Thriving in the light

Thriving in the sunlight
even when it's overcast!

In the last post, we talked about buckthorn – that invasive non-native species that clutters up forests in the American Midwest – and how it is a metaphor for whatever would clutter our thinking. All human clutter is non-native to man as God’s loved spiritual idea.

It’s exciting to see the results once that clutter is removed. The most obvious result is light! Light everywhere – to the left, to the right, and in between. With all this light, the forest’s natural beauty reappears. Where underbrush grabbed at your legs a year ago, wildflowers bask in newly discovered space and sunshine.

To push the light metaphor a little further, you and I are not that different from the flowers – insofar as we thrive in the light of our creator’s love for us.

The non-native invasive species of anger, envy, hate, resentment create an unnatural shade in which life becomes a struggle.

It takes persistent commitment to remove the over-competitive buckthorn. Also, on the mental and spiritual level, it takes persistent commitment to a God of Love to remove invasive species from our lives, so we can thrive and be as beautiful and useful and joyous as He/She intends.

Seeing the forest by removing the clutter

Notice how you can see distant treetrunks

-- because (except for the person sitting on the log)

there is no clutter!

In the Chicago area, we are blessed with somebody’s foresight decades ago – to set aside green areas now known as the Cook County Forest Preserves. These are acres and acres of green space scattered around this big county, that include picnic tables, fields, forests, trails, and ponds.

Nearby counties have followed suit, and most have their own Forest Preserves as well.

The villain in this happy picture is buckthorn. Buckthorn was brought to America from Europe in the 1800s because it made good hedges. It also thrived and became a problem because it out-competes native vegetation. Its leaves become green earliest in the spring, and create dense shade that native flowers and plants cannot tolerate.

Forest Preserves frequently tap volunteers to help remove these hardy pests, and follow up with controlled burns. These prescribed fires remove ground litter like dead leaves and branches that would otherwise accumulate to become fuel for an unplanned and uncontrolled fire.

It’s been exciting to see some amazing results. Walking through controlled burn areas, you can actually see between the trees without the clutter of invasive buckthorn. Only the litter is gone. The tree trunks haven’t even been scorched. In spring tiny and magnificent wild flowers actually keep growing because they have light. Harmful insects that live in Buckthorn are also gone.

So I got to thinking, buckthorn can be a metaphor for our lives. It’s something that isn’t native to us, that out-competes what is natural to us, by cutting off the light of God’s goodness.

What’s natural to mankind as the likeness of a universally present God, are qualities like patience, kindness, thoughtfulness, wisdom.

The buckthorn of life would be anger, hate, resentment, jealousy, impatience, self-importance. If indulged, these take over and snuff out our innate intelligence and caring.

Sometimes we realize what’s going on, and we voluntarily dig out the roots of the buckthorn that’s messing up our life view.

Other times, our Father-Mother starts a controlled burn that removes the clutter of rage and criticism – without harming us. We may resist the heat and the smoke, but it is so much easier to fulfill our purpose in this world when the buckthorn has been uprooted and the clutter burned.

That’s when we can look around and see how very beautiful life is. That's when we gain a better sense of our value and discover new opportunities to contribute to the infinite scheme of life.