Who is Watering the Grass?

When I was a child one of my favorite pastimes was to play in the grass. It never ceased to amaze me how wonderful it was to smell that ruddy earthy smell that can only be produced when sun, water, and earth form to become tall green silos of stuff. And in the stuff, possibility! Imagine my amazement when I discovered that without the reciprocity between all the elements, including the intake of our carbon dioxide, we couldn't have oxygen, the stuff that keeps us all taking in deep breaths each morning.

The poetry in the simple act of living is lost on most of us. We get up each morning , calculate a do-to list, and then another, methodically marking off the days, minutes and hours that it takes to be completed with our work for the day. At the end of the day, how many of us can claim satisfaction?

I realized quite some time ago that I was missing something that could not be filled with my wants or even my needs, or completed by the realizations of my hopes and dreams. There is something bigger than life itself that is composed into its parts, each part needed to create the whole.

Some would call that a naive assumption that the human soul desires to exist beyond its own means, the ego taking on a god-like desire to be beyond the being.

I, however, call it faith.

If you notice, true to Jesus' saying the grass gets watered regardless of human intervention for the most part. Oh there are droughts, and dry spells, and disasters, to be sure. But even after the Pacific rim erupts in a destructive splendor, obliterating everything in its path, emerald green is still the first sparkling color you see. The sun still shines, the rain still falls, the earth molested by human lust, still manages to care for a tiny seed that is here today, gone tomorrow.

Grass can resist birds, disease, and storms, and too much sun and not enough, and too much wind, and not enough, and yes, even us. Imagine that the living thing that acts as the intercessor for human breathing, so devalued by us that we cut it just when it starts to thrive, just because.

Hummph.

And yet most of us will spend the rest of our lives worried, confused, stuck in the redundant chaos of human imperfection that keeps us up late at night. How many of us have the faith of a blade of grass, which by most accounts, should have no faith at all.

Which leads me to wonder-- who on earth is watering the grass?

And if God were a color, would he be green?


Now I am no gardener, but I am an admirer of them. It almost seems as if gardens are a superficial attempt to keep nature controlled. Keeping the "undesirables" at bay. Maybe a little elitist? One woman's weed is another one's prize? Considering how difficult it is to keep a garden it is a wonder than anyone every attempts it.

If you know anything about weeds, you will learn they are tenacious characters, armed with millions of years of evolutionary attitude. The more we try to isolate them, the smarter they get, forcing us to go on the offensive, producting tougher, cleverer strategies. And yet we still create gardens. We still trust that with constant care, the oasis we've created can thrive given the right conditions.

And yet the In the garden of Eden man struggled to keep human nature at bay and lost to the lone weed. I often think that God is a gardner. Knowing the odds he still labors. Why?

Why water the garden that is doomed to be invaded unless something strongly compels you to continue?

This is the question of faith. This is the understanding of love, and all that other stuff....