Amuck with Delight

You gotta love Huck’s enthusiastic, single-mindedness of purpose, don’t you? His total body engagement in the pursuit of flowers. He’ll eat anything, but flowers are his favorite. And when flowers are involved Huck can’t resist!

He scrambles on the tips of his super-grip toes. He clambers with his knees, his tail and his nose.

The thing is, all that scrambling, clambering doesn’t seem to often get Huck where he wants to be or what he wants to eat. Just a whisker away from the flowers atop the summit, just a whisker away from Mrs. Tuppleton’s flowery underpants, just a whisker away form the flowers Mr. Watson has bought for his wife, just a whisker away from the flowers on Mrs. Spooner’s hat, he falls off the mountain, spins in the clothesline, tumbles off the bridge, sees the wind whisk the hat away. All that scrambling, all that clambering, and Huck lands in a pond, in a pile of boxes, on top of a boy on a bicycle. Not a single mouthful of flowers. Not even a taste of flowers.

Then, when he scrambles and clambers for the last time, to the tip top of the steeple, a lurching, perching, climbing sensation, and Mrs. Spooner’s flowered hat just a whisker away for a second time, when all his running amuck is about to pay off in a flower feast–Huck reins himself in. He takes that hat in his mouth, gently, and bears it safely back to Mrs. Spooner–without even a nibble at the flowers.

It must be said, goats are not the only creatures known to run amuck. I’ve been known to do so myself. Flowers aren’t my trigger; recipes and craft ideas are. My daughter, mom, and siblings will all attest that when I utter the words "I could do that", chaos is sure to follow. Flour on every flat surface in the kitchen and every article of clothing I’m wearing; scraps of paper all over the floor, splotches of glue on table and, again, clothes; an ever-shrinking amount of surface area available for actually eating at the kitchen table; bits of fiber and fabric trailing from the craft room into the dining room; threads tying up the brushes on the vacuum.

I’ve had to rein myself in, since trading an eight room parsonage in Minnesota in for a four room rental property here in Savannah. Nevertheless December did find me making three triple batches of penuche one day, as gifts for our board members and staff members. A saucepan may have gotten cemented to the cooktop overnight but Nora-the-dog loved the amount of brown sugar on the floor that that particular episode of running amuck resulted in.

Perhaps you’ve experienced the condition yourself. Have there been times you’ve run amuck? Appearing to an outside observer as uncontrollable and perhaps a bit disruptive? Maybe you sometimes even feel uncontrollable and disruptive to yourself. What sets you off?

Homegrown tomato season? A new release by your favorite musical artist? A local team in the running for a championship? An injustice that must not stand? Presidential campaigns? Used book sales? New gadgets?

Sometimes running amuck is a collective condition, like mass hysteria resulting from the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds or election denial. And sometimes running amuck is a more benign sort of collective experience, like Beanie Babies once upon a time.

Running amuck just might be a normal part of the human condition, though it manifests itself differently in each of us. And most of the time, most of us, as Huck eventually did, are able to rein ourselves in. Ship the Beanie Babies off to Goodwill or sell them on E-Bay. Try to constrain the worst of the Christmas card making mess to a large tray that came be removed from the table to clear space for eating a meal in a civilized fashion. Agree to leave the campaign buttons and posters in the car when arriving at the mixed-party family reunion. Nevertheless, even with our capacity to pull ourselves back from excesses of passions and abandon, sometimes it feels like we’re in the midst of a great, big amuckness that’s not necessarily improving the quality of our lives.

Swedish death cleaning–organizing and decluttering your home before you die to lessen the burden of your loved ones after you've passed–is taking hold in this country even as Marie Kondo has recently admitted that her own method of decluttering and organizing has its limitations when confronted with the realities of parenting. Simplicity, order, reduction of clutter are industries all of their own. In over-scheduled lives, amidst the material accumulations of middle-America, we often yearn for a simpler, quieter, less cluttered way. Less running amuck and fewer of the resulting consequences of having run amuck.

Still, there’s running amuck and there’s running amuck.

I have a confession, another confession: I still don’t know what to make of spanish moss, live oaks, Sago Palms, and everything that grows everywhere here. I’ve spent most of my life in the midwest and upper midwest. The 13 years just prior to coming to Savannah I lived on the edge of a prairie, on a tree covered hill bordered on two sides by corn and soybean grown in orderly lines. The greenery of Savannah feels chaotic to me, out of control, amuck. It all makes me a bit anxious. Yet we opened our service this morning singing earth was given as a garden. And gardens, left free of constraints, run amuck–as in our reading from Les Miserables. Beautifully, verdantly, vibrantly amuck. Nature, left free of constraints, runs amuck, runs toward abundant life. My anxiety is slowly giving way to gratitude that the greenery of Savannah offers me a daily reminder of that truth. Living things want to live, and will--in astonishing exquisite healthy abandon when we stop placing our limits and expectations on them.

A night-before-Flower-Ceremony-Sunday conversation with a wise colleague/friend went something like this:

Emily: Flowers are beautiful; you are too. Is that enough or should I say a little more? I don’t have much more in me.

Lisa: More than enough. You could repeat it until they get it.

Emily: I seem to recall that I may have said the same thing last year…”

Lisa: Who remembers? And if they do, well, folks put in gardens every year, the same flowers…because we need them every year. But I’m regretting my decision to preach about running amuck.

Emily: Stray petals and broken stems are all part of the beauty of the flower ceremony. Plus, they get a flower. What else do you need to say, right?

What else does anyone need to say?

Stray petals and broken stems are all part of the beauty of the flower ceremony. Running amuck is part of the beauty and delight of life. It doesn’t always get us where we want to be. Huck never did get all those flowers he hungered for, but he got the admiration of an entire town–and an invitation to eat whatever he liked. When you next find yourself running amuck, may the adventure be exhilarating, and your reward for eventually reining yourself in be sweeter and more satisfying than you can imagine.

Until then, remember, flowers are beautiful; you are too.