The newsletter of The Bishop's Ranch, Coming Home, is a bi-annual newsletter about life at the Ranch, a retreat and conference center for all ages. To be added to the newsletter mailing list send your name(s) and address to info@bishopsranch.org
From the Executive Director of the Ranch Goldfinches & Groundsel
Walking near Harrison House, I noticed a patch of weeds by the split rail fence. Though I was walking in a thicket of my own creation–a thicket constructed of the problems of the day, the tumult our land is experiencing and my own inner upheavals–I wasn’t pleased to see the flourishing weeds, clearly ready to spread seeds. So I made a note to ask the maintenance crew to cut them down.
Later, on my way back to the office, the hopping movements of a half-dozen tiny birds in the same weed patch broke through my preoccupation. The birds, each moving individually yet in purposeful concert, landed on the flowering tops of the weeds to eat the cottony seeds forming there. Though their wings were black with a white stripe, the bodies of a few were an intense, bright yellow, others a darker corn-color. In their appearance and movements the little birds had an amiable way about them. Each seemed aware of the other birds in the group as they gleaned the weed patch.
When I looked the birds up that evening I found they were American goldfinches, a common bird, known for their bright canary-like singing and lemon yellow color. I read that they eat only seeds, mostly from plants in the sunflower family that we consider noxious weeds. The European version of this bird has for centuries been associated with the Christ Child, I found, and was often drawn by monks in illuminated manuscripts, perhaps because they eat thistle seeds–thorns. In southern Italy the birds are kept in cages and released on Easter in celebration of the Resurrection. I began to look for the goldfinches and the more I saw them the more I was influenced by the good nature they exhibit, in wind, rain and cold. They are tough little travelers, frequenting waste places where no one else wants to go.
The seeds I’d seen the goldfinches eating were from a weed I recognized from appearance but also had never bothered to identify. I’d waged war against it all my life–cutting it with every kind of tool you can imagine. In Weeds of the West, I saw it is called common groundsel and contains troublesome but sometimes helpful alkaloids. Groundsel has a long history of use by people, even as a medicine until the 1930’s. Just a bit of reading made me think: brother, everything has a back story.
Sometimes I feel so tiny in the immensity of our universe, overwhelmed by problems around me. But I am six feet tall, 165 pounds, dine varied and well, live in a sturdy, heated house, travel by car or commute a few hundred yards to work on foot. Goldfinches, powered by the seeds of a hated weed, are about four inches long, weigh less than a half-ounce and may travel hundreds of miles on their own petite wings in all kinds of weather. And they are much, much more cheerful about it than I.
If the gardener had cut the groundsel down before the seeds formed, the goldfinches would have been elsewhere looking for food and I’d have missed the great pleasure of seeing them. During Lent, and other times, we confess what we have done (wrong) and what we have failed to do. Thinking about our earth, I confess that for some with whom we share the Ranch, our earth, what I have done ‘right’ may be wrong as well. Perhaps what I have failed to do is pay attention. That may be what is most required of us. So if you see a smallish patch of groundsel, sowthistle or a purple flowered scotch thistle at the Ranch please don’t think we are slacking off. We may be just keeping a little for the goldfinches. As for a thicket, or a little weed patch in my soul, even there I may take a moment to pay attention before cutting it down.
(Many thanks to the people of Church of the Resurrection, Pleasant Hill, for helping me sort further through these thoughts.)
