Summerness

This is my first update in a while. Sorry.
I briefly toyed with the idea of faking a number of previous posts stretching back for the past month. If I wrote them today, they would have titles like “Summer Dreams and Plans,” “On Being Idle,” “Just Hangin’ Around,” “Job Search,” “Job Found,” “Lawn Work Is Great,” “Pulling Weeds is Not So Great,” and finally, “Redeeming creation one weed at a time” (the last is an actual post from my other blog).

So that’s what has happened so far. I stayed in GR as long as possible, moved out late at night (much to my father’s chagrin) from the Koinonia house, and hung around Holland for a two weeks. During that time I read lots, surfed the internet at 33.1kbs (thanks to free-but-slow AOL dialup), and slept. Eventually, my dad prodded me into finding a job. So I looked around, applied at a nearby garden center, picked up a Meijer app (and even partially filled it out!), and ended up picking up the phone and calling the uncle of a cousin, a relative somehow I guess, who owns a landscaping/lawncare business. He had just the spot: a lot of work during the month of June (trimming bushes) that required a temporary extra hand. So I got the perfect job for me: just the right time frame, decent pay, good hours, 4 days/wk, with family, working beside my cousin Gavin, and having a decent time.

That’s where I’m still at today: picking up bush trimmings most days of the week, with occasional bouts of weed-pulling and sledgehammer-swinging. I enjoy it, especially being outside and getting a nice farmer’s tan. Today I ate my lunch (cold moro: rice with chickpeas; forgot the spoon…) under the dappled shade of a tall oak tree.

I listen to a lot of NPR at work; that is, whenever I’m in the truck or near it or on break… my boss listens to it a lot too (I was surprised) and I’m working on convincing my cousin Gavin that NPR rocks. It may take more time than I’ve got. Last Friday I got paid to sit around and listen to NPR for an hour. That really rocked.

Redeeming creation one weed at a time

Inspired by the wise, thoughful posts of friends on their summer jobs(see Dean’s blog), I have decided to show some signs of life on this blog and post a few of the deep thoughts that run through my head as I work.

During June I work at a lawn care/nursery in the Holland area, owned by a sort-of relative (a primo in the Dominican sense of the word). The company has a few Mexican employees, as well as my cousin Gavin and I. Since we don’t have the training to run the fancy machines, Gavin and I are relegated to picking up trimmings and weeding. It’s not glamorous work, but I enjoy it most of the time. The abundant quiet time during the day should give me lots of time to think, but in reality my thoughts are more often ordinary than lofty.

On Monday, after a few too many hours of pulling weeds from endless curves of landscaped corporate gardens, my cousin asked me a really deep question: “Why did God create weeds?” Which immediately led me to think about cockroaches, another one of those creatures on the planet that has one purpose for its existence: to feed the ants. Well, that and maybe some intangible contribution to biomass and environmental equilibrium, but that’s beyond me. I told Gavin that I had no idea why weeds existed (after ranting about cockroaches for a few minutes).

I had thought about the purpose of weed-pulling (and lawn care in general) the previous week, wondering what sort of contribution I was making to hasten the kingdom of God (thanks to the Sunday sermon, which I mostly tuned out). I have my doubts about the whole enterprise, from the immaculate green grass (thanks to countless fertilizers and pesticides, not to mention gallons of gas for the lawnmowers) to the neatly trimmed bushes shaped in perfect bells and spheres, from the perfect little flower gardens (weeded by yours truly or knocked out by a heavy dose of chemicals) to the unnaturally blue ponds. I hate the monotonous sameness of these condo communities, with their identical shrubs, drab walls, winding cul-de-sacs, empty yards, SUVs, limited ages. After a while, a biodiversity quotient of six types of plants numbs one’s soul.

To be honest, I see little redeeming value in weeds, the pulling thereof, or the whole lawn care business. Sure, it’s a paycheck that will buy a few college textbooks and maybe a beer or two in Amsterdam. Sure, I’m kept busy, out of trouble, by the chance to work. And I derive a not-insignificant amount of personal pleasure from a job well done, a flower bed clean of weeds, a raked lawn, or a trimmed bush. But that’s not enough. There must be a greater purpose to pulling weeds. Someone, please, help me figure it out.