Taproot

An Invitation to the Banquet -- My Own Take

**Note: my father is writing/has written (?) a book by the same name, so I think it's important to point out I am borrowing his title and the views expressed are solely my own...though it is the nature of fathers to heavily influence the views of their sons, and therefore my views are probably his fault. :) **

When my siblings and I were kids, my father used to tell us that grades were the least important indicator of knowledge. 

The best way to judge how much someone knows, he'd say, is to listen to the questions they ask. 

I think we all took this as a personal challenge to ask as many questions as possible...one of the first ones being: "Does this mean our parents don't care if we get bad grades?"  That question, it turns out, is a good indicator that you don't know shit. 

I personally made "questioning" my mode of choice, particularly when it applied to authority.  And, I quickly learned that nowhere was there more authority worth questioning than in the Church.  It's important to point out that I have always been, and will always be of Christian faith.  I have a home church.  I believe in Jesus the Christ and God in Heaven.  More importantly, I believe in the principles of acceptance, forgiveness and redemption that are at the core of my faith.  But it is a far cry from professing that faith, to defending the wholesale ignorance of most people who go to Church.  Ignorance, mind you, not stupidity.  Ignorance demonstrated not by them getting a failing grade in their Jesus Test, but in their steadfast insistence on checking their real questions at the door.

That's right, I said "real questions".  That's because most churches (Protestant ones, anyway) I've been associated with will tell you they want you to ask questions.  But what I learned early on was that there was a list of "acceptable" questions, the ones the Church felt they had a good response to.  And then there were the tough ones, the ones I started asking silently in Sunday school.   The ones that went something like this:

Does anyone else think that Samson guy was a total dick?  And why do we think it's awesome that he killed all those unsuspecting diners?

Why are the disciples the stupidest people in the Bible?  And what does that say about the fact we call ourselves "disciples"?

Why doesn't anyone read the parts of the Psalms where David dashes the baby brains on the rocks?

Am I the only one who things the statement, "I only slept with my daughter because I was trashed and she came on to me" should disqualify you as a Biblical hero?

And, just for good measure, I'll throw in one to get my dad a little worked up:

Was there anyone in the Bible MORE arrogant than Paul?  I mean who says, "we are all sinners...but I'm pretty sure I was the BIGGEST sinner.  Like, if we're judging based on sin, then I was the BEST sinner...EVER"?

They may sound trite, but these are not silly questions.  These are questions that everyone who hasn't taken the "shepherd and sheep" analogy to mean that we should literally act like sheep, should be asking.  And, I would venture to say, questions like these would probably lead us around to discussing things that might get us a little closer to the truth of the matter:  We need to get a little more comfortable with not knowing what the hell we're talking about.  We claim a God who is bigger than us.  Smarter than us.  Beyond us.  That means God is more than the bite sized pieces that even the smartest among us (I'm talking to you, Paul!) can absorb, much less regurgitate in a doctrinal thesis or spew on a family values talk radio show.  And guess what?  I like that about God.  It means some of the questions I can't answer, I don't have to.  That's why God is God, and I'm just me.

I've been dealing with one of those questions for a week now.  As you may know, we have some plum trees next to our back porch.  Over the past couple years, one of them has given exactly one fruit per season.  So, this year, in an effort to encourage cross pollination, I put bird feeders in each of them.  The thought was, if I could get birds to fly back and forth between the trees while they were flowering, I might see a little more fruit.  Basically, I gave God a shot for a couple years, but this year we're gonna try it my way.  Typical of me, by the way.  The results of my meddling are yet to be proven, but one thing is already abundantly clear:

There's nothing like a banquet buffet to bring out the riff raff.

 Don't laugh.  This is a Biblical concept.  But before I get to that, let me tell you what I'm talking about.  You see, the birds LOVE the feeders.  I took this picture this morning after having filled this feeder to the top yesterday morning...we got us some birds eating out of that thing!  In fact, since I put them up, it's like I have a birdie Vegas buffet right outside the sliding glass doors.  I truly didn't know some of the birds we're seeing lived in our neighborhood:  Blue jays, robins, flycatchers.  I like to think of them as the chic tourists, the Hollywood day trippers, the European faux-hawk crowd.  And, of course, we also have the midwestern crowd, the out-sized mourning doves that literally sit beneath the feeders all day long stuffing their faces.  I can almost hear them saying, We made the trip, now we're gonna get our money's worth.  I don't mind  any of them.  I love watching them.  After all, that's who the feeders are for. 

