“In our small garden I have made a wild place to remind me of chaos, Andrew once wrote in his column. Our modern lives are too ordered, too antiseptic.” From Little Bee by Chris Cleaver

I agree…and then I don’t. Our “ordered and antiseptic” ways allow humans to live a longer and less stressful life. We know when and where our food and water will come next. We know what to expect in life and can plan our lives and become more prosperous. We know where to go for help and when to work things out for ourselves. We have more power over our lives.

If each day, I woke up with no order to things, I’d spend most of my day finding food, water, and shelter, and keeping that from everyone else doing the same. Without our antiseptic ideas, we’d continue to eat lower quality dirty food and water, and our wounds would fester and kill us. That’s the old way of living. Lives were harder, shorter, and rough. Pastoral life was not pleasant.

But the whole world is not ordered and antiseptic. There are wild places near our gardens that remind us of chaos. Whole regions, countries, and continents. People there spend their lives trying to stay alive as long as they can in very rough ways. They make terrifying attempts to get to places that are more ordered and antiseptic. And many times, we throw those weeds back into the wild place.

I’ve spent my morning wondering…

What can we do to help the rest of the world find more order, become more antiseptic? How do we, who have found ourselves in the middle of a garden, help that garden spread so that the rest of the world can prosper and thrive with us?

Read the previous post inspired by this book, “Little Bee: Scars”