"Weeds" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

July 14, 2002 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

To be of the Earth is to know

the restlessness of being a seed
the darkness of being planted
the struggles toward the light
the pain of growth into the light
the joy of bursting and bearing fruit
the love of being food for someone
the scattering of your seeds
the decay of the seasons
the mystery of death
and the miracle of birth.

READING: by Rev. Jennifer L. Brower [Newsletter of the Community Church of NY, UU. (fall 2001?)]

A few years ago I purchased a new hanging plant for my home, a “variegated peperomia.” I was told by the shopkeeper that it “prefers less water.” OK, I can manage NOT to water a plant. That sounded easy! But it hasn’t been nearly as easy as I’d imagined.
No matter what I have done over the years that this plant and I have lived together – given it lots of light, given it less light, watered regularly, watered irregularly, fed it “miracle grow” or just tap water – this poor plant has always looked to be hear death’s door. So much so that I began to regard it as a constant reminder of the things in life over which I seem to have no control.
Recently, I propped up some of its tendrils with toothpicks and that has improved its appearance, if not its health. But I was still left with the sense that I have a brown thumb instead of a green one.
And then I went away on vacation.
I returned to find a glorious happening in my variegated peperomia’s pot, new shoots growing out of the soil. My house-sitting in-laws apparently had the key to this plant’s health and so I began a regular routine of watching its growth, watering it more carefully, and turning it each day so it would receive even sunlight.
Then I noticed that instead of having spade-shaped leaves, the leaves on this new growth were clover-shaped. There was a weed growing next to my houseplant.
I was heartbroken. The clover-leafed thing grew like wildfire. I stared at its growth trying to decide what to do. Here was this plant that I have been trying, desperately, to grow and which I have barely kept alive. Now there was something coming up fast and furious, but it wasn’t what I had wanted.
My first inclination was to yank it out. But this new growth – any new growth – brought life to what had been a dreary-looking planter.
Finally, I have had to laugh at the irony of this plant’s life-lessons; that often we get results we didn’t count on, and in so many ways – great and small – we are forced to make decisions. This was – in the grand scheme of things - a tiny, perhaps trivial decision, but I agonized over it, just the same…

SERMON: “Weeds” - Rev. Alison Hyder

Each year, out at my little Truro homestead, I watch as plants emerge with their bright green shoots, looking brave and hopeful against the gray and sandy soil. There are lilies and sundrops, daffodils and rhododendrons, and new shoots of lilac and forsythia to lighten my mood. Recently, a new and mysterious plant has appeared, leafy and generous and bold, to shelter the bare hillside…and take over the yard…and swallow up the rose bushes and the daphne and menace the young lilacs.
I have never really understood the vendetta against dandelions. I am not zealous about perfect lawns. I like wildflowers. But a couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon uprooting that plant from my yard wherever I could find it. I really never thought I’d take such violent action against nature. I combine indolence with an almost total lack of horticultural knowledge. But I’m not ready to sacrifice my scraggly little rose-bushes to obscurity or death. I feel I owe them more than that. They are doing their best with virtually no help from me.
Like my colleague Jennifer Brower, I was ambivalent about my decision. In fact, I still am. Frankly, the stuff looked lovely and thick. It had a system of roots that held down the soil. And it provided cover for my cat as she stalked through her turf like a wily jungle tiger. Now my lawn looks like something from “The Invasion of the Mole People.” And it serves me right.
Biologist and soil expert Ehrenfried Pfeiffer wrote,

“Weeds are WEEDS only from our human egotistical point of view, because they grow where we do not want them. In Nature, however, they play an important and interesting role. They resist conditions which cultivated plants cannot resist, such as drought, acidity of soil, lack of humus, mineral deficiencies, as well as one-sidedness of minerals, etc. They are witness of man’s failure to master the soil, and they grow abundantly wherever man has ‘missed the train’ – they only indicate our errors and Nature’s corrections. Weeds want to tell a story – they are Nature’s way of teaching [us], and their story is interesting. If we would only listen to it we could apprehend a great deal of the finer forces through which Nature helps and heals and balances, and sometimes, also, has fun with us.”

