I left Boston yesterday afternoon for a place where there is significantly more grass, trees, and other flora. While running this morning I was admiring the many colors when, in the distance, I saw a patch of grass with lots of purple speckled with large yellow dots. Even though I knew they were dandelions, common weeds, in that moment those yellow dots were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Some of my fellow metaphorically-minded religious folks would see in that proof that Satan is a beguiler, that the things that ultimately consume us are hidden in lovely packages. I, on the other hand, began an extended meditation on how even the weeds, the least among flowers, are beautiful and valuable. Quite a difference.
I’m not usually one to say things like “there are two kinds of people in the world”, but when it comes to people of faith, it seems to be true: some people see the world as something to be defended against, and some see it as something to be embraced. Although I fall immovably into the latter group, I try as hard as I can to be charitable with those who disagree with me, because I really think this attitude has everything to do with personality and very little to do with conscious choice.
This approach to the world is about much more than interpreting dandelions, I have found. Through times of trial and pain I have discovered that my inclination is not to dwell on the evil that prompted the agony – though true evil it may be – but to look for hope amid the wreckage, to figure out what is still salvageable, to look for the evidence of God still working.
Maybe it’s my confidence in God’s ongoing work that keeps me from being numbered among the “prophets of doom”. Anyone who knows me will tell you that it is not because I have a naturally cheerful personality. And it’s not because I am a better person than someone who meditates on all the problems in the world that need to be fixed. I understand that it takes all sorts of people to make up the Body of Christ, and that without their unique contributions and charisms we would be incomplete.
I may never know why I insist on finding beauty in the weeds, but I am grateful that I do.
We feel that We must disagree with these prophets of doom, who are always forecasting worse disasters, as though the end of the world were at hand.
Present indications are that the human family is on the threshold of a new era. We must recognize here the hand of God, who, as the years roll by, is ever directing men’s efforts, whether they realize it or not, towards the fulfillment of the inscrutable designs of His providence, wisely arranging everything, even adverse human fortune, for the Church’s good. – Pope John XXIII, Address at the Opening of the Second Vatican Council
Yes! … one only has to think of this: a 3 year old boy brings to his mother an arm full of, in his eyes, beautiful golden flowers (that in all reality are simple dandelions); with a big smile and a chest filled with pride in his work the child hands them over tenderly to his mother. She looks down and excepts them with loving care, places them in a vase, and then puts them in the place of honor at the middle of the dinning room table.
Not only is this a sweet story, but don’t you find a correlation between it and yourself?
Christ not only excepts us, and are lowly filthy sin filled persons, but then cleans us up and places us by his side, in the place of honor before the Father.
see… i love dandelions….
and the song Five Iron Frenzy sings about the same story as above!!!
I’ve never heard of that song I’ll have to check it out! Glad to see you share my love for those little yellow monsters!
Little kids at work have been giving me dandelions quite a bit this past week, and they are beautiful. = )
You’re a lucky lady!