Welcome to the Blackberry Project

If I look at the whole thing, it is overwhelming.

I feel that way about a lot these days: the death of George Floyd, my white privilege,  my lack of awareness of that white privilege, global warming, plastic in the ocean, plastic everywhere else, the national debt, Donald Trump (just everything about him), an unexplained elephant die off in Africa, COVID-19 and this continuing lock down in California that makes it illegal for me to practice massage inside.

See, isn’t it all just a little too much?

That brings me to the blackberries.

When we bought our house seven years ago, it came with four parcels of land. There are two on the side of the road where the house sits. We have never had it officially surveyed, but judging by the county’s tax maps, it looks like the deck off our back door is somehow split between both parcels. If we were to ever sell the bottom parcel, the new owners would get half our deck.

On the other side of our little street, we have two more parcels. They both run alongside a small, year-round creek. The smaller parcel starts at our house and goes down the street toward our neighbor’s house. The larger parcel also starts by our house, but then winds up our street to the stop sign, then turns the corner and intersects with Main Street, giving us a little land on the other side of the creek.

I have a confession. Up until very recently, I didn’t actually realize that this land was ours. I’m not sure what I thought. That we just owned the little bit that fronted Main Street, and everything below it was somebody else’s?

It is not.

It is ours, and it is a mess.

It is tangled with foxtails, blackberry vines and aging black locust trees that are splitting in half and dropping prickly branches all up and down the hillside. The slope at the corner that goes down to the creek is steep and seemingly impossible to traverse. If this lot belonged to someone else, I would shake my head and wonder why the irresponsible owners didn’t do anything about the mess.

Unfortunate reality check.

This is my mess.

I am not sure where to even begin.

So maybe it is the same as with so many things: the only place to begin is where you are.

Welcome to my Blackberry Project.

Here is my plan. My hope, anyway. I am going to make clearing the overgrown lot a part of my meditation practice. I am going to aim for 20 minutes of daily clearing as often as I can. I will set my phone alarm for 20 minutes, and will do what I can in that time. When the alarm sounds, I will go on to something else. One of the rules of this project will be that I can’t spend too much time each day on it. Twenty minutes is enough.

Another rule? I must wear gloves! The baby blackberries look harmless, like you should be able to spot them as you wander by and gently pluck them out at the roots. But you can’t. They have thorns. They will cut you and give you splinters. I have learned this the hard way.

During this time, my intention will be to treat with compassion all that is overgrown in me, for my brambles and stickers and thorns. I will try to honor this parcel of land, this small part of our beautiful world, and nurture all that is native, carefully removing  the suffocating non-native plants, the destroyers.

There is a Bible verse that tells us not to “despise small beginnings (Zechariah 4:10)”.  Mother Teresa said that we sometimes can do no great things, only small things with great love.

For fun, I am videotaping some of my clearing sessions. I started an OrdinaryHoly YouTube channel.  Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRVwjQJYTm_F2l6WYQVg4MQ? While there, take a look at my most recent video, “Blackberry Project on the Road,” which isn’t even about blackberries at all. It is about star thistle, another invasive weed which is gobbling up California which I find quite concerning, especially when it shows up on my neighbor’s property. But amazingly, 20 minutes of focus yesterday seemed to take care of the worst of it.

Here’s one thing about blackberries. They grow quickly, but they really have no chance if I just keep showing up. The problem comes when they are ignored and forgotten.  When I avoid them, they gobble up space, climb trees, make it impossible for wildlife to pass through, and starve out the native plants.

This twenty minutes? It won’t be enough.

It won’t be anything!

It will be what I can do.

It will be a start.

I know that it’s not going to get better in one day.

But people wiser than me say that we often overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do with a small amount of faithful effort over time.

Maybe, if I keep showing up, extraordinary things can happen.

It’s never too late to start.

It’s never too late to show up.

Ordinary time. Ordinary attention. Ordinary love. Ordinary holy.