The Beans and the Sunflowers
Some fragmented thoughts on lessons from the garden about focus, resilience, and growth, a grievous piece of partisan rhetoric, and love of neighbor
Friday, September 13
Grand Rapids, Mich.
A shift in the garden: Most of the tomato plants are withering, though a few defiantly blossom. The zinnias are still in full and robust bloom, but all the gladioli have faded and the majority of my cosmos have gone to seed. We might get a meal or two more from the shishito peppers, and I’ll probably harvest most of the jalapeños next week, to pickle for the colder months.
Every time I go to the garden, I notice how everything is constantly changing. Every time I pause my chores long enough to pay attention to what’s happening, I learn something.
The beans, for instance, have been telling me that they keep to their own calendar, not mine. Since we don’t much like green beans in our house, I grow the plants mainly for dried beans. Right now, most of the bean pods are drying out. Sometimes I can’t resist temptation, and I crack open a pod to see what’s inside. Inevitably, it’s a marvel: The dragon’s-tongues with purple speckles on cream flesh. The white beans, plump and pristine. The cranberry beans—I think they’re the descendants of some that my friend Barbara sent me from her garden a couple of years ago, so they’re wondrous in multiple ways.
Come, thou fount, of every blessing.
One variety of black-bean plant, with deep green leaves and stems streaked with purple, is still sending out new shoots, unfurling new leaves, and debuting flourishes of new flowers. To be honest, I worried about their productivity. The Mexican bean beetles had ravaged them. Nevertheless, they persisted—and I receive their rebuke: “What were you worrying about? We know what we’re doing.”
Those bean beetles, which I battled all summer, have mostly gone away. Perhaps the plants knew something I didn’t. Anyway, they’re just getting on with their steady work—growing and flowering and producing new pods, day by uncharacteristically warm day.
The things growing in the garden inspire me simply by doing what they’re designed to do. Yes, of course there are threats—fungi and disease, drought or flood. But they’re all external forces, not internal. Somehow, unlike humans, they seem not know how to be their own worst enemies. They don’t stray from their calling. They stay focused.
A friend recently recommended to me Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. I’m only partway through, but how exactly did he see so clearly some 40 years into the future? Drawing heavily on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Postman writes that “no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history.” As Huxley predicted, “people will come to... adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” In a deluge of information, “we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.” With too much clamoring for our attention, “the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” Constantly distracted and morbidly entertained, “Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”
Even as I have been writing you this letter, I’ve constantly clicked through the (too many) tabs I have open on my browser. I watched some Instagram reels. I put on some music. I refreshed my New York Times app for the latest headlines—and then I even distracted myself from that, trying to find a few more words on Spelling Bee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
On Wednesday, we had a friend coming for dinner, so I harvested as much bok choy as I could. And though I was running behind, I stopped to regard the sunflowers. I love how they turn toward the sun, so much so that they almost absorb its radiance, shining it back out across the garden.
The sunflowers tell such a story of abundance. The first two seasons I had this plot in the community garden, I planted seeds. Last year, I added a bit more, but plenty sprang up on their own, from seeds that fell the year before. This year, I planted none, and it’s been the most productive sunflower summer I’ve had.
For weeks, the bees and the butterflies have gathered to feast on nectar and pollen. Now the finches and squirrels are having their turn with the seeds. I have no doubt that there will be plenty left, though, for next summer’s crop.
As the beans teach me about focus and resilience, the sunflowers remind me how so much happens all at once, sometimes without our realizing it. The seasons aren’t quite as discrete as we might like to think. They draw strength for themselves and offer it to others. Even as they sprout and bloom, they are constantly preparing for what’s still to come. The fading of a flower is the beginning of the seed, the bolting of the bok choy a sign of growing readiness.
Oh, to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be.
I rarely veer into partisan politics here. You can get enough of that elsewhere, if you want. In Tuesday’s presidential debate, though, one moment struck a particular nerve for me: It was when the Republican candidate brought up the (already disproven) story about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying, “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
I write as one who has been mocked for allegedly eating dog—an immature jest now thrust into the realm of presidential politics. This fear-mongering is unbecoming of an honorable leader. It is yet another manifestation of the coarsening of our political culture. Such language dehumanizes, diminishes, and divides. It represents weakness, not strength. And those of us who hold the Bible as holy Scripture, our guide for life and practice, will surely recognize these instructions: “And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself.”
