Haints and Faeries

The God I know is desperate to be in a relationship with His children. When we aren’t in a relationship, He will go to any lengths to build a bridge across the chasm that separates us. On a grand scale, the whole story of Jesus, the Son of God, also God, lowering Himself to be the helpless human baby of a poor woman who undoubtedly had a bad reputation for her “virgin birth”, a lowly carpenter, a prophet of sometimes ill-repute: all just to eventually face humiliation and death so that He might paradoxically become the escape from sin and death for those who choose Him, is an unfathomable demonstration of that desire for relationship. On a smaller scale, the God I know makes an effort to cross the chasm on a minute by minute basis. He calls out to His children on just the level that we can understand. If people would just open their ears, they would hear the whispers or shouts from the God they thought long dead.

In my case, God often catches me in the garden. There, He has taught me as many lessons as are species of plants in my humble patch of land. Why does God meet me in the garden? Because I am an excellent gardener? On the contrary, I am a shamefully poor gardener. I have no innate gift for gardening. My garden is overrun with gophers, deer, a multitude of blights, nutrient poor, hard, constricting, clay soil and an incomplete and faulty watering system. The problems I have listed are just the highlights in a never ending litany of flaws that plague me in the garden. Basically, my garden is a undeniable metaphor for my base nature. I am overrun with blights I wish I could conquer: anger, pride, laziness, lack of perseverance. The soil of my heart is naturally claylike, desiring to squeeze out the root of human relationship in almost all its forms. My poor watering system is probably a good representation of my inconsistency in maintaining discipline in my own life. And so the garden is where I learn about me.

I quite enjoyed the book,The Shack. Thanks to CS Lewis, I am a lifelong fan of the magical, supernatural journey. On the journey through The Shack, the part that I liked the most was the representation of the Holy Spirit as a delicate asian woman who worked the garden with expert care. I found the use of a big black woman as the God figure a little hackneyed but the Madame Butterfly of the Holy Spirit was a wonderful visual tool for me, given the myriad lessons I have learned in the garden of my heart and my own back yard in tandem parallel.

As I read back, this might seem like theological mumbo jumbo, what John Steinbeck described in East of Eden as a mixture of “haints and faeries and Old Testament Jehovah” (my editrice Jessica helped me remember this quote better), so let me give a concrete example of how God has spoken to me recently in my garden. In 1997, when my husband and I first started renting the home that we would eventually buy, there were three well-established wisteria plants at the corners of the front facade of our home. The owner before us was a botanist who had planted and trained the vine around the eaves of our house. Every year, around Easter, the wisteria bloom in a one-time pale lilac riot of hanging bunches. As I walk out my front door, the scent is, literally, heavenly. Each year, this miracle of rebirth reminds me of grace. For me, the definition of grace is undeserved favor and the wisteria are the physical manifestation of this grace. I didn’t plant those plants, I didn’t train them, I don’t even actively have to water them because they are fully established. I have never fed these plants, not once. The only thing I have ever contributed to the existence of this gracious bounty is some severe pruning three or four times a year. Every year, the blooms say from God, “Meghan, look at what you’ve been given; not because you’ve worked hard for it, not because you earned it. Not through anything you’ve ever done do these blossoms bloom and yet here they are.” Grace, hanging from the doorway of my home.

This year has brought some different weather patterns to the bay area. It was unseasonably warm around February which provoked my wisteria to poke her delicate blooms out in an untimely dare. Just as the tender petals began to hope against hope, a violent wind storm came and stripped the vines bare. I walked out one morning to the broken remnants of flower buds all over my driveway and deck, fragile purple grey corpses everywhere. This might sound dramatic to the reader, but, as I said, the wisteria have come to signify a dialogue of grace between God and me. What could this loss signify? As I mentioned, the wisteria only has one full, lush bloom every year. There are some stragglers that mix in with the foliage over the rest of the season, but the riot of grace only comes once.

I was sad but figured that God had a different way He wanted to speak to me this year. After all, He doesn’t stand on ceremony and tradition and sometimes He comes at me in a totally different way so that I can hear Him new and fresh. Then one day, right before Easter, I saw new buds peeking out. I was going to blog about my “Easter Wisteria Miracle” because I was so excited about this “second chance” that the vines had received, so reminiscent of the million second chances I receive when my tentative signs of growth have been stripped away by the violent windstorm of my own creation. After a few days, though, I realized that the new buds were not flower buds but leaf buds, the tender reddish purple of the new leaves tricking me into anticipating flowers. I thought, “I’m glad I didn’t embarrass myself by claiming this Easter Miracle in writing, talk about your haints and faeries.”

So I moved on. Grow up Meghan. The greenery of the wisteria is a lovely addition to the eaves of my home, so why complain? Maybe I’m supposed to learn about maturity and something about unmet expectations, right?

Then, it happened: without notice, amidst the new green leaves, in an unprecedented simultaneous display of flowers and foliage, the inverted pyramids of purple appeared everywhere. Though I had lost faith in the miracle of second chances, I was wrong. Though I had been ashamed of my childish hopes, I was wrong. Though I doubted God, I was wrong. This lavish and new display spoke to me in a new language: it spoke of God’s creativity, His ability to overcome all obstacles, His faithfulness despite my faithlessness, His desire to show me something new.

I do realize that this might still sound like haints and faeries to some. That’s okay because I know what I’ve heard. I would encourage those of you who are so inclined to open your ears, open your hearts and listen for what God has to say to you. He is waiting in just the place where you can understand Him and has a secret that He wishes to whisper that’s just for you.