Posted By Rebekah Zuñiga on Feb 28, 2022 | 4 comments

Last spring, the trustees of my church decided the bushes in front of the parsonage we call home had overstayed their welcome. Over several days various men dug and tugged and clipped until the bushes were gone. In their wake was a sullen strip of dry dirt. It called to me like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. I knew it just needed a little love and it would be as good as new. Although I had a baby on the way and knew I would not have much attention to spare for any other new arrivals, I stopped by Sugar Creek Gardens plant nursery on my way back from town one day and picked out a few choice plants on my meager budget: A Black Lace elderberry bush, a poppy mallow whose tag promised beautiful magenta blooms, and a furry yarrow. (Walking down a local trail a week later, I found an abundance of wild yarrow, and regretted my wasted ten dollars.)

While my chosen plants settled in well enough in their inhospitable new home, a number of unexpected housemates quickly moved into the barren strip as well. Well, I can hardly call the dandelions unexpected; but they were at least uninvited. However, in the spirit of curiosity and with a touch of laziness in expectation of a coming newborn, I decided to let the uninvited species do as they would for a time and see how the bed fared.

Uninvited, but not uncreated

I was surprised at the variety and vigor of the “weeds” that began to grow. Nature despises a vacuum, and the earth worked quickly to cover this vacant patch of its surface. I have read that a seed can lie dormant for hundreds of years, until one spring it germinates; waiting, almost, to be called by name for such a time as this. I wondered how long the wood sorrel, purslane, and scarlet pimpernel had waited for the room, the sunshine, the rain to reach them at just the right time to begin their lives on the other side. What complex inner, earthy discussion had transpired in the mind of God to call forth these particular plants in this particular season; their presence would amend the soil, prevent compaction, produce carbon in the dirt, and feed the straggling population of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa who had perhaps nearly died after their bland and malnourishing diet of shrub and monolithic lawn.

But the protozoa were not the only creatures these uninvited plants would feed. I was pleased, after identifying the unfamiliar green, to find that purslane is delicious when sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper. (My mother-in-law grew up eating it in Mexico, where it is called verdolagas.) And just as I was harvesting purslane for a late pregnancy, high-iron snack, a volunteer tomato popped up–one plant I did not need to consult any books to identify. What bird or squirrel had dropped (or processed) this seed so many years ago that now would slowly and systematically take over my entire garden bed? Little did I know how prolific the volunteer tomato plant would be. I bought a few tomato plant friends to keep her company; by “few,” I mean ten; but that volunteer easily outdid them all! When I finally decided to cull the bed in early November, that tomato plant had become the giant headmistress of the entire garden, leaving the chosen, purchased tomatoes at either side of her to wither and succumb to her ruthless vitality.

What a universe that dead dirt became to me last season! “We have not yet found the dot so small it is uncreated,” says Annie Dillard. “The creator . . . churns out the intricate texture of least works that is the world with a spendthrift genius and an extravagance of care.”^[1] Have you seen a scarlet pimpernel? The flowers are lilliputian, ten to fifteen millimeters in diameter. I barely found the pimpernel in my garden, because it actually lived inside the yarrow (a lovely summer home, I’m sure). It was a shy thing, but I occasionally found it unawares, pulling back the furry front door of its herbaceous abode.

Next-door to the pimpernel grew a bushy plant, Solanum nigrum: common nightshade. The delicate white flowers were lovely, but where the black berries dropped, my blue false indigo died. (Another ten dollars wasted.) These few were the plants I was able to identify, but many more odd little green things spread themselves opportunistically over this little patch of real estate: some lettuce-like, some with spiny tendrils, some yellow flowers so similar to all thirty species of yellow flowers in my field guide that I gave up almost immediately on knowing their name. What a job it is God has given us, this naming of the world!

Naming and reading

Richard Louv interviewed marine ecologist, Paul Dayton, for his book documenting the declining relationship between children and nature. Dayton bemoans that so few upper-level marine ecology students “know even major phyla such as arthropods or annelids.”[2] Indeed! So few of us regular old people know the names of even our nearest human neighbors, much less the little vining greens or creepy crawly neighbors at our feet.When we cannot name something, we fear it. And fear is the opposite of love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). In order to love properly what God has made, we must name it. Yet, “[t]he people who name the animals, or even know the names, are fast becoming extinct.”[3]

We have so quickly abandoned the first task given to us by our Creator. Perhaps God gave to Adam the job of naming to force him to pay attention. The Lord knows that when we really see the world that He has made, we will know we owe something to Someone. We will be forced to a decision: give Him thanks, or incur judgment for our sin of omission (Rom. 1:20–21). When I open my eyes to the “extravagance of care” all around me, then as “I go on my way, my left foot says ‘Glory,’ and my right foot says, ‘Amen.’”^[4] Naming the Creation puts wind in my bones to shout with new air: “All nature sings!”

Church fathers like Saint Augustine referred to creation sometimes as the Book of Nature, drawing out the way knowledge of the natural world interprets the knowledge of the supernatural that is revealed to us in the Book of Scripture. Hear Augustine: “[T]here is a certain great big book, the book of created nature. Look carefully at it top and bottom, observe it, read it. God did not make letters of ink for you to recognize him in; he set before your eyes all these things he has made. Why look for a louder voice? Heaven and earth cries out to you, ‘God made me.’”^[5]

Friend, do you hear the cry? Spring is around the corner. What a perfect time to pick up a new Book. A host of created things live around you, waiting to introduce themselves. Put a name to the faces. Do not be so hasty to pull up that unfamiliar plant. Make friends first. Or find a piece of night sky not yet suffering from light pollution and learn the name of even one burning star, and it will turn around to burn in you, “like the monk . . . who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal.”[6] Follow the advice of patient Job, who at last found rest in the Lord after a tour of all He had made:

But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;

the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you;

or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you;

and the fish of the sea will declare to you.

Who among all these does not know

that the hand of the LORD has done this? (Job 12:7–9)

Godspeed!

^[1] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 128.

[2] Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008), 142.

[3] Ibid, 143.

^[4] Dillard, 277.

^[5] Augustine, quoted in “The Two Books of God: The Metaphor of the Book of Nature in Augustine” by Oskari Juurikkala, Augustinianum61/2 (2021), 479–498, https://www.academia.edu/70323813/The_Two_Books_of_God_The_Metaphor_of_the_Book_of_Nature_in_Augustine?pop_sutd=false.

[6] Dillard, 276.

The best way to stay up-to-date with HSF

SUBSCRIBE!

You have Successfully Subscribed!