Then there's the riff raff.  Squirrels, refusing to acknowledge I have purchased the "squirrel proof" feeders, make daily attempts to make me feel like I wasted my money by not having gotten the pretty ones.  Full disclosure:  I don't really mind squirrels, either.  They're greedy little bastards, but there's something endearing about them.  Okay fine, they can eat, too, as long as they don't keep pulling the lids off and pulling seed out from the top.

But they aren't the only riff-raff.  The other day, just as I let one of my dogs out, a hawk flashed into one of the plum trees about 10 feet from me.  Now, I love hawks.  They are my favorite bird, and I have a large tattoo of one on my back.  But, I don't want one as a pet.  And having one death dive into a tree and land 4 feet above my dog's head is a completely different story.  Thankfully, realizing last minute that the dog below was of the 70 pound variety, it flew off to sit on a nearby telephone wire for a few minutes.  It was breathtaking in not an entirely bad way, and I like to think it was there for the squirrels and not lying in wait for Einstein, my 7 pound toy poodle.  Regardless, this banquet of mine was attracting predators.

It was the tree rats that put me over the edge.  Everything else has some kind of redeeming quality.  Beauty. Predatory grace.  Just plain cute.  But when you walk out just after dark, see several rats running through your trees and hear them clambering over the porch awning, something happens inside.  It's that oh, HELL no! moment when you say I'll be damned if I'm going to feed a family of freakin' rats!  So, over the past week, I've been putting out poison for them every night.  In case you're wondering, poisoning rats works just like poisoning people at a buffet: you put out something that looks nothing like food, but apparently tastes damn good, and they ingest mass quantities of it before going back to lay in their room in agony, wishing for death.

I did it without remorse, even watching to make sure they were coming to eat it.  I did it with complete discrimination, as well.  I put it out at night, when I was sure the squirrels were gone and after my dogs had been out for the last time.  And, I brought any leftovers back in at the beginning of the next day so the rest of the wildlife wouldn't accidentally eat it.  I didn't want to hurt anything else.  I only wanted the rats gone.  They ate ridiculous amounts of the stuff, and every night I had to deal with seeing them swarming through the trees, all the while wishing them dead.  Then, on Thursday, they were gone.  We didn't see them that night and, the next day, the poison was still there.  Mission accomplished.

Perhaps it's because it's Easter.  Maybe it's because my "honey-do" list today includes getting up on my roof and in the attic to find out if the rats decided to die on my property.  I don't know.  What I do know is this whole thing has me feeling pensive.  I have questions I can't answer...that probably no one can answer.

You see, the Bible recounts one of Jesus' parables, where a king sets out a marriage feast and invites all the best people to come.  For whatever reason, the cool kids think it's a big joke and decide not to show.  So the king says to his servants, "Hey I've got a feast here.  Find me someone to eat it."  And the servants go and grab every Tom, Dick and Sally from the streets and fill the hall and have a much better party than they probably would have if the original folks had showed up.  The way this story has been explained to me, is that God is the king opening his banquet to all the riff-raff through forgiveness.  But something isn't quite right for me.  Never mind that the king kicks one of them out for not being dressed properly, what bothers me about this story is the tough question behind it that no one asks: 

What if the first people the king invited had showed up?  Would that mean the others would have been persona non grata?

I look at my bird feeders and I desperately hope God is more forgiving than me.  Because all my preferred guests showed up...so I made it difficult for everyone else.  I bought feeders that made it harder for squirrels to share the bounty.  I kept a suspicious eye on the hawk from afar, ready to rush out and scare it away if it got too close again.  And I poisoned the rats.

Heck, while I'm at it, I hope God is more forgiving than the Church.  We talk a big game about having an open table, but we act like all the preferred guests are already sitting at their seats, and we treat the riff raff like pests.  Predators.  Rats.