Before Dopplar radar people observed plant and animal behavior to predict weather and prepare for the seasons. They counted the stripes on a Wooly Bear caterpillar to gauge a severe winter. They knew that the droop of a pine bough indicates the barometric pressure and that animals become restless before an earthquake. But according to Dr. Pfeiffer, weeds can teach us too. UU minister Barbara Haugen found his book Weeds and What They Tell when she was living on a rocky farm in New Hampshire. She found it a gem of information. In it, Pfeiffer

explains that [the presence of] Sorrels, Docks and Hawkweeds indicate an acid soil, but Daisies an only slightly acid soil. Field Mustard, Morning Glory and the Chamomiles indicate a crust formation and/or hard pan in the soil. Buttercup and Dandelion “follow human steps and cultivation,” he writes, while weeds of the Rose, Pink, and Legume families indicate “mainly a lack of care and cultivation”
The prevalence of a certain kind of weed or wild plant is revealing, but so, too, he tells us, is “the tendency of certain weeds to appear and disappear.” That pattern “gives us the best lead in judging soils. For instance, the increase of weeds in the summer and fall flowering class is frequently a symptom of decrease of fertility and loss of humus (and lack of attention).” [Pittsfield “UU News,” 1999]

So by observing weeds and wildflowers, we can learn what kind of soil we have and what else will thrive in our gardens. Instead of fighting the natural conditions, we can use them to our own advantage. For instance, living in the woods, I will never be able to eliminate all the pine needles that fall in my yard. But I can decide to plant the kinds of flowers that like that sort of thing – whatever they are.
My wild daisies are certainly thriving. So maybe I can learn from them. After all, they are pretty and graceful and sturdy and independent, and require no care at all. They are a gift, pure and simple, from the earth.
We all have weeds growing in our lives, those unexpected, often irritating and unwelcome encumbrances that seem to crowd out all of our best dreams and intentions. What are yours? And what do they teach you about the soil where they take root? Is it acidic or rich with humor? Do you keep your personal plot well-nurtured? Or is it suffering from “a lack of care and cultivation?” What characteristics, what values, sustain and nurture your growth?
Pfeiffer says that you can judge the soil from the weeds that grow there. Perhaps your weeds are the traits of self-absorption that suffocate optimism and generosity and courage, and crowd out others growing around you.
Maybe, like the plants in my yard, you are bold and beautiful and big, but you unconsciously overshadow anything or anyone more modest and frail.
Do you have roots of sullenness or fear that keep you from blooming in the sunlight of love? Perhaps you are letting past traumas keep you stunted and dry and fallow.
Sometimes the blossoms spring up like poppies, enticing and colorful. There are people or opportunities that look innocent, and so we go along at first, never realizing the danger until we are addicted to their charms. Our soil is so depleted and hungry that any attention and stimulation will do. We ignore all the warning labels. So we don’t see the poison inside the pretty packaging.
Bernice Johnson Reagon says, “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” Our problems are a key to the underlying matter in which they take root. By looking at our behaviors, we can sometimes get to the core issues of our lives.
There are an awful lot things that I can’t control, like the squirrels who bury acorns all over my place, the amount of rainfall we’ll get, or whether some new plant will bloom. But that is true for all of our lives. We do not know what storms will come our way, or what new growth will come pushing up from below. All we can control is our own response.
When Jennifer Brower was confronted with the weed in her flowerpot, she was perplexed.
“Here was this plant that I have been trying, desperately, to grow and which I have barely kept alive. Now there was something coming up fast and furious, but it wasn’t what I had wanted. My first inclination was to yank it out. But this new growth – any new growth – brought life to what had been a dreary-looking planter. Finally, I have had to laugh at the irony of this plant’s life-lessons; that often we get results we didn’t count on, and in so many ways – great and small – we are forced to make decisions.”
Maybe your weeds are crowding out something quiet and fine, and taking your attention from your true purpose. At every point we all have to decide what is helping us, and what is holding us back. Do we need to dig about in our past to root out the source of our problems? What do we need to cut out of our lives, and what unexpected blossoms are beautiful and sweet? Everyone’s weeds are different, made up of their own strange blend of disappointments, dreams, and cultures. But weeds can be our teachers, indicating our weaknesses and hurts, showing where we might want to do some pruning, and where we need to be enriched and fertilized with love and patience and wisdom.
