On a late summer Sunday morning, when there’s a distinct something (I dare not call it a chill, though that’s what it is) in the air, I’m out in the garden, mug of coffee in hand, peering at spent pansy blossoms, looking for seed pods that are dry enough to harvest.
I want to grow pansies in my indoor Aerogarden. The last sowing was supposed to be a variety of basil, but turned out looking suspiciously like spinach, complete with telltale angular leaves that the plant produces when it’s bolting. I took it out, cleaned the garden, and waited for inspiration. Now, happy-faced pansies seem just the ticket as we head toward the dark months (sorry, but that’s the direction we’re heading).
A hunt for a packet of seeds in the shops revealed that they’ve all been put away to make space for autumn stock. Halloween decorations on the shelves already seem bizarre, but here we are. In a forehead-slap moment, I realized I could save seeds from pansies already growing in my backyard—especially the small volunteer plant that surprised us when it popped up in the gravel. That’s one hardy plant, and I’m guessing plants grown from the seeds it produces will be equally strong.
So, I run my fingers through strong and healthy plants, looking for pods that have changed from green to brown, signalling that the seeds enclosed within are ready to harvest. I find a couple—enough for today.
Later, at the Eucharist service at the Anglican church Gerry and I attend, I can’t help but overhear conversations from a pew of young men sitting behind us. Their lives are just beginning. One of them is leaving the following day for graduate school at a university a couple of provinces away. There’s something exceedingly hopeful about listening to young people who are actively moving forward toward a goal. Lord willing, they’ve got decades ahead of them in which to craft a life and contribute to the communities they inhabit. One can only imagine the difference they will make in the lives of the people they touch.
For all the trouble in the world, there’s something about this brief overheard conversation that makes me feel like we’re leaving it in good hands.
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”
Frederick Buechner
I’m reminded of my old friend, Frederick Buechner, his words about the beautiful and terrible, and how life is unavoidably and inevitably made up of both. Wisdom is knowing this and still throwing one foot out from under the covers, followed by the other, every morning and contributing one small beautiful thing to the mess that is life. Grace is the ability to do so. Doing it changes the world.
It’s like a ribbon.
A small act of creation care in the form of saving pansy seeds for tomorrow, through my chosen belief in young people of today, to the knowledge that even though all is not as I want it to be, there’s grace sufficient for one more day. Choosing to counteract what’s messed up by seeing through a filter of love. Maybe these are gifts I have hungered to receive and wondered how to give.