Sunday School Drop out

Sweet Peas. So lovely; thanks to Henry Eckford, a gardener in the 1800s, we have a plethora of colors and strains to pick from. I’ve been awestruck by the color fusions I see every time I encounter a bountiful spread of these flowers.

        But I have a history with sweet peas. And it began with a Sunday School teacher named Miss Louise. I’ll never forget her. I’m dating myself here, but she reminded me of Anita Bryant, with her toothy smile and bouffant hairdo that flipped up at the ends. Very much the rage fifty years ago.

        Back then, I was a 13-year-old kid, and Sunday School was a place to see friends and hang out for an hour while my parents attended church. But then Miss Louise showed up with a packet of seeds and a plan for what she thought was a great life lesson.

        We arrived in class and Miss Louise had us all get set up at little gardening stations. These sweet peas were going to be illustrations for our spiritual growth.

        How wonderful! I was in there with the best of them, gently patting down the little seedlings, spritzing the soil gently with water, setting my terra cotta pot in a place where it could get some, but not too much sunlight.

        The first week went by with no results for me, but I wasn’t concerned. The second week, little green heads started to break through in the pots around mine. I seemed to be the late bloomer. Fair enough. But when the third week and the fourth week went by, I soon had Miss Louise standing over my shoulder as I examined the barren dirt of my impending failure. It seemed my sweet peas were the only ones that hadn’t sprouted.

        “I just don’t understand,” She mused, “Why look at Amy’s over here, how this plant has just reached its little face toward Heaven, like it’s thirsting for – ”

        I opened my mouth to say something incredibly rude about what Amy could do with her sprawling sweet pea, and shut it again. Instead, I just put the pot down and waited for class to end.

        I never went back to Sunday School after that. Miss Louise never inquired as to my absences. Evidently the flowerless pot was all she needed as an explanation.

        Wow, what I would now say today to that very young me. I would say that just because one set of seeds fail, it doesn’t mean other living things won’t thrive under my care. I would say maybe some of those seeds were sick and had infected the soil and I had no control over that, so don’t blame myself. I would say that other people’s commentary on what was going on with my seeds was irrelevant because it was none of their business. And finally I’d say, don’t put the weight of some gargantuan lesson on some tiny seedlings entrusted to a novice gardener. Lessons like that often unfold with experiences over time, embedded in the messy twists and turns of life. How many of the other seeds that sprouted ended up dying soon after? I don’t know, but I’m sure some of them did just that. And what did that say about spiritual growth?

        Nowadays, I grow a lot of different things in my garden. But it’s funny; I’ve never tried, nor do I have the inclination to try, sweet peas. Besides, I’ve also found out they’re poisonous. Beautiful, but poisonous. Oh, the irony…