By Steve Matthews, Senior Missional Consultant, FaithX
“Watch carefully
the magic that occurs
when you give a person
enough comfort
to just be themselves.”
― Atticus Poetry, Love Her Wild
What is the responsible thing to do in 2023 with a house on ¾ of an acre of lawn? This is one of the many questions my partner, John, and I had to address when we bought a 1914 bungalow in NC a couple of years ago. We knew we didn’t want to mow all that space with a gas mower. So, we bought an electric mower (I get 12,000 steps per mow cycle!), planted a garden, mulched an area for flowers including native pollinators, and decided to leave about ¼ of the area to grow up as “meadow”. It turns out that we did get some golden rod and wild asters on that ¼ acre, but mostly it was weeds and mounds and mounds of fescue grass (not all that pretty), so, we called our local Plant and Wildlife Specialist in to consult with us (our tax dollars at work)!
Bryan taught us a lot! He was complimentary of the work we had done, and he taught us about seed banks. I knew about seed saving, and I’ve heard about the Doomsday Seed Bank in Norway, but who knew we had a seed bank in our own backyard? According to Bryan, vast areas of NC were once covered in prairie. An old French map of the Carolinas and Virginia has the wording Grand Savanne in the area that would now be covered by the North Carolina piedmont. These grasslands were grazed by large herbivores, including bison and elk. They were overflowing with native grasses and wildflowers.
According to Bryan, underneath the top layer of the soil is a vast treasure of native wildflowers just waiting for the space to spring up. Our own little seed bank! Some of these seeds can lie dormant for decades. To access this “bank” we would need to get rid of the fescue (the non-native grass growing in dense root clusters and smothering out all else). It would not be an easy job, but once it’s done, we were assured that nature would take its course.
Where is the “seed bank” in your church and neighborhood? What life is waiting to spring up naturally? What might be choking the potential beauty and abundance just waiting to be born? As church people we see ourselves as the ones who are seed planters, cultivators, waterers, and harvesters, yet perhaps the most important work for us is to remove the obstacles to God’s love emerging which might mean to get out of the way and pay attention.
Some of these obstacles might be our systems and structures that seek to control and maintain order at all cost, but a little disorder is necessary for emergence. Perhaps we have made assumptions about the places where seeds can grow, and we have failed to listen and invite the voices and gifts on the margins. Perhaps WE are the fescue in our community and Life is out there inviting us to a deeper, more wild, more beautiful place of abundance.
This Advent season, pay attention, don’t try so hard, nurture life where you see it struggling, and dare to say “Yes” to the divine invitations coming your way, perhaps from unexpected places.
