Some view society as a manicured lawn. They treat unconventional people as weeds to be mowed down or poisoned. A more eco-friendly design is to see everyone as wildflowers and let them bloom. Then our society could resemble a beautiful butterfly garden.
How do you help cultivate the unconventional?
Oh this so reminds me of a story from a previous church – two stories actually.
One is about a meadow surrounding the church property. The music director was also a master gardener who for years had been cultivating the meadow with small tree plants and wild flowers. To my eyes and heart, it was lovely. There were trails through the meadow created by deer and I used to go wander there to contemplate church things. Subsequently, a new person stepped into the building and grounds role and to his eyes the meadow was messy and wild and weedy and without any consultation, rented a bush-hog and mowed it all down. It was heart wrenching.
The other story is of coffee mugs. When I first started at this church they had a tradition of inviting newish people to bring their own ‘conversation starter mug’. I loved that so much – an acknowledgement of individuals within the community. I loved perusing the rack of mugs and wondering to whom this one or that one might belong and during coffee hour seeking out that person. We came to church one Sunday to find all the eclectic mugs replaced by standard beige ones and came to learn that a person from the Aesthetics committee was bothered by the messiness of the various mugs and took it upon herself, again without consultation, to donate the lot to charity and purchased the nice neat mono-chrome beige mugs that fit nicely into the racks, all the same size – height and color. AHHHHHHHH. Again there were souls wounded by that action.
In both cases these church volunteers ‘thought’ they were doing something good. These two happenings sparked some deep learning in the congregation about ‘lone ranger’ actions.
As for me and what I do to cultivate wildflowers…good question. I’m first year in my current situation, Acting with an Interim portfolio in a congregation that seems to have settled into being largely beige mugs where I’m the eclectic one cheerleading for the beauty of embracing differences. I’ll have to contemplate this.
As a visually oriented person and a professionally trained artist, I spend a lot of my time, looking at all kinds of things: perhaps a pattern of canned foods arranged at the store; the white horse in the green meadow; the herd of black cows and calves grouped in bundles in the fields; a cloud that looks different from all the others. You get “the picture”. When I shout, “Oh. look at THAT!” others are often confused and say “WHERE?” since they are not noticing anything special in the wide world that we are in. Of course I point out the thing I see that is beautiful or different or curious or strange, so that they may enjoy the differentness in our world. Often the response is just “Oh” but I never give up. There is so much to see in the world that is strangely beautiful or amazing and different.