Wild Lillies
On the brief walk from my office to the campus where I work with students, there are a lot of interesting things. Typically, there are as many as twenty broken bottles tossed from car windows by frat boys on a dare. There’s this old retaining wall covered in ivy that nearly takes over the sidewalk. An abandoned funeral home stands ominously at the top of the hill and a tattoo shop greets me as campus comes into view.
There are interesting things all around us, if we’re really willing to look. I don’t think that Grove Avenue is particularly special or unique. I just walk up and down it several times a week without looking at my phone or listening to anything (usually). My eyes are up, I have nothing to do other than walk, and I pay attention. That’s it. That’s how I found the lilies.
Among the many curious things on Grove Avenue is an old pizza place. When I moved to Radford, it was in business and apparently pretty good. As recently as five years ago, you could still get a pizza or a calzone there. I think the little history that I’ve observed of this place is fascinating. A street or so over, there’s an old building that used to have a “Mike’s Pizza & Video” sign on it. A relic from a simpler time, perhaps, when you would get your pizza and your Friday movie rental at the same store. Genius. That sign isn’t up anymore because, shortly after I moved here, another location opened up. This time, just “Mike’s Pizza”. This one was on Grove Avenue, but about a block or so away from the place I’m talking about. Sometime before the pandemic, that building was rezoned for commercial use (from all appearances it was a residence before). Then, “Mike’s Pizza” took their sign down and moved into this oddly-shaped, low-roofed building. And, like so many other places, it hasn’t been open for business since the start of the pandemic.
You wouldn’t know that from the signage, though. If you drove by and didn’t know better, you would think they were just closed for the day. All signs point to a normal pizza place, except for the yard (if you can call it that). The yard is walled, rather than fenced, with an opening facing the street for the sidewalk. The wall is about two feet high and goes all the way around to the back. But inside the wall, where there was grass at some point in the distant past, it’s an absolute riot of weeds: stinging nettle, dandelion, poke weed, unidentified cousin of the dandelion, Virginia creeper, probably poison ivy- you get it. It’s kind of a mess.
I’ve walked by these chaotic weeds for years now and I’m always amazed that nobody does anything about it. I guess we are just fine with it. Perhaps the owner of the building is one of those “native plant” lawn people. Perhaps they moved and are letting nature do its entropic thing. Maybe they thrive on chaos. I don’t know, it’s none of my business. But what is my business is flowers- lilies to be precise.
Recently, as I walked past the apparently abandoned Mike’s Pizza, formerly Mike’s Pizza & Video, I saw lilies growing in the corner of the chaos. Now, you may not know this, but lilies are my favorite flowers. I love the way they smell. When I was growing up, there was this creek in my backyard with daylilies growing all along it. I loved how they opened in the day time and closed at night, all summer long. For most of my life, I’ve always been surprised and delighted by daylilies. When I got married, white lilies were in my bouquet. I love lilies.
When I saw some growing in the walled yard, I stopped and said, “How did you get here?” Literally, I talked out loud to the flowers. I was just so shocked to find them in that place, amidst so much chaos and neglect.
This was especially powerful for me today. I’m still processing some pretty devastating news related to my work. The circumstances are different, but this kind of thing just keeps happening. I often wonder if it’s something I’m doing wrong or if it’s just the nature of the place I work. Is it the people that I choose to spend my time on? Is it some weird combination of it all?
I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure. It would be really easy to let the shame spiral take over here. It would be foolish, but easy, to blame it on myself and either quit or move on to something else. It would honestly be easy to switch my methods, do what everyone else does, tell a spruced up version of the truth to the outside world, and fake it until I make it. It would even be easy to do what so many have told me to do, wished I would do, and would praise me for doing: sit down, shut up, and go home.
But it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. And it wouldn’t solve the problem or answer my questions. It certainly wouldn’t help those that I get to serve.
No, even amidst the chaos of an utterly neglected garden, something beautiful grew. How much more in my work? How much more when I have thought, prayed, worked, shifted, learned, grown, re-learned, and planned? Of course flowers grow in a well-planned and tended garden. But they also grow in the chaos.
If flowers can grow in the chaos of Mike’s Pizza, can’t something good come out of my work, no matter if the same setbacks occur over and over again? I can’t control other people. I can’t make seeds grow. All I can do is make sure there’s good soil, adequate sunlight, water, and fertilizer from time to time. What folks (or flowers) do in those conditions isn’t really up to me.
I hope this is encouraging to you today as you deal with difficult circumstances of your own. I hope this reminds you that good, light, and glory always find a way to poke through the chaos. There’s never going to be a night so dark that it won’t be met by dawn. Lilies grow in the neglected garden, too.