A Lesson from Cala Lilies

Finally!  I’ve took the time and effort in starting those Cala Lily rhizomes I’ve had in cold storage for three years now. I do feel somewhat a guilt, knowing that I dug them such a long time ago, studied on how to store for just a short time, planning to revive their strength the next spring.  Just never doing it. I thought about it, I suppose, dozens of times. Checked their condition. A few times, wrote the items needed so I wouldn’t forget to purchase the materials. But always allowed myself to be detoured with something or other.  Almost all gave sprout I’m just trusting that they will give further evidence of life after being planted this past week at Quiet Rest. I'll be rejoicing in their beautiful blooms coming the first week of July. To my great disappointment those that I left in the ground this past winter froze and I will dearly miss my beautiful, elder patch after eight years of pleasure. 

I’ve been haunted of sorts after running across a Wendell Berry poem, “Vacation,” following my black starter soiled hands episode and guilty thoughts of leaving my beauties in the dark ground of winter's cold. From the outset of sitting down to write this entry I realized afresh, the creative me, needs to constantly remember that paying attention is a spiritual, emotional and acute intentional discipline. That, far too often, my aspirations for paying quality attention to everything dissolves into something more like what I define as attention deficit disorder. As it turned out, at birth, I’m prone to seeing and not really seeing, hearing and not really hearing.  And this is all the more ironic when my very attempts to capture what I am seeing and hearing are the thing that prevent me from truly being present. Berry’s poem is about a man on holiday, who, trying to seize the sights and sounds of his vacation by video camera, manages to miss the entire thing.

 …he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.(1)

I’m wondering if one of the most quoted sayings of Jesus is not often employed with a similar irony. “Consider the lilies,” Jesus said, “how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field…will he not much more clothe you?  Therefore, do not worry.” I’ve always recognizing Jesus, here, as giving a helpful word against worry. And I think He is. But, I notice for the first time,  worry is not the only command He is articulating. Consider the lilies, He said. I’ve heard the first instruction peripherally, hurriedly, as mere set up for the final instruction of the saying. And in so doing, I’ve previously missed something great, perhaps even something vital, both in the means and in the end. With my rationalistic sensibilities, I think I’ve glossed over consideration of the lilies; ironically, sometimes, in an attempt to consider the real work Jesus is asking me to do.

What if it is the consideration of the lilies; the real work, the antidote to the anxious, preoccupied part of my life? What if He is calling my attention to the beauty, to the transient, to the passing details of my life? Is this what Jesus is commanding me to take seriously in and of itself?

I’m remembering, some years ago, becoming familiar with the artist, Makoto Fujimura’s work. He also comments prolifically at times on the biblical themes he pants. The one I was most taken with was his thoughts on Mary and her costly pouring of perfume on the feet of Jesus. The anger of Judas and the disgust of the others are all given in rational terms, the cacophony of their reaction attempting to drown out her quiet act of attention: That bottle would have cost over a year’s wages. The poor could have used that money. This sinful woman clings to a holy man’s feet. Does he not see who it is who touches him? Their response to her and her act of beauty exposes their own inattention to a world beyond the one they see—to their own peril. Fujimura wrote: “Pragmatism, legalism, and greed cannot comprehend the power of ephemeral beauty. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness; the opposite of beauty is legalism.  Legalism is hard determinism that slowly strangles the soul. Legalism injures by giving pragmatic answers to our suffering.” I’m understand the corollary to be that beauty can offer healing; that paying attention, even to fleeting glimpses of glory, is deeply restorative.

I think that if I will consider the lilies, to consider beauty in the midst of what I consider, black, smelly, cow manure, rotted mulch, hard,  rocky red clay, the weeds and thorns that steal nourishment from the starter seeds and weakened rhizomes caused by a harsh winter, that is present all around me, I will also see and hear more acuity Jesus request is full of promise, for He is both the Source of beauty and its subject. Paying attention to the ephemeral, (great word) being willing like Mary to risk and to recognize beauty, is in and of itself restorative because it is paying attention to Him. Here, I’ve found, after all these years, a different slant on finding a residence in a different sort of kingdom for my anxiety-addicted and attention-overloaded being.  A kingdom in which here is room for the paradox of my fleeting body, mind and life with eternity in my heart.

Father, God of Mystery, I’m curious if, perhaps, Jesus also is also instructing me to consider the lilies because it is characteristic of Your concern for me.  These past few days in daily liturgy of lilies I have been brought to a unceasing care and attention for me; a gift given which reveals freshness in each rhizome of life.  I praise You, Glorious, God for reveling the details of another daybreak, another sunset, the discovery of Bettyann, family, friends, and even one lost soul.  I commit to considering the lilies; how they grow.  They neither toil, nor spin. Amen.