Remember Noah

The red jaboticaba will test your faith between year one and two.

In the morning, I wrote, “Causation is impossible to ascertain.” Behind every cause there could be another cause and a cause of this into infinity. This thought brings great freedom. Peace comes with the idea that I might be wrong. Peace comes with the idea that God, sometimes in the form of another human being, can bring me closer to the truth. And peace comes in helping all those you know to explore what it is they want to explore. 

I sat with a group of people who discussed business and the bible and their experiences with both. One man spoke of how we don’t necessarily know what is going to happen when people come to us, that we can’t always trust our own thinking and how some of our greatest triumphs come through no thought of our own. Some come from saying yes even when we do not understand or believe in what we are about to do. 

It was easy fifteen years ago. I always said yes. I always answered my phone. And I passed these ideas along to others and still think this is a good way to live in God’s will if you have nothing happening. Through this process, a big life unfolds, a wife and a house in the suburbs and two businesses and a lawn that needs to be mowed to keep up with the Joneses. And the Joneses, they mow a lot!

Yes has to be weighed. The black and white thinking grayed. A constant state of prayer. And in this small voice, the right answers come. One man this morning spoke of Noah, how he built a boat in the middle of the desert and waited a hundred years. Wonder what Old Noah’s neighbors thought of this man’s giant boat sitting on sand day after day. In no way whatsoever keeping up with the Joneses.

But look at what his patience led to. Look at how his belief brought variety when the waters receded. This same man then said, “Zach, when you plant a seed, you can’t see it’s growing, right? You have to have faith. You have to believe.”

I said that I was thinking similar thoughts in the parking lot. I am the one who believes that rather than plant a tree you plant a hundred seeds and trust that what is meant to be will be. I can see this plain as day, know this, have borne witness to the power of seedlings, have known death and resurrection.

I said that I had many irons in the fire and that these proverbial irons are like seeds, that people are seeds, that situations are the same and if we can see that God delivers the sun and the rain, there is no difference between the people and the outcomes that come to us.

Save for sentience. A sensitive plant knows my finger. The same plant does not turn away wind, rain or sun. It’s just not in the plant's makeup. But us, oh, we have thoughts that will push blessings away. We have the need for certainty, the need to determine causation, the need to know, to secure a firm spot.

How often has this blocked me? How would I do waiting a hundred years? 

Another guy brought up Chinese bamboo and said that this bamboo lies dormant, doesn’t grow a bit until all of a sudden, bam, eighty feet in the fourth year. I don’t know that I could have held on. I don’t know that I would not have given up.

There are many zen parables about the way bamboo bends and my mind could have gone to a dense path in Vietnam. Instead, I thought of jaboticaba, of how I was talking to Danny from Milo Gardens. I showed him my red jaboticaba and told him of my concern, that it didn’t seem to be doing that well. He said that plinia are like that, they grow up for a year and then stall out. 

Or maybe Kevin told me this. Either way, there is hope. There is rain water and sun and if I ever need to complain to any of these growers, all they’ve got to say is, “Zach, remember Noah.”