I can see my tree before anything else - it marks the spot that is my home. This is the value this tree brings, not because it is the same as me, or different to me, but because it is a Syringa tree in my garden.

If I can see people in this third way, by putting them at the centre instead of how they relate to me (which is putting myself at the centre), for the value they bring because of who they are, and not for their similarities to me, or differences, then I think there is hope for me, and for my environment, and for my city. If I can, then I think I can avoid both pride ("I am better than them") and despair ("they are so much better than me/ I am worthless"); I think I could then overcome my fear of the other, and walk in true freedom with the other.

But how is this possible? Well, I'm not sure it is. I am so given to comparisons and snap judgements, albeit secretly in my head and heart, that on my own I don't think I can truly change my mind-set on this. Plus, despite my best efforts, I still have so many stereotypes rolling around inside my head, many of which I'm not even conscious of! But fortunately, I'm not on my own. Fortunately, I have a Helper. Even with His help, I know it will be tough, but nothing worth having comes easily or without a price tag. Still though, this will be something I will need to choose each day, every day - to allow the Spirit to open my eyes to the value of others, not because of how they relate to me, but because of who they intrinsically are.

Thanks be to God for my Syringa tree!