This is a traditional Sufi story:
A young man named Nashruddin planted a flower garden, but when the flowers came up so did a great crop of dandelions among them. Wishing to eliminate the unwanted guests, Nashruddin consulted with gardeners near and far, but none of their solutions worked.
Finally, Nashruddin traveled to the palace of the sheik to seek the wisdom of the royal gardener himself. But alas, Nashruddin had already tried all the methods the kind old man recommended to him for eradicating such troublesome weeds.
Silently they sat together for a good long time.
At last, the royal gardener looked at Nashruddin and said, “Well, then, the only thing I can suggest is that you learn to love them.”
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So many of our problems could be resolved if we could learn to love the “unwanted guests” that wander into our lives uninvited. Imagine if we applied this principle to the world.
Have a good weekend everyone.
This brings to mind a lovely book by Kathleen Chesto entitled “Why are the Dandelions Weeds”… Great for family ministry.
Serious gardening analogies asside, there do seem to be people thrown into our lives who are “unwanted guests”, who challenge us to step beyond our comfort levels to embrace them. We are having such a moment in our family right now. My only brother, the younges of the family, has moved in with a young woman who has 2 children from previous relationships. My sister who had for a long time been the closest to him is having a very hard time with this. Partially because she knows of the young woman’s past, partially because she doesn’t want to see him get hurt and partially because she feels that my brother’s own teenage daughter is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to his time and attention. She undenyably has some legitimate concerns about their relationship but she has been trying to demand that others in the family take sides. Meanwhile my approach has been to do my best to make the girl and her children feel comfortable at family events. I will admit that I am not yet sure if I “love” her but I have to acknowledge that there must be something good in their relationship as my brother is more settled with her than he has been with any other girlfriend in the last 10 years and I have also noticed and admire that she makes an effort to be kind and helpful even in the face of my sister’s barely veiled hostility which she clearly finds hurtful. It is my hope that in time if she remains with my brother, we will all come to love her even if only as a child who does’t see a difference between a dandelion and a weed because they each have their own unique beauty.
Two things came to mind when reading this:
1. There are certain people in my life that I have trouble getting along with and have from time to time tried to change their response to situations and even trying to change the situation outcome itself in order to avoid a conflict. I have to keep remembering that I cannot change them or their reactions to situations. However, I can change how I let them affect me. I am constantly praying for the Grace to do this and to realize I cannot change them so I need to love and accept them warts and all.
2. I hope that my warts are not so difficult for those in my life to love
Have a wonderful weekend!
Ha, thank you! This is just what inner dandelions wanted to hear! You made their/my day
PS: “my inner dandelions”
I am so grateful for the comments of everyone above. When I first read this, I thought only of my “inner dandelions” — what a great image, Claire! — the things in me I want so badly to uproot but don’t seem to be able to. I hadn’t thought at all about the people in my life that I treat as weeds to be pulled, or at best patiently borne. Work today promises to be absolutely full of opportunities to start seeing a few of these people as the beautiful flowers they are. Thank you, Paul, for sharing this story, and thank you everyone else for pulling me out of myself this morning — I really needed it.
Have a glorious wekend, everyone. Enjoy the first day of fall.
Hmmm, methinks we should send this to certain people in Washington DC…
Have a relaxing weekend everyone
I’ll assume you meant someone other than me, Tim But I’ll do my part here to take the message and “grow where I’m planted!”
I’m feeling a bit like a dandelion myself right now. If only it were sooooooo easy to “weed myself” out.
ps. Thank you for all who prayed for MF. He is, I’m told sitting up in bed!
Wonderful news. Happy weekend.
I see the church in this. Not always, but more frequently than it should be, we attempt to weed our congregations. Words to another song come to mind :
“The traveller is far away from home
He sheds his coat and quietly slips into the back row
The weight of their judgmental glances
Tells him that his chances
Are better out on the road. ”
Casting Crowns “If We Are the Body “
This dropped right into my ponderings earlier this week about the reading from St. Paul: love is patient, kind…. and my desire to root up all the dandelions I seem intent on noticing. Maybe I can just learn to love them!
Jesus wasn’t an orchid, He was a dandelion! If you dig up one dandelion from your lawn, the next day there will be twenty more to take its place. From one the roots and seeds spread everywhere!! It is next to impossible to eradicate them. They just won’t die
From one came many and they took route throughout the world. The Church itself sprung up from what was thought of as something unwelcome. We look for a King we wouldn’t recognize if we look for an orchid!! Jesus was is not a fragile cultured flower. The gardener knows.
love this analogy
There’s a wonderful sermon for someone in that analogy, Emma!
