CRAZY DAISIES

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?" — Annie Dillard

This chapter was inspired by a church service in Bangkok, Thailand. I remember walking by a Christian church one Sunday morning. I stepped inside to see what church might look like in Thailand. What I saw looked regular enough from a western perspective, but I felt troubled for reasons that I couldn't put my finger on at first.

I watched as the Thai Christians stood and sang western hymns, listened to a western-style sermon, complete with offering plate, of course, and performed all the proper posturing that is called for. It had all the trappings of a church in say...Nebraska.

I left feeling unaccountably saddened. Over the next few days, I began to realize why.

These lovely Thai believers were dressed as westerners. They held themselves stiffly, awkwardly, not as relaxed easy-going Thais. They shook hands or hugged exactly as one might in an American Baptist church. Their hair styles were copied from the evangelicals. Even their smiles and mannerisms were borrowed from the west. They were stilted and unnatural in everything they did! It was the saddest thing ever. Who had done this to them?!

What was so offensive about their Thai-ness that their culture and personalities had to be erased and replaced with this dreadful caricature? Why couldn't they simply believe the gospel and let it enhance their lives. Surely this was not the aim of Christ.

Even as an American, I knew there was a difference between the Book and the cultural overlay. I chafed at the culture back then with all its peculiar expectations and demands. It seems you couldn't just receive Christ. You had to take on the particular culture...church suppers with their starchy casseroles, nightly bowls of ice cream, joining the other women with all their unchristian gossip or the emasculated men with their faux Christian personas.

One had to adhere to the myriad and widely varied denominational particulars around behaviors such as makeup, dress, banned activities, alcohol use, etc. The heavy cultural overlay of the church was not only unnecessary. It was erroneous to the point of being misleading and harmful...even dangerous at times. I was sick of their fads, programs, big business, politics, infighting, hypocrisies and twisted thinking.

It was then that the idea of the crazy daisies came to me...

"Oh, it’s just those crazy daisies again,” I said to my friend.

"What’s a crazy daisy?"

"Well… let me tell you a little story…

In the beginning when the world was first created, flowers were given to every land and place. Every kind of flower imaginable. So many different kinds you could hardly count them. The whole world was overflowing with their beauty. Each land declared a national flower for all to admire.

Who could possibly invent all these blossoms? Why, God, of course, some will say. Great Creator or Mother Earth, others will say. However it came about, one thing is clear. Creator loves variety!!

Just to ponder the vast array of flowers would leave one overcome with amazement and delight! Tiny blossoms blooming in the snow, flowers in the desert, flowers that bloom only in the night and some that bloom only once a year.

They come in more hues and combinations than anyone could dream of…pinks and purples and yellows and oranges and reds! I have even seen a black flower and it, too, was very mysterious and wonderful. Some simple, some extravagant, some frilly, some with stripes! Such a myriad of shapes, sizes and perfumes!

When I step into someone else’s garden, I cannot help but admire the very special beauty of it.

When I step into someone else’s garden I cannot say “Oh! This should be over there! And those roses are the wrong color for that spot! This is too lush! Too strange."

Imagine my surprise when I stepped into a Zen Garden finding no flowers at all.

It is said in scripture that we can learn about God in three ways….through nature, through the voice of conscience and through sacred writings.

In our culture we put most of the emphasis on the study of the Christian scriptures. We prefer words, apparently,

Now, proceeding from that, came more words, many more words, endless explanations and much talk… some of it leading to arguments and divisions and confusion.

Such an avalanche of words and clamor!! Why, it could give one such a headache or a bellyache!

We are so full of words. Not so full of love…which is the primary message of the gospel. We have made so much commerce and so little community.

Sometimes I just have to take myself away…

I thought I would give nature a try. It was legal after all, even though most preachers would insist that the pew encased in four walls was the more proper setting for spiritual instruction. But I knew that something was missing and if God had messages for us in nature, maybe I should try to learn something from that perspective.

To be fair, there were a few pastors talking about their love of nature…and the strange way that manifested. I happened to eavesdrop one Monday morning on a pastor's breakfast in a local restaurant as a group of church leaders spoke enviously of a fellow pastor who had organized hunting trips for the men in his congregation. It had really boosted attendance at his church!

Their idea of loving nature was to go out and shoot at it every weekend.

Now I didn’t know much about nature… Real nature, not text book nature, you understand. So I went for walks in the woods and fields. The first thing I realized was that nature was kind of chaotic. Not neat and tidy as I’d hoped. Everything was just all jumbled up together…or so it seemed to my unpracticed eye.

Now farmers know that various plants make very good neighbors. They protect each other and they give shelter and food. They return nourishment to the earth. They keep balance. All without committees and governments and laws. Imagine…

The next thing I noticed was the astonishing variety in nature. Why so many trees? So many insects? Birds? Flowers? What makes a weed and what makes a flower? Who decides ? That seemed a bit suspect to me. Weeds were beautiful too!

