DRIVEWAY PARSLEY
she’s really thriving where she’s planted… another garden metaphro to learn from
on accidental gardening
Several years ago I planted a parsley plant in one of a few small raised beds in my backyard. It's a very overlooked herb. My first encounter with the curly, frazzled plant was on my Denny's pancake plate as a child, next to the small, round scoop of butter that always confused me because it looked like ice cream. That parsley was woody and hard, an afterthought serving as the 80's de facto plate garnish meant to be tossed in the bin.
It wasn't until I started growing my own garden and looking for easy and nutritious plants that would thrive in my northwest climate that I really discovered the herb in it's glory. Italian parsley is much different than its curly counterpart. Broad, flat leaves more akin to cilantro in their appearance hold up both raw and cooked. Strewn across a salad or chopped into a chimichirri they add a green brightness, a fresh flavor that captures something of summer's sun the way warm tomatoes picked from the vine can.
Late last summer I went outside to cut a few bunches for a dish I was making and realized I had harvested most of the plant already. Looking down, underneath the raised bed I noticed a leafy stem emerging from the crack in the driveway. Most of the backyard is, unfortunately, concrete. My beds are an alien organic invasion plopped atop the hardscaping. This baby parsley plant had found a fissure in the concrete, a singular space to root and grow.
To the untrained eye, it was nothing more than a driveway weed to pull, but I saw it's promise, recognized it's name. Throughout winter that plant provided fresh and tender leaves, just enough to remember summer's taste. A sprinkle here and there for a sauce or soup.
By spring it's become well established and mature. It might need to be transplanted to an actual bed. But there's something sort of punk rock about driveway parsley, something rebellious and unexpected. When I need to harvest it, I love bending down and being surprised by how much it's grown, or sending a kid out to pick some and saying, "it's in a crack in the driveway underneath the first garden bed."
It reminds me of the tenacious seeds in the story Jesus told:
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13)
I was invited a couple of years ago to preach on this passage, and what stood out to me was the unstoppable, miraculous life in the seed. The same force that pushes up the greeny shoot stirs and moves and forms our inner being. Life just cannot be stopped. The Divine is always at work whether we recognize it or not.
Despite my lack of effort caring for the parsley plant, God was at work underneath the soil all along, growing something and bringing forth new life in an unexpected place.
Our lives resemble this gestation, this miraculous knitting together of life. David Whyte, in his poem What to Remember When Waking asks this question:
“What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?”
ELEMENTAL THINGS:
I love that Jesus told stories about such earthy, elemental, everyday things: farming, coins, sheep, fish, wheat, wine, lamps, bread.
He was constantly bringing heaven down to earth, reminding his listeners that the things of God, the truths of eternity, and the kingdom of God, are revealed in the normal, everyday stuff of life.
When the disciples ask Jesus “why do you tell stories?” They were asking, why are you teaching us this way- through these stories of everyday things? He replied, in verses 10-12 from The Message-
“You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening.”
This is what Jesus does as the SOWER in our hearts and lives.
There is something in a seed that is inevitable, a greening that can’t be stopped given the right conditions. I wonder if that same inevitable something is built into us as well, breathed into life by God's own Spirit in the hidden places.