What’s wrong with dandelions? You can play “Kill the Man With the Ball” in a field of them, trample them, smash them; mow them, spray them, pull them until they are obviously destroyed. Two days later, drive by that field and you will see a glorious, yellow carpet of them, heads rising towards the sun, swaying in the breeze.
Put yourself back 2000 yrs to the day after the crucifixion. Place yourself in the Roman Empire with its Pax Romana on one of its 250,000 miles of roads stretching from Asia to Africa to Europe. Live within that history of dominance and status that was the envy of the Mediterranean. Then, see these few failed, confused and frightened friends of an executed carpenter. Place your bet. Place your bet on who you think will survive and who will be extinct in 2000 yrs. Anyone want to bet on the dandelions?
You might be on to something. If more young women were aware of the circumstances that women in those times, maybe they’d stop parading around the country crying about how the Catholics are trying to take away their “rights “. If they made an effort to educate themselves, they would see that the early Christians were champions of women’s rights during a time when they were not supported by a political machine, but opposed by it. Whether one believes that Jesus of Nazareth was God Incarnate or not, there’s no disputing the historical evidence, but I suppose they’d rather live in a time when baby girls were left to die of exposure on manure piles, women were not permitted to leave their homes, and children of both genders were sold as sex slaves to the rich and powerful. Who do they think first spoke for them and died because of it? And whose teachings is our system of law founded on?
Uh-oh there goes Emma!
I won’t dispute what you’ve said; however, nobody’s heart or mind was ever changed when, coming out the gate, they’re told that they’re wrong. What’s required is open dialogue. The opposing viewpoint must be spoken and *heard*. Question and let the other person speak. Listen. Don’t be formulating a defense. More often than not, as that person opens up they begin to question themselves. Ask them for their source. Again, often they don’t even know or they’ve heard it from a “credible” web site. Again, open the door for them to have that desire to know more, learn more and let the Spirit guide them.
Beautiful..
Thanks to everyone.
The posting and comments have been so insightful and encouraging.
Have a great weekend!
Geese are highly effective at destroying dandelions so it is not an insoluble problem.
The person confined with the goose, never looking over his own fence fails to notice the dandelions growing in vacant city lots and in ditches alongside the road. One day he ventures out to the garden dept of the local home improvement store where he meets a neighbor. They greet each other and during the conversation, the man extols the benefits of goose vs dandelion. The neighbor wants to know why he sees dandelions as the enemy. He goes on to tell him of the nutritional and medicinal benefits of dandelions and shares a bottle of dandelion wine with him. The gooseman takes it home and tastes it. In the days to come he reflects on the sweet taste of that wine and decides that he likes the effect that it had, the way it made him feel. He then walks out into his yard and sees the mess left by the goose. Goose poop everywhere!! on the walks! on the picnic table! in the pool! and he begins to wish that he’d never let that goose in. He scrubs and hoses and tries all he knows to rid his life and environment of goose poop. But, he can’t eliminate it on his own. The more he cleans, the more the goose poops. Meanwhile, over the fence, year after year, the dandelions ever so silently shed their seeds and the breeze blows them everywhere. And they wait for the gooseman to stop trying to clean up the mess on their own and welcome them into his yard.
Uh oh. There goes Rico : )
Clarification called for? Ok. I was having a moment of self-reflection. I try to be the good neighbor, sometimes I can carry it off. Most of the time, I’m the gooseman, and ashamedly, more than I care to acknowledge, am also the goose. Those dandelions, tho’, their spirit convicts those of us who have been nurtured and cared for, those of us who grew under the watchful eye of a loving gardener. The dandelions among us, no matter where they’ve been left to grow, never forget to raise their heads towards the sun each morning. A dandelion doesn’t allow its circumstances to dictate to it that it needs be anything but a dandelion. It not only survives under the most adverse conditions, but seems to enjoy itself, no matter that its been dropped by the roadside, trampled down or left to fend for itself. It is what it is and it’s content to be just that. It doesn’t wait for a caretaker to come along, it is the caretaker of its own destiny and it knows it and it doesn’t waste time seeped in self-pity or doubt waiting for things to change. Dandelions not only convict those of us who have been nurtured, they also give us hope. The world would be poorer without the dandelions. Dandelion.
A friend told me (because I do love the dandelions until they make me sneeze) that “dandelions are a mothers first bouquet from her child.” It is true. Embrace it all.