Transformative

Renewal: pruning, dividing, transplanting. Transplanting is transformative. But it is also risky, and violent. Some weeding decisions are easy: we have buffalo grass growing among the irises, cleome, and blue star. Those knobby long stems are easy to identify as intruders, even if the pulling and bending and bundling present a physical challenge. 

Some decisions are easy and present minimal risk. Some decisions are more fraught. Change is dangerous, but it’s the only way to open space to grow. In front of our house we have a small flower garden, a strip about 6 feet wide and twenty or so feet long. It’s the sunniest spot on our wooded lot, so anything that needs full sun lives there. It took a few years to establish, but we have two beautiful varieties of bluestar, or amsonia: Eastern which is shorter with willow shaped leaves, and Fringed—taller, needle leaves and lighter blue flowers that produces a golden yellow fall foliage display. The Fringed really took off and crowded out the Eastern so that the smaller, darker, denser plants had formed a ring or crown around the stronger cultivar. 

There was nothing wrong with the Eastern plants: they just weren’t spreading quite so aggressively and were forced to retreat from its spreading stronger neighbor.

Both were beautiful, healthy, and growing.

But because this post is a metaphor for renewal, allow me to expand a bit on my meaning and purpose. While both plants were doing well, the willow-leaved Eastern Amsonia was getting squeezed out from the bed, inhabiting the edge, and literally getting shaded from the abutting taller, stronger plant. But transplantation is risky: there’s no assurance that the plant will thrive, even if it is only located a few feet away. The sun might not be right, and the water and nutrients may just travel differently in its new home. But removing the smaller bluestar opens up a new avenue for the needle-leaved fringed plant to expand and thrive—will it?

 Change is a constant; but will it bring expanded opportunities or curtail growth? Will change allow the shaded, stunted plants to multiply and expand, or will the very competition that allowed both plants to thrive collapse, leaving both languishing.

So to bring this back to the church community and talk about people, I admit that there’s trepidation in change. 

This is the fear: change will scare away parts of the community, the good will built, the gift economy that makes Good Shepherd our spiritual home—why risk the camaraderie that emerged organically?

How do we encourage healthy change, and take advantage of the community’s desire to grow and flourish, while making sure leaves get sunlight, flowers bloom, and roots set deeply in nourishing soil? Buffalo grass is easily identified as a problem. What to do about more complicated decisions?

 It’s easy to recognize the buffalo grass. Pulling the weeds may be challenging, and it's always a chore to keep up with the pace of grass' reproduction and spread, yet we are usually pretty good at spotting harmful weeds. Tougher to understand is the need to give thriving plants space, knowing when to divide the clumps of successful hostas and daffodils, and when an older iris rhizome is spent and needs to be trimmed away to allow for new flowering stems to emerge. It’s sometimes a hard lesson to accept that weeds are simply plants that are growing where they are not wanted.

Transformation from pruning, weeding, and transplanting can be nerve-racking. Anxiety emerges precisely because growth is something we hope for and encourage. But sometimes it is necessary to shift focus from what’s overwhelming the garden to allow green shoots to reach light, gather sustenance, and thrive … with a little encouragement.