Planting Seeds
of beauty and hospitality
Last Friday was Halloween and our dear sweet CJ spent the bulk of the day hiding. All of the noise and people make her a little bit anxious.
I love that she has a safe space to go. It is a beautiful thing.
One of my chosen family members shares my love of children’s books, and several years ago shared with me one of her favorites, Miss Rumphius.
It is the most delightful story of a women who is committed to the idea and practice of making the world more beautiful. Theologian and writer Sarah Bessey posted a picture earlier through her substack Field Notes, that shows her dressed as Miss Rumphius for Halloween. “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.” is a line repeated several times in the story. Miss Rumphius chooses the spreading of lupine seeds to add flowers wherever she went. If you are not familiar with the story, I highly recommend it.
We’ve all got the capability to make the world more beautiful. We can welcome strangers, we can show up with flowers or plant them as we go, I imagine there are so many other things that we can think of, ways that we might greet the chaos of the world around us with some seeds in hand.
In the midst of tough things on a world wide scale and some tougher things that hit closer to home, I experienced some beauty this week. I got to laugh with colleagues and fellow board members as we celebrated a recent fundraising success for the local LGBTQIA+ youth center in our community. Laughter is pretty precious these days, I’m so very grateful for it. I got to learn some stories from a new friend who went out of their way to spend some time with me. The leaves are in showoff mode and it’s breezy enough around here that driving around town is like wandering through a rainbow. I went to pick up some pizza after a day long enough that I didn’t have the energy to cook, and the servers recognized me and called me by name as I walked in (my Cheers dream of having a community gathering place where my name is known).
I have a dear friend who has taught me a lot about radical hospitality, which, is one of my favorite things. Radical hospitality is a seed of beauty that produces the absolute best things. One of the first times we met, she showed up at my office in a job I had started that very day, with flowers and snacks. Beautiful white daisies in a mason jar vase and a collection of crackers and veggies to go into pimento cheese. It has been years since that day and I love the stories of the hospitality she offers to the world. She has treats on her doorstep regularly, to the sanitation workers who collect her garbage, she has bottles of water and snacks of all kinds. She knows love languages well, and the giving of thoughtful things is not only her love language, it is her superpower.
Many years ago, Andrew and I sat with her on her front steps on a Halloween night and handed out candy to trick or treaters as they passed by. Every person was greeted with such enthusiasm and kindness, as if they were the most special visitor of the evening. And last week, I came across a quote, and one that I can surely imagine my dear friend sharing with me at some point in the past.
Halloween: a day when we get it right. Strangers come to us, beautiful, ugly, odd or scary, and we accept them all without question, compliment them, treat them kindly, and give them good things. Why don’t we live like that? - Steve Garnass-Holmes
She lives that idea all year round, not just on Halloween. A beautiful inspiration of seeds planted from last week’s Halloween and the Halloweens of years past and all the ways sharing hospitality are both seeds of beauty and the fruits and flowers all at once.
I’m thankful for the beauty that showed up this week, and I’m praying for strength and hope so that I can do my part to spread some seeds myself. The thing about seeds is that they are seen as small in scale, but they can be ever so powerful. A leaf, a small treat shared with strangers, even greeting someone by name- these things that are seemingly small make a difference, not unlike seeds. Not everything has to be a sweepingly grand gesture. (Does anyone have time or energy for grand gestures right now?) For those of us feeling overwhelmed, planting some small seeds is an act of hope and faith. We don’t always get to see or experience the fruits and flowers that come from our seeds, but we plant them anyways, and trust that there will be beauty for the world from those seeds at some point.
Where are you seeing the seeds of beauty? Any suggestions for seeds we can be planting?
In my community and I imagine many others in the US, the ongoing government shutdown is doing a lot of damage. I know that there are so many concerns and very few people have the capacity to meet all the needs or even a few of them. Because food is one of my favorite things, I’m focusing on sharing it for the moment. If you have the capacity to support a food crisis organization in your area, they are very much in need. Serve at a soup kitchen, buy some extra canned goods at the store and donate them to a little food pantry (like the ones located in parking lots where people can drive up and take what they need) or a food distribution. There’s a local Mexican restaurant in my town that posted they would give away a certain number of free meals to people who are missing out on benefits and I’m hopeful that those who could afford to bought and paid for meals there to help keep them in business. Helping to feed hungry people is hospitality, it is beauty, in times of deep need, it is everything. If you want some help finding resources to support or ones that you can use while you are food insecure, please reach out to me and I would love to help you find some.
For love of waffle fries,
and beauty,
and hospitality for strangers,
and of all the things we can do to help feed hungry people,
Jill