About the Three Carrots

I have been marveling at the three carrots on a brick wall for, saints preserve me, twenty years.

It was Spring and I was walking through the old neighborhoods that surrounded my undergraduate school, weaving aimlessly around quiet streets and thinking my young person's thoughts. I was very good at this. I worried and sighed. I felt in a hurry to know things and to experience life and to grow wise.

As I walked, my hand traced a thick brick wall that lined one yard. The bricks were old and worn, but sturdy. As I turned the corner, my fingers still on the bricks, an unexpected sight met me. There on the wall, a few feet ahead of me, sat three fat carrots. They looked home grown and freshly picked, the greens still attached and only a little wilted.

There was no sign of their purpose on that wall. No one was nearby working. There was no note to explain their placement ("Marge: here are those carrots I was telling you about.") They were too big to be left out for the squirrels, and too high up to be food for the rabbits. The carrots seemed pointless, and yet there were so deliberately placed.

For a reason I still can't explain, the sight of these three carrots sent my mind reeling. Why are they there? What is their puprose? Who has placed these carrots? I wanted to know all the answers immediately. I felt anxious--even panicky--about the my inability to make sense of the sight. My intellectual powerlessness frightened me.

And then a calmness floated in through the transom of my mind. It was the still small voice of perspective that I suddenly heard in my heart, and it told me to be still. I heard myself saying, "Someone knows why there are three carrots on a brick wall, but it is not me."

In a rush, I realized that three carrots on a brick wall were not my business to solve. I could see them, acknowledge my lack of knowledge, and keep walking. The carrots did not need my understanding to exist.

My little experiences do not give meaning to the world.

The peace I had at the moment of realization, when I finally understood my point of view in the big universe, was profound. So profound that I continue to mark it as the end of my child mind and the start of my wisdom...such as it is.

That is when I learned to allow things to be unclear to me without anxiety and without dispair. This is helpful in human interactions, relationships, but most especially in subjects of Faith.

Like the three carrots on a brick wall, there are thousands of things that I currently do not understand about how human's practice religion, about the meaning of our lives, about what happens when we die. But I do not despair at my lack of understanding. And I do not mark these points of confusion as shortcomings of the Creator.

Gracious God: I seek holy perspective on the world. Be near me when I become anxious about the limits of my knowledge. Give me Your patience and peace. Nourish my abilty to trust in You and not myself. Amen.