Of Weeds and Wounds and Willfulness

In the slow times. When work has dried up and I can’t go into the office. I’ve taken to working in the yard, pulling up weeds by hand. Dandelions mostly, staring up at me with hateful yellow eyes.

Once you’re close to the ground, on your hands and knees, you spot the others. The ones with their eyes closed. That’s why the slow way is better.

They are like my wounds and my willfulness. Got to look for them carefully and pull them out by the roots. Otherwise they just keep coming up.

I feel sorry for those who say they have nothing to confess. Nothing to regret. Nothing to apologize for. They live in a garden of weeds. And when they go to seed, their wounds and willfulness spread to the gardens of their neighbors.

I keep at this for an hour or more until I uproot all I can see. It feels good until the next day when a hundred more have sprouted like an insincerity. Staring up at me with yellow eyes.

So, I go back out. One by one I am digging them up slowly by the roots, my wounds and my willfulness and my weeds. The next day a new onslaught. Every day more to confess.

I wonder if this does any good, this slow penance of pulling up weeds by hand.

After many days and many hours, I look out upon the yard. I see a thousand holes where the weeds once were. Pockmarks of repentance. Then I understand.

My quest to root out the weeds and wounds and willfulness, has not been about ridding myself of sin. It’s been about aerating the soil.

Now the ground can breathe, and the sun and rain and nutrition have a place to go.