Dandelions for the Gospel

A dandelion tattoo festoons my left forearm, a puffball ready to launch its wispy seeds. Asked to speak at one of our congregations one Sunday, I intended to start the children’s feature by showing the tattoo.

“Can you do that?” a friend asked. “Can you show a tattoo in church?”

That exchange is object lesson No. 1, and I will let you decide what to take from it.

The dandelion is object lesson No. 2. As I told the children, dandelions remind me of my faith, and I want every one of them to think of their faith every time they see a dandelion. Reckon they’d be thinking of God a lot then!

“In other words, thou shalt not ‘weedkill’ the dandelions, for then thou hinder the Lord your God from communicating with thee.”

I say that in jest. But dandelions are hard to stamp out, just as God will find a way around human efforts to avoid or suppress God. The more effort we put into fighting, the more vigorous means God will use to “weedkill” the sin in our ears and lives. Maybe that analogy is a bit strong. Still, both God and dandelions are stubborn, persistent, a bit wild and outside our control.

Like the chickadee—that oh-so-common bird that is among my favourites—the even-more-common dandelion ranks high among my favourite flowers.

What do you see when you think of dandelions? Weed? Food? Nuisance? Beauty? Green leaves suddenly bursting with yellow transforming later to white? Seedy puffballs upon which some of us make wishes and others assign enmity? Since we have just passed through Easter and the stories are still fresh, doesn’t that last bit sound like Jesus?

The dandelion is a source of wonder; its seeds can float eight kilometres! Every part of it is edible. Salad greens, roasted roots, dandelion tea and wine. Dandelions are full of vitamins and nutrients, with antioxidants and compounds that can reduce inflammation and blood pressure, and possibly other health problems. They are herbs misclassified as weeds. Dandelions are useful, even as they are undervalued and even despised.

A few years ago, Kevin Derksen combined the parable of seed and sower (Matthew 13) with a reflection on dandelions. It is a “wild and stubborn counterculture in a world of domesticated lawns,” he wrote in the June 3, 2020, issue of Canadian Mennonite. The gospel of dandelions contrasts with polite and domesticated forms of Christian faith. Dandelions are feral. They will always escape our control.

Maybe that is part of why they are labelled “weeds.” The label illustrates the command-and-control attitudes of modernity; human egotism; and forms of science and technology that manipulate, subjugate or eliminate that which is determined to be unregulated or in need of discipline. Science and technology have many benefits but they can also be used for dominion and domination. Think eugenics.

But notions like “weeds” or “invasive species”—things that are wild, undesirable or out-of-place—have been applied to humans, especially of various immigration statuses or ethno-racial categories. It is a way of enforcing exclusivity.

And so we go back to dandelions. Are they an apt metaphor for the Gospel?

Perhaps, instead we should be like the dandelion—unapologetic, growing wild but as beautiful flowers—brilliant yellow amidst the green but sterile lawns. Useful, too, if our gifts are valued. And, although some will be annoyed by you, others will take delight, making wishes and blowing seeds into the wind.

When Randy Haluza-DeLay owned a house with a yard, it was an interesting source of discussion with neighbours.

Read more Mind and Soul columns:
Chickadee as sacrament
Beyond free speech
Say no to moralistic therapeutic deism
Christmas delight?
Writing for the foyer