For good measure, I pray God is bigger than the Bible, too.  I pray God had a plan for feeding everyone who was hungry, whether the A-List showed up or not.  I pray that the Word of God, the one that leaves me with so many concerns, isn't the only word God has.  I have too many questions left unanswered and I have a feeling I'm not the only rat tired of eating poison.

 

Selah

Be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10

Google this verse and you will find millions of references, sermons, translations and cheesy posters with peaceful streams and other such nonsense.  Go ahead.  Do it.  I don't need to.  Why?  Because I live with it everyday.  Notice I didn't say "live it".  I gracelessly co-exist with it as a concept, an unattainable edict.  It taunts me with its simplicity.  It lures me into quiet moments, peaceful places...where I then sit and wonder how long it will take before I can be done with this motionless crap and move on.

I hate being still.

I am not a "be still" person.  I don't not live a "be still" life.  I don't work in a "be still" environment.  I am up relatively early every morning.  "Sleeping in" involves not setting my alarm.  It doesn't change the time I wake up, it just means I work a little harder to stay in bed longer.  Most days, I put on a shirt and tie, drive to work and spend my time pushing other people to do something.  I do it all month, and then start over the next.  I have places to go, things to accomplish...and I am good at getting them done.  

But being good inevitably leads to needing to be better, which inevitably leads to recognizing I can never be good enough.  As a result, though I have rarely failed, I am constantly a failure in my own constant self-analysis.  Sound complicated?  It is. Tiring?  Absolutely.  And God's answer to it is always the same:  "Be still."

I suck at that.

For reasons beyond my control, my job is stressful right now...more so than usual.  A lot of things hang in the balance, the outcome based on actions that are not mine, decisions that will be made by others.  I can do nothing but wait, try not to fidget, be still...and know that God's got this.  That's just freakin' great.  GIVE ME SOMETHING I CAN DO!!!!

This morning I spent some time in the garden looking for a selah moment.  "Selah" is a word commonly used in the Psalms.  Wikipedia describes it like this:
 

Probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen"...[it also] notes a break in the song and as such is similar in purpose to Amen in that it stresses the importance of the preceding passage.

I need moments like that right now, moments where I stop and take into account the passage of time that has come before this one.  So I forced myself to sit still.  Listen.  There were birds, and bees and the faint sound of cars on the street.  There were flowers that weren't there a year ago and a couple brush cherries that had come back from the brink of extinction but are now beginning to flourish.  It was hard for me, but I sat a little longer than I felt I should, until I heard the truth:

I have this because I listened.  I have this because I obeyed.  I have this because I waited.  I have this because God is GOOD and, despite my own failures, He has never let me down.  If I stop, listen and obey, He's not about to start letting me down now.

I'm trying to hold onto that thought.  No matter how badly I wait for God to do what He's going to do, being still is still my best option.

Selah.

OverBlessed

When I was in college, I had a fig tree named Abe.  I bought him at the beginning of my senior year, from a streetside vendor catering to dorm dwellers who had no idea that plants actually need things...like water.  But I digress...

Abe was my first real life experience with a fig tree.  Up to that point, I had mainly thought of figs as your Biblical one stop clothing shop for the previously naked mother and father of humanity, the fruit of which was used to make Fig Newtons -- Did anyone else think Fig Newtons were a poor excuse for a cookie when you were a kid?  

What is this mushy thing with real fruit filling?  Just give me an Oreo for God's sake!

But, again, I digress...

From Abe, I learned why Biblical authors might have thought the fig leaf a perfect accessory for le premier homme as it is very, shall we say, anatomically correct.  I also learned that a tiny little fig sapling, takes a frustratingly long time to grow, and doesn't bear any fruit.  Other than that, I learned absolutely nothing that could have possibly prepared me for the behemoth fig tree living in my backyard.

That fig tree, which in a house where everything gets named, has somehow remained nameless, was one of the first things I loved about this house.  On my first visit to see the house my realtor, a wonderful Persian man, excitedly took me into the backyard to show it to me.  It was beautiful, large branches and dark green leaves casting a wonderful shade in the late afternoon sun.  Though it was early September, there were even a few ripe figs left on it.  Other than the aforementioned Fig Newtons, or as an occasional accompaniment to goat's cheese, I had never eaten a fig before.  I had certainly never eaten one straight off a tree.  But, at my realtor's insistence, I relented and bit into the weird purpley green fleshy fruit.

