Praising God with dandelions

She has a knack for creating lovely arrangements with flowers and greens from her yard and the woods near her home. When she brings her work to grace our Sunday worship, we are reminded that all of nature joins with us in our joyful praise of God.

On one such Sunday, as she approached our meeting place, her daughter ran from behind and thrust a handful of dandelions into the middle of her carefully crafted arrangement. At first she was perturbed because she hardly had time to repair the damage. Then she decided to leave the arrangement exactly as it was, dandelions and all. Dandelions are everywhere, she thought, yet they are never included in anybody’s arrangement. “Sometimes I feel like a dandelion,” she explained during the coffee hour.

The dandelion, of course, is well known to all who would perfect their lawns. It is sturdy, tenacious, aggressive, prolific and capable of growing under the most adverse of circumstances. It is a survivor. It intrudes where it is not appreciated. It brashly disturbs the otherwise quiet elegance of a cultivated lawn. Powerful poisons have been designed to destroy it, but it returns.

It’s greatest offense may be that it is so common. It takes no skill to grow a dandelion; having a crack in one’s concrete step may be sufficient. I have never heard anyone brag, even in the most indirect manner, about the dandelions in their gardens.

To an impartial observer this may seem curious. The dandelion has all the requisites of a lovely and useful flower. It had an exotic name derived from the French - dent de lion, or “lion’s tooth”, because of the tooth-like outline of its leaves. Its soft yellow blossoms, when massed, create carpets of brilliant color over sunlit meadows and fields. Its puff-balls possess a fragile beauty whose design has been copied by sculptors. Generations of earth’s children have enjoyed blowing into these buff-balls, watching them disintegrate and vanish in the breeze.

In ancient times the dandelion was considered a useful herb. Even today people add tender dandelion greens to their spring salads. The delicacy of the color, bouquet and taste of a well-made dandelion wine defies verbal description. This “lowly” flower may simply be the victim of a very bad press.

Someone once said that a weed is merely a flower misplaced. I quite agree. I am grateful to my young friend who saw the beauty and dignity of this common plant and gave it the place of honor on a Sunday morning. She has not yet learned to see it as a weed. I suspect that she sees beauty in a great many other places that I overlook. Is it any wonder that so many of our spiritual leaders have insisted that children have the clearest vision of us all? 

Photos from "Wildman" Steve Brill's Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places.

Pomp and Circumstance

Jim and I were fellow seminarians. Neither of us is very tall, and I always admired the way he conducted himself. He was something of a prince -- urbane, articulate, even a bit haughty. His  beard was precisely trimmed; his clothing was exquisitely appropriate to every occasion. I never saw Jim in a situation in which he was not in complete control.

Once he was asked to conduct worship for one of the more stately Presbyterian churches in Princeton. Jim was a master at ceremonies. What would seem hopelessly pompous in anyone else was merely dignified when performed by Jim; he was a good choice to direct the staid and proper rites of these eminent folks.

On this occasion, while he was leading a responsive litany, Jim felt a peculiarly insistent call of nature -- one he could not ignore. Alone in the pulpit, he also could not depart to relieve himself. He glanced hurriedly through the order of service and devised a strategy. While the offering was being collected, he would sneak out behind the choir and return unnoticed before the doxology and prayer. Much depended on timing.

The first part of his plan went well. Enthralled by a typically magnificent anthem, the attentive congregation did not know that they were temporarily without a leader. But as the anthem neared its conclusion and Jim started back to his place, he found that the door separating him from the sanctuary had locked when he passed through. He was alone and trapped in an upper hallway. With the choir singing gustily away, no one heard him scratching behind the door.

But Jim is smart, as I say, and he never loses control. He found an open window and, with nary a pause to consider the consequences, he leaped through it - black robes, academic hood and all. Landing on his feet, he ran around the church as the organist hit the chords for the doxology.

The congregation performed its conditioned response of standing, and joined in the song, "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow...” The ushers began their ritual walk down the center aisle with offerings great and bountiful. And marching right behind them, with head held high and singing as loudly as anyone present, was the Reverend Mr. Jim. He waltzed around the ushers in time to collect the plates, and gave a most deeply-felt prayer of thanksgiving. Then he continued with his sermon.

To this day he swears that ninety-nine percent of the congregation never noticed anything unusual about that service.