Weed Or Flower, there is beauty in us all

Did you know the only real difference between a weed and a flower is what the gardener thinks of the plant. If they think a plant is desirable, they'll see it as a flower; a thing of beauty and something to keep. If they think the plant is taking away from the beauty of their other plants, they'll see it as something to remove - to kill.

I think of the poor dandelion. It's fate determined not by where its seeds land, but what the owner of the soil on which those seeds land thinks of them after they bloom.

I mean, really - to me - the dandelion looks like a miniature version of the sunflower. I often see people having their pictures taken in the middle of a bright yellow field full of sunflowers, but never with dandelions.

I wonder if that's because we've been told sunflowers are flowers and dandelions are weeds?

I wonder how many people don't want to have their pictures taken next to us because of what someone else decided to call us. I wonder how many of us flowers begin to see ourselves as weeds because of those same labels.

I guess by definition flowers are desirable; weeds are not. The reality is, though, we are all full of traits that are both desirable and undesirable. None of us are either flower or weed.

Maybe the aim, though, is to get better at seeing everyone as a flower and not immediately removing them because someone told us they are a weed.

Richard Rohr says, "What love means is to say, “I know your faults, I see your weeds, and I care for you anyway.” Only God’s heart, only the mind of Christ in us, really and fully knows how to do that."

The heart of Jesus - by instinct - doesn't see flower or weed, it sees beauty. It's a heart that doesn't care to adapt to our definitions of flower and weed, it's more concerned with us adopting that heart's instinct for beauty.

Maybe it starts with looking at a dandelion and thinking, what a beautiful flower.

Then maybe it goes to us looking at one another, flaws and all, and thinking - what a beautiful human.

That's hard to do sometimes, because we often operate from definitions - and the beautiful human response often requires super human instincts.

The kind Jesus has, and longs for us to adopt.

And maybe that does start with the dandelion.