Holy crap, that was good!

Though there were other reasons for buying the house, I must admit that the fig tree (and the tangerine tree) featured prominently in my homeowner dreams.  What a blessing it would be to walk out into our yard and pick fruit from our own trees!

I would be lying if I said that, looking back, I don't feel a little bit duped.  In the same way my German Shepherd (God bless her) bears little resemblance to the bundle of fuzz she was when we got her, that fig tree is nothing like it was on that September afternoon.

To begin with, someone must have pruned it before they put the house on the market, because it was quite a tidy tree.  In the two years we've lived here, I have pruned it back twice, and both times the tree has taken it as a challenge to grow back twice as much.  This year, it is growing so much fruit that it is literally sagging beneath the weight of it, its branches bowed until they touch the ground.

As I ponder this monstrous maker of fruit gradually taking over its corner of the yard, I find myself wondering:  "Can one be overblessed?"

I mean, one can only eat so many figs, right?  And, looking at the enormous strain the fruit seems to be putting on the tree itself, you have to wonder if the tree isn't being just a little over zealous with its output.  Maybe this massive crop of blessings will be too much for the tree to handle.  Maybe it has more fruit than its structure justifies.

Or maybe, just maybe, having "too much" of a good thing, getting more than you can handle...or more than you might deserve, even...is exactly what being blessed truly is.  In the most famous Psalm, David describes God's blessings by saying: "My cup runneth over." Sound like too much.  Sounds messy.  Sounds like exactly how God might draw it up.

The fig tree gave out "way too much fruit" last year, too.  We had a few, gave a way a few and fed a neighborhood of possums, squirrels, birds and bugs with our over-abundance.  By the end of the season, there wasn't a single fig left on it. 

I stopped trying to second guess God's plans and decided to enjoy it a little.  I crawled up under the low hanging canopy, where the air was cool and smelled like honey, looked at all God's blessings.  Some of them are mine, some of them will go to the neighborhood wildlife, and none of us have done anything to deserve them.  One thing's for sure, though: there will be more than enough to go around.

I come to the garden alone...

Growing up in Calexico, my family attended the local Methodist Church.  It was quite progressive, as Methodist churches go.  They did fairly contemporary worship music with <gasp> a drum kit and guitar, and did bilingual services.  However, at least once a service, they got down to their roots with some good ol' fashioned hymns.

And now, please stand and open your hymnals to page 356.  We will be singing verses 1,3 and 5.

Then Mary Brubaker would strike the opening chords on the organ and everyone would sing together.  For my older brother and I, it was the epitome of boredom.  We usually amused ourselves by singing different verses, singing the words out of order, or changing them entirely.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand/All other ground is stinking sand...all other ground is STINK-ING sand! 

If my mother gave us one of her looks, we would tone it down and sing harmony, instead.

Despite my best efforts to ruin the experience, those hymns have had a tremendous impact throughout my life.  Not only did they form the basis for developing an ear for harmony, they have consistently reverberated in my memory during some of my most trying times.

So it has been no surprise that over the past year, I have heard the strains of those childhood services on a regular basis.  By far, the one I have thought of the most is "I Come To The Garden Alone".  No leaps of imagination needed to understand why.   In the early days of my garden, I spent a great deal of time in it alone, whether I was working on it, or escaping to it.  I was working on salvaging a marriage, searching for a relationship with God...but I felt completely alone.  My family, though I knew they loved me, was doing a piss poor job of reaching out to me.  What friends I had left were either unable to say anything to help me, or were not being given an opportunity to try, due to my self-imposed exile.

It would be fair to say that I was not getting past the first line of Verse 1.  

I come to the garden alone...

As my relationship with Sharon progressed, the garden became more and more a place we shared.  She threw me a private wine and cheese birthday party.  She would go to the nursery to look at plants.  She even spent the odd morning here and there weeding. 