Besides, not all weeds are bad. Sometimes the opportunities and gifts that we least expect turn out to be blessings. How would we survive if we had to plan and create everything that we need, if everything was laid out and plotted like a formal garden, without abandon or surprise? Just think of all that we’d miss, the friends we’d never meet, the offer of a job or a trip or a bite of fiddle-head fern? Who ever thought of eating that for the first time?
Weeds have many good traits. Many grow in poor soil. They have to be tenacious, strong, quick to take hold, able to adapt themselves to strange situations, and to thrive unassisted. Weeds hold the earth together and keep it from blowing away in strong winds and storms. They support a diversity of life, providing shade and medicines and food for a wide variety of animals and people. Weeds may be accomplishing what Nature knows the land needs, better and faster than we do. And some weeds - like cornflowers and buttercups and black-eyed susans - offer us gifts of beauty and grace that have grown from struggle and adversity, that were planted in the acid soil of disappointment or poverty or pain and learned how to bloom.
Geoffrey Canada grew up in the South Bronx, in a neighborhood characterized as much by violence as by poverty. He talks about how their deprivation angered him and his brothers, and alienated them from their hard-working mother. Nothing she did could get them out of the grind of privation. As a child he lived on the street, going from one fight to another, forced to be tough or to be bullied by the kids on his block. He saw how violence tends to escalate, how boys have to learn to be hard and brutal. He managed to survive. But Canada was lucky. His mother valued education, for herself and her children. When he was in high school, she sent him to live with his grandparents. He says,
I was a wild and reckless adolescent and I must admit, my soul was in some peril. And I fell in love with my grandmother, a deep, personal love that any of us would have if suddenly an angel came into our lives. And the more time I spent with her the more I loved her. She cooled my hot temper and anger over being poor and showed me there was dignity, even in poverty. And all the years I knew her, she was never able to afford material things that others took for granted. She worked so hard and never could afford anything of luxury. She taught me how one could have a deep, spiritual love of life that was not tied to material things. This is a tough lesson to learn in a country that places so much value on materialism.
Love helped, and encouragement, and education. But Canada knows it was part luck and part strategy and an equal part of bravado that kept him alive as a kid. He learned what many kids must do to stay alive. Now Canada takes his experience and his knowledge to help reduce violence among kids, one child at a time. You may know his books, Fist Stick Knife Gun, and Reaching Up For Manhood. Canada is the Principal of Rheedlen’s Beacon School, which gives urban children and their families social services 17 hours a day, 365 days a year. He founded the Harlem Peacemakers Program, which trains kids in peer mediation and peacemaking techniques. He works to build strong and vocal and active communities.
Somehow, like a weed blossoming in a vacant lot, Canada managed to hold on to his integrity with tenacity and imagination. He didn’t capitalize on his problems, or magnify them, or repudiate them. Instead he used them to create a life of meaning and courage and generous service. He can help kids because he came off the same streets that they are trying to negotiate and survive.
“At the center of our pain,” one author wrote, “we glimpse a fairer world and hear a call. When we are able to keep company with our own fears and sorrows, we are shown the way to go; our parched lives are watered, and the earth becomes greener place.” [Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope]
It takes determination and courage to dig around in the soil of pain, to weed out the extraneous and destructive, to plant your strength in wounded ground. But as every gardener knows, the biggest blooms come from the stinkiest soil. Nothing is ever wasted. It is all good fertilizer for the new life to come.
What is growing in your life?

CLOSING WORDS: by Nancy Wood

Hold on to what is good
even if it is
a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe
even if it is
a tree which stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do
even if it is
a long way from here.

Hold on to my hand even when
I have gone away from you.

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