Stump Grinders, Dignity and Bruised Reeds Not Broken
It’s been a month since I’ve written. I’ve found words hard to form in the swirl of post-election headlines and family needs that don’t stop for existential dread. We just returned from an unplanned trip to Michigan to visit my grandmother who had severe complications from a knee-replacement surgery. We stayed with my 91-year-old grandfather who has had several falls and who is absolutely lost without my grandma while she is recovering in a bleak rehab facility. The amount of indignities we saw this week were many but on Wednesday, we had the most violent, surreal experience of them all. Selfishly, I’m writing to bear witness and to find some sort of meaning in what felt so senseless.
We were sitting at the breakfast table, when we heard chainsaws and saw a crew of tree professionals moving around behind the house. My grandpa had said the neighbor had mentioned they might be trimming some on their side. Unbeknownst to any of us, the entire hedge my grandparents had planted 54 years ago was all on the other line of two green metal stakes. Before any of us could move, tree trimmers moved in and began cutting down spirea bushes, rose of sharon, forsythia, all overgrown and old, to be sure, but the work of my grandparents hands. I have countless memories of the cascade of white flowers in the backdrop of their yard. My sister and I would make tunnels under it to play with the neighbor girls when we were young. My grandma had a rhubarb patch that was over fifty years old that she cuts and preps for me still each spring.
The hedge (along the white house behind theirs) and my Grandma, ten years ago.
We slipped on some boots and went to talk with the men to see what in the world was going on. They told us it was all set to be removed, that it was all on the neighbors’ property, that all they were removing was old and no good, and that what they were going to put in the spring would be so much better. Meanwhile, birds flew frantically into the increasingly small patch of brush. My grandpa watched from inside, and mentioned their rhubarb patch. We asked the men if we could save it. They said they doubted it would come back up in the spring but that we had about 20 minutes before it was gone to save what we could.
With tears pouring down my face, Patrick and I were able to wrestle a few clumps of rhubarb out of the almost frozen ground. We broke an ancient shovel while the men kept working, not even stopping while we dug.
In under an hour, the entire row of plants and shrubs was gone, ground by a huge stump remover, raked and leveled.
The strip of brown is all that was left. 54 years of growth vanished in less than an hour.
Some burly men and the neighbor (who eventually stopped by when he heard how upset we were), saw me ugly cry and refuse to stop watching what felt like a violation, a terrible metaphor of loss and powerlessness in the context of my grandparent’s vulnerability and the world’s terrible state.
I cried for my Grandma who would return home to a new landscape and who because of MRSA she contracted IN the hospital would have to pay $600 a WEEK deductible OUT of pocket for five weeks of IV antibiotics. Nothing to do but pay.
I cried for my Grandpa who once was a four-sport varsity letterman, a minor league baseball pitcher, a sports photographer, a GM engineer, and a community fixture watching powerlessly as new people who didn’t know them removed without comment what was beautiful and long-standing.
I cried for museums with thousands of years of human history bombed in Gaza, Indigenous people watching their lands ravaged because of man-made boundary lines, for organizations and advocates who worked toward progress and justice and who are anticipating the vanishing of this work over the next four years. I cried for flocks of birds without a home in the dropping temperatures.
Patrick and I spent a lot of time talking about what would have made this experience less traumatic and more respectful. It boiled down to knowing the stories of the places we enter, communicating clearly, honoring history, giving dignity, and acknowledging that even in changes that have to happen, there is often something worth saving.
All week, the description of Jesus the Servant in Isaiah 42 has been rolling around in my head:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
The Message translation puts it this way:
I’ve bathed him with my Spirit, my life.
He’ll set everything right among the nations.
He won’t call attention to what he does
with loud speeches or gaudy parades.
He won’t brush aside the bruised and the hurt
and he won’t disregard the small and insignificant,
but he’ll steadily and firmly set things right.
There are so many changes I want to see in my family, my community, our country, the church. I joke to Patrick often, “Ugh, I just want to burn it all down!” There is much that needs to be torn down to the ground and be set right.
And yet, we follow not only Jesus but the Way of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t brush aside, disregard, break, snuff, quench (ESV), crush or extinguish (NLT). He didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.
I remember distinctly joking when I painted the nursery at IMC about what I felt were garishly bright colors of yellow, orange and blue. Graciously, Sally said to me, “ please don’t say anything too harsh. People including me painted that to be bright and cheerful for the children.”
Knowing the stories of the places we enter, communicating clearly, honoring history, giving dignity, and acknowledging that even in changes that have to happen, there is often something worth saving.
When we change the ways we do church, when we make decisions that affect our neighborhoods, when we get the chance to lead in new spaces, when we enter into the playroom after our children have set up what looks like a mess to us, how are we making changes. Are we doing the above, acknowledging the powerless feelings that changes can cause, honoring what could amount to 54 years of growth even if acknowledging that it might be time to change the landscape?
As we move into Advent, I’m thinking about Isaiah 11, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Jesus didn’t come out of nowhere. There was enough left in the particular family of God to sustain the growth of its Messiah.
May we slow down, know the stories, communicate clearly, honor history, give dignity, save what’s worth saving (it might be fertile ground for new growth), and be gentle with those who might be feeling bruised and brushed aside amidst our changing world.