When a family emergency called, and she left the country, I decided I would put a plant in there for her.  After much deliberation, I picked a Don Juan rosebush, a climbing rose with beautiful deep red blooms and an aroma that evoked Shakespeare:  call it what you want, it smells damn good.  I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.  It was beautiful, it was romantic...

...and it opened up that old hymn to me in a way I would never have expected.

When my brother Ben and I sang the hymn, we always focused on the chorus.  Not because of the words.  No, no...we loved that chorus because it gave us the opportunity to sway back and forth and act like sailors raising their mugs and singing a raucous drinking song.

A-N-D H-E...WALKS with me and He TALKS with me...

Whatever.  I'm not proud, but it was pretty funny to us, and it made that hymn one of our favorites, one of the only ones we sang correctly...and one of the ones for which I remember the words most clearly.

So it was, that on one of the first mornings after I planted that Don Juan, I found myself drinking an early morning coffee, completely enraptured by the beauty of dew drops on rose petals.  In the silence of the cool morning air, I heard Mary play the opening chords and I heard a song I can honestly say I'd never truly heard before.

I come to the garden alone/while the dew is still on the roses/and the voice I hear falling on my ear/the Son of God discloses

 And He walks with me, and He talks with me/And He tells me I am His own/And the joy we share as we tarry there/None other has ever known

This was no silly pseudo-drinking song.  This was a love song.  This was a song about how God Himself was choosing to let me know I belonged to Him, even if I didn't feel I belonged to anyone else.  This was a painfully intimate poem detailing the fact that God had made all this for ME...that no one else on the planet would ever experience this exact same overpoweringly humbling moment of pure and unadulterated joy.  This was as close to heaven as I was probably going to get.

It has been almost a year, and the roses have been blooming again for a couple months.  Sharon and I have our coffee by the rosebush almost every morning, together.  But, once in a while I go out there alone and stand really close, breathing in deeply, realizing how far I've come and how GOOD God is to me...which brings to mind another hymn:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

 

8/29/2008 -- Constant Gardener

It's been almost a week since my last journal entry...there are many reasons why, but perhaps the most important one is because these past six days have seen some of my deepest moments of despair.  Part of me was afraid that taking the time to put those feelings on paper would turn the tides of a battle I was barely winning, against me...Or maybe, it's just that some of those thoughts were so ugly I didn't want to give them the right to be committed to history, where they could be read again.  Regardless, I have not written, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten the garden.

I have been out there everyday, watering, raking up mulch and spreading it over fragile root systems and constantly pleading with everything to grow.  This morning as I watered, a thought that had been germinating in my head, suddenly sprang into clear focus: the constant gardener has a truly intimate relationship with his garden.

Like much of this, the thought has so many possible interpretations; figurative, literal and metaphorical, not to mention spiritual.

As before, I will focus on the literal, first.  I know every plant in my garden intimately.  Having spent so much time working with them, I can tell you which of the shrubs has new growth without hesitation.  I know the durantas on the right side of the garden get more direct sun than the ones on the left, and need more water to keep them from wilting by day's end.  I know which jasmin has flowers, that the trumpet vines are growing remarkably fast, and that the brush cherry on the left is going to need constant attention to make it as healthy as the other two.  I can even tell you where the ants have moved in, which areas I have put stray worms in, and which plant has a brand new spider building a web.  I know all of this because I have committed myself to their survival, and my attention to detail is essential to meeting that goal...I know this because I have spent time there instead of somewhere else.

Sharon came home yesterday.  Once again, I find myself turning soil and dreaming of growth...I know there will be a garden there, too, though neither of us knows what it will look like.  But this morning, I know something more:  I want to know every intimate detail of that garden, the parts that need more attention than others, the parts that are growing fine and just need me to stop poking at them, and the parts that are starting to bloom and be beautiful.  And I know that I want to be known that way by a person who chooses me as the place to plant their hopes, dreams and desires.

But, most importantly, this morning I have a clearer idea of how my Constant Gardener knows me.  He knows where things need to be planted, and where things need to be dug up or cut off.  He knows and rejoices when things take root and bloom.  I know He is not only committed to my survival, but to my beauty, my potential and my ability to eventually be a place of peace and refuge.  Praise God. Amen.