Bloom Where You're Planted

This phrase went through my mind some time back, and I've been trying to sort out what I think it means.

Some of the options that I've investigated involve leaving the area and starting over somewhere that seemed more hospitable, for the change of scenery if nothing else. So far, I haven't seen any place that had enough security to make a blind one-way leap with little to fund it and no way back feasible. Solomon made a comment that I think applies: "A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool's eyes wander to the ends of the earth." (Prov. 17:24).

I think that there's something to be said for caution. I also think that there's the issue of not only where we find ourself planted, but of what's been planted in us, to be considered.

We've recently celebrated Martin Luther King Day in this country, which is a noteworthy event in our household. More that 100 years before Dr. King told the world about his dream that his four little children would have room to flourish in a safe and productive culture, William Wilberforce was laying some of the legal bedrock for it in the British Parliament. After experiencing a genuine conversion to Christianity as an adult, he sought the counsel of clergy on whether to leave his seat in Parliament for a more directly spiritual vocation. He was advised to remain at his post, eventually contributing to both The Slave Trade Act of 1807 and The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery that was finally ratified in 1833. News of the latter was rushed to the ailing Wilberforce of its passage three days before his death, as though he had finished his course with that victory.

Another periodic topic of conversation at our house is the saga of Standing Bear, a 19th-century Ponca chief. The United States government decided that this nomadic hunting tribe should settle down and farm. Then, they mistakenly allocated some of their farmland to the Sioux, causing a deadly conflict. They were moved to another place that wasn't home and had the misfortune of going through a hard winter for which they were by that point ill-prepared. The chief's son was among those who died. He could no longer reinvent himself, and had to return to the land around the Niobrara to properly lay him to rest. At great personal risk, he reentered Nebraska with his late son's body, and was arrested while seeking help from relatives on the Omaha reservation. With some volunteer help from an attorney that had read an article on their plight written by journalist Thomas Tribbles, the detainment levied by Gen. George Crook was found to be invalid because "an Indian is a person" within the meaning of the habeas corpus act filed by Standing Bear. Not only he but his tribe was allowed to go home to the Niobrara, and he continued from that point to speak as an advocate for Native rights with the help of translators and other supporters.

Another scion of the Ponca and their neighbors, my friend Karen, started her life not knowing about her origins. She had frequent dreams about Native Americans as a child, but knew of no connection that she had to them until she had her adoption records opened later in life. This information, and the fact that there had been a trail left for her in the dreams, gave her some grounding that helped her recover from what had been a troubled era in her life. She was able to meet her grandmother while she was still alive. She expressed her joy mostly in her native Omaha language, but did comment in English that "Jesus brought the baby back!" The story came to be told as part of her advice to school children and other groups about how to respect the person that we are and the society in which we live enough to make good choices. I just learned that she has been asked to serve as a Native representative on a board of National Service commissioners for Native affairs. My response to her misgivings was another bit of wisdom from Solomon in Prov 18:16: "A gift opens the way for the giver and ushers him into the presence of the great.". What was planted in her and watered by Grandma's prayers is bearing fruit as a demonstrated ability to speak for those who need a voice, or guidance from the voice of experience.

I wonder sometimes how well I can take my own advice. I've recently been encouraged again to explore returning to college in pursuit of a degree in literature. This does seem to reignite some inner spark that's been much too frequently absent lately. I was reading simple books out loud by the age of four, and wrote and illustrated my first poem at five; the love of arranging words is a long-standing one, to say the least. With a first manifestation coming that early, I would say that the urge is quite seminal, and an inescapable part of this individual design. To bloom best, perhaps its sound husbandry to regraft into the deepest roots without the shock of a long transport.