Lessons from grass, and green

Green* is one of the most common English surnames, and it was used in Scotland, too. People were named Green because they lived near a village green, or because they wore clothes of this color.

Green is the color of emeralds, jade, and growing grass. Green is the color most commonly associated with nature and the environmental movement, Ireland, spring, hope, greed, envy, youth, inexperience, health, sickness, Islam, Saint Patrick's Day, and money. In formal churches, Green symbolizes Ordinary Time (as opposed to Lent, Advent, and other special times), and Christian growth.

The word green comes from the Middle English and Old English word grene, which, like the German word grün, has the same root as the words grass and grow. The first recorded use of the word as a color term in Old English dates to about 14 centuries ago. A word for the color green was apparently invented several times, by different language speakers. In ancient Greek, chloros was the word for yellowish, pale green.

There are over 40 places where the Bible uses the word, green. Most of them are in the sense of "green plant," or related to that use. In some translations, Esther 1:6 uses green as a fabric color. Job 8:16 and 15:32 use green to refer to a favored person. One of the most familiar uses is in Psalm 23, where David says that he has laid down in green pastures. Here’s how Jeremiah described a righteous person, in 17:7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

and whose confidence is in God.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters,

who spreads out its roots by the river,

and shall not fear when heat comes,

but its leaf shall be green;

and shall not be careful in the year of drought,

neither shall cease from yielding fruit. So, someone who trusts God is compared to a green tree – growing, alive, and fertile.

Here’s another passage:

Psalm 92:12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.

He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

13 They are planted in the Lord’s house.

They will flourish in our God’s courts.

14 They will still produce fruit in old age.

They will be full of sap and green, Lesson 1: We can, and should, still be fruitful for God, and others, for all of our lives, including in our old age. Fruit? Probably two things: winning others to a relationship with Christ; showing the fruits of the Spirit, from Galatians 5:22-3, which are joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

As I said, and as you can see all around us at this time of year, green is the color of plants, and of growth. Did you know that we wouldn't be here without green plants? They make food for us, and for animals. Every item of food on that table out there originated as a mostly green plant, whether it’s lettuce, tomