|
The Blessings of Goutweed: A Seasonal Reflection Goutweed, Bishop’s Weed, Ground Elder, or for you Latin aficionados, Aegopodium Podagrari, is the bane of a gardener’s existence once it makes its home in your garden. Although there are those who actually cultivate it in large areas to discourage other, even more invasive plant life, it is a nuisance to anyone trying to grow anything OTHER than goutweed in small spaces. The roots are ingenious testimonials to divine creativity: taproots clinging tenaciously to dirt and rocks 10 inches and more underground, and subterranean tendrils stretching out in all directions laterally, sending up new shoots of the stuff a foot away from its root of origin. Ingenious, adaptable, and as wily a weed as you’re likely to find anywhere. Trust me, this really is relevant to the pursuit of peace and justice. In fact, I have found more meaningful instruction on pathways to peace in my decades-long struggle with goutweed than in some books I’ve read on the subject. In the garden, life’s issues get personalized. Where to begin? The ignorance of my youth is a good place to start; I didn’t know or notice the difference between goutweed and Queen Anne’s Lace or other carrot-relatives until I was well into my thirties. The weed’s deep green foliage and delicate white flowers beckoned, seduced, misled me; I even thought that it was attractive, and still do. Ah, confusion of youth! I cultivated the very weed I needed to uproot due to my lack of understanding that not all flowering groundcovers are benign. So thank you, goutweed, for these first important lessons: nothing is what it first appears, not all that attracts us is wholesome, and what’s hidden from view is often far more important than what is seen. Goutweed slowly took on social significance for me, serving as a meaningful metaphor for all of the ills assaulting our world. The elimination of goutweed assumed epic and biblical significance in my imagination; if there was a war on poverty, ignorance, greed, corruption, or any social problem, then during the spring and summer months, it was played out in the dust and dirt of my own patch of paradise. Do justice, “and you shall be like a watered garden . . .” I launched into a period of opinionated opposition to goutweed; all goutweed had to go. In the ecosystem of my tiny yard, it was an environmental pollutant, insidiously infiltrating the garden culture and undermining the health and vitality of even my most cherished, deeply rooted perennials. Those tridental leaves really were the axis of evil. But true confessions, as so often is true of the armchair liberal, until about 8 years ago, my opposition to goutweed was considerably more theoretical than practical. I let someone else be the engaged activist for me. My late husband Jim, an avid gardener, spent hours of back-breaking labor digging up roots and rhizomes, invaders and evaders. I was perfectly contented to let someone else literally do the heavy lifting for me. I wanted the benefits of a pristine garden, but didn’t see the need for personal involvement other than a vehement opposition to the troublesome weed. “Why not let Jim do it?” I thought. “Gardening is his gift and passion, not mine.” Which at the time, was true. But retrospectively, I am sure there would have been great benefit to sharing the load, strategizing together, exploring some small contribution that I could have made to a collaborative beautification effort, some gift for me to offer as well. It might have made the burden lighter, or even made the task enjoyable. We might have developed some creative, effective response, heretofore unknown in the international struggle to eradicate goutweed. At the very least, we would have laughed even more than we already did. Now, the responsibility is clearly mine and my perspective has shifted. If I want the benefits, I need to get my hands dirty. From a stance of politically correct eco-purity, I, of course, never resorted to chemicals or anything non-biodegradable. As for me and my house, we will be organic. I became a firm proponent of personal involvement in the issue, developing a relationship with the weed, if you will. I researched the problem in great depth, taking an unhealthy pride in my mastery both of information and my acquisition of Internet research skills. Knowledge is power, and I now know a lot about this antisocial weed. I have vacillated between over-zealous eradication efforts, which exhaust me and those close to me, and seasons of being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the enormity of the problem. Where find the energy to deal with such an intractable, long standing, and seemingly irremediable problem? Oh, the blurring of my social, political, moral, spiritual, and horticultural lives! I resonated with the parallels between the goutweed conundrum and my own discouragement about ever healing our weary, struggling world. I’ve flirted with futility and despair on both counts. And then one day, I had an epiphany: I needed to shift my imagery and attitude. I once thought of goutweed as a metaphor for all that is wrong with the world: irresponsible and opportunistic government, pervasive greed, aggressive and self-centered individuals of all descriptions. In my arrogance and need to blame, I identified the source of the problem as people and situations outside of myself, all needing to be controlled, shut down or up, silenced and pulled from the garden of public discourse and interaction. The solution to all our social problems comfortably resided in changing other people, not me. But after years of wrangling with the world and the weed, I now think of those entangled, persistent, resistant, and irritating plants as my own ego dysfunctions; my entrenched and deeply rooted need to be right, to impress, to control. My invidious judgments, my need for dominance, my desire to crowd out the opinions of others, the list goes on and on. And it is so very clear to me that these are the roots of injustice and war. Our collective clinging to these same behaviors creates the world in which we live, a world where the invasive, aggressive ascendancy of relentless ego leaves little or no room for the flowering of the Divine: for love, compassion, gentleness, mercy, justice. A world so full of avarice and fear that there is no space for peace to take root and flourish. So now, I take my time with the goutweed; just a little every day: watching carefully for that first tell-tale leaf pushing through the dirt, digging deep to find the offending cause, all the while reflecting on how my own actions have blocked peace, spread negativity, compromised the rights of others to flourish and grow . I know the goutweed will never be completely gone, and this is an oddly reassuring thought. Making space for peace requires constant work and vigilance: patient attention to the things that make for peace, steady awareness of those things that do not, and some intentional, highly personal response. And I know from some deep intuitive place that peace and justice, once deeply rooted, are even more tenacious and extravagantly prolific than goutweed. Uprooting our own collusive behaviors may just be the necessary prelude to the flowering of a gorgeous, wildly abundant peace. And through it all, I give thanks for the struggle, and for the life of the weed, this wisdom teacher, this blessing in my life. Gardening is as much about tending the soul as it is the soil. Sharon Browning
|