But since we’re on the subject of flowers… There is such a dazzling array of flowers in this world. So, so amazing! You could spend your whole life traveling and not see every kind of flower. You just can’t help but see that God loves flowers. ‘He’ loves color! From pale pale shades to brilliant, bold, even outlandish colors. Yes, even black flowers, flowers that bloom only once a year and only at night? Flowers that can withstand storms and snow. Flowers that can only be found in one corner of the world. There are the tiniest of blooms all the way up to an Asian flower that grows to over 3 feet in diameter. There is such a wild profusion of colors and designs… It stretches our imaginations way beyond bounds...

It is supposed to!

If we could drop all our sermons and books and programs for just a little while and ponder only one thing…flowers...we would learn so much more of God.

When you look at flowers, you see that vast creative, even madcap genius of God…. or at least a speck of it.

We have a lot of information here….

The almighty LOVES to create a wildly abundant variety of beautiful things. God loves variety, color, splendor, simplicity, beauty for beauty’s sake, things that we might consider bizarre. He loves abundance and crazy mixtures that are somehow harmonious. There is no end of delight offered to us.

Each beautiful creation is a story God exults in telling.

Who can say that the rose is more beautiful than a sunflower? They each have their unique loveliness. They are beyond compare and they are perfect in their setting.

Flowers are peaceable. They do not go to war as God’s children often do. If only we would sit in these cathedrals and learn from nature.

But let us just imagine nature gone astray…

Let us imagine that one day a certain flower would rebel and forget God. Oh! How terrible a thing! They would still look like flowers but maybe they would lose a little of their luster, a little of their brilliance, a little of the reflected light of the sun. Their happiness would be a bit diminished and so, too, their vitality.

Maybe in their forgetfulness, they would view man as the greatest creation of all. Perhaps they would aspire to imitate man. Can you imagine such a thing?

Well… That is what happened to a daisy one time. When it was full of thoughts of God, it was radiant and smiling, happy to be alive along with all the other gorgeous flowers.

But when its thoughts strayed, a strange thing happened. It took note of itself for the first time.

This little daisy looked at its pretty yellow petals, it’s lovely leaves and its bright center. "Why, how very beautiful I am!" It was certainly true.

The daisy looked all around her. She was in a beautiful field of daisies. A sea of white and yellow flowers as far as she could behold. It was breathtaking! Then she got the idea of rising up a little higher so that she could be tall and fine like some others. If she tried hard enough, maybe she could be the tallest and fairest of all. Then she could be noticed and admired by all the others. She did indeed capture the attention of the other daisies as she rose to block their sun.

She soon gathered a following of daisies that wanted to be just like her. And before long, there was an army of daisies all motivated by the desire to be the best.

As time went on, they began to look down on their neighbors. A humble crocus was nothing in comparison to a fine daisy. Roses were just too varied and haphazard. Thorns were definitely out! Climbing vines were too unruly.

In their self-adoration, fault could be found with any and all of the other flowers... None of the others were as beautiful and fine as the daisy.

In their zeal, they determined that all the other flowers should strive to become daisies.

That, to me, is the American church. They are the crazy daisies that cannot see the beauty of the other creations in God's Garden.

We are all flowers in God's garden...here by design...radiant with divine beauty.

The lilting Irish rose, the mysterious Indian Lotus, the African Bird of Paradise, the exquisite Thai orchids...and so many more.

Who is to say that the Thai orchid is not suitable? That it must go...and be replaced by a deformed daisy?

A native converted is a native spoiled.

The church has stepped into God's garden and tried to re-arrange it.

We got off on the wrong foot many years ago when we were expelled from a garden...

Then someone put a heavy-handed emphasis on the idea of subduing the earth. The original command was to replenish the earth and subdue it. In that was contained the idea of prosperity and abundance for all.

It only takes a small error to compound great mistakes.

Subduing the earth...not the people…

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ps... I must tell you that in one instance, the Orchids won the day.

On one of my trips to Thailand, I stayed at a guest house that was host to a well-known Christian youth group. Every two weeks, they received a new group of missionary youth and dispatched the previous group.

Their mission project consisted of hauling logs from a village at the base of a mountain to a village high up the mountain. In the evenings they would hold church services for the lost souls of the northern villages. They would sing and preach and hold an altar call. Nearly all of the ‘heathen’ answered the call and gave their hearts to Christ. The young missionaries would carefully record all the converts they had made for the folks back home in the States. They went village by village throughout the region and saved whole unreached tribal groups!

When their rotation was over, the next group was flown in. They busied themselves fetching those very same logs from the upper reaches to the lower villages on the mountain. They also boasted outstanding numbers of new converts to the lord night after night everywhere they went. Whole villages turned out to receive the lord!

I began to dig deeper into this mission project…

The Thai people had been obliging the young missionaries the whole time. On the one hand, they were able to give their elephants a rest during logging season. And in their kind way, they had agreed to all turn out to receive the lord each night as though for the first time so that the young missionaries would feel that they were a success.

Such is the Thai way…

with metta (loving kindness) and a bit of sanuk thrown in (wise-hearted playfulness)

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