I’ll be honest: I hesitated to write anything about this. Then I remembered the words of Marilyn McEntyre, from her wise and prescient 2009 book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, which I commend to you. “Do we shrug and say there’s nothing we can do? I don’t think so,” she writes. “It seems to me that the call to be stewards of words requires of us some willingness to call liars to account—particularly when their lies threaten the welfare of the community.”
A healthy community, McEntyre argues, strives for clarity and is unafraid of truth. “What is true?” she continues. “This is not a rhetorical question to ask while we wash our hands like Pontius Pilate.” To consider it well, we have to consider our biases, our preconceived notions, and our assumptions. “We must listen with all our might, with all our will to discern, laying aside our very human desire to be right with a prayer that we may be faithful,” she writes. “We are called not only individually but collectively to care for the words we share and exchange.”
So it is with great care that I admit there’s part of me that’s grateful this all has surfaced. This presidential candidate isn’t the only one who holds fellow humans in such low regard—and that fact is worthy of recognition. Such lies will hurt some people, stirring fear, disconnection, even marginalization—and I want not just to understand but also to do my part to meet those people in those places, when I can, with empathy and encouragement. But this is true, too: Such lies will resonate with some who feel fear, disconnection, even marginalization—and I want not just to understand but also to do my part to meet those people in those places, when I can, with empathy and encouragement.
So much work remains to be done—to create belonging, to address persistent inequities, to meet people in their very real fears and help them toward wholeness, to build a just society in which no child ever hears such slurs or knows the ugly sentiments behind them. I want to believe that the United States of America can be better (or, as a former First Lady put it, “be best!”), but we’re not quite there yet.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican. Since my days as a young reporter, I’ve abided by my teacher Charlotte Grimes’s counsel to be hitched to no party. Neither candidate is above reproach. My values don’t align perfectly with those of either party or nominee. I am leery whenever anyone, of any party, declares that God is on their side or that their candidate somehow more truly embodies Christian values. I don’t think we have to go there to see clearly the choice before us.
The Haitian immigrants in Ohio have been in prayers, as have countless others across the country who will have to deal in real ways with the hate being stirred up against them. As a proud son of immigrants and as a fellow alleged dog-eater, my heart breaks for them and wants the best for them—and for all of us. And on Election Day, I will cast my ballot for Kamala Harris.
Time to get off my soapbox and send this off to you.
If you’re in or near Richmond, Va., I’d love to see you this Sunday. At 11 a.m., I’ll be preaching at Battery Park Christian Church. Then, at 6 p.m., I’ll be at River Road Church; the church website says that I’m delivering a lecture on belovedness and belonging, but I’m very much hoping that it will be more of a conversation. All are welcome.
What’s on your hearts and minds? You know I always enjoy hearing from you and being in conversation with you.
Take courage, look around you for hope, and never, ever forget that you are loved.
Yours,
Jeff
Jeff- I live just south of Springfield on a small farm. I raised my 5 children right here in southern Ohio. You are absolutely right; accusing “others” of eating pets is a solid tradition in these parts, and has been going on for as long as I can remember.
About a week ago when I first heard these old, familiar rumors once again start floating around, I feared this would be brought up during the then-upcoming debate. Of course they were not only brought up, but amplified with fervor.
Although liberal leaning, I am politically independent and have voted for both parties in the past. However the fact that thinly veiled racist rhetoric is being actively embraced by a presidential candidate is just another reason my centrist self identifies more and more with the left. By making statements that incite fear and appeal to our baser natures, this individual and his campaign seem to be actively seeking to debase us both as individuals and as a country. I can’t think of a much better definition of evil than that.
You must ( at least here in New York), be registered to a specific party to vote in the primary. This matters much because the winner of the primary advances to the general. I consider myself an independent but am a registered Democrat. That is where most of the sunflowers grow. Kamala Harris is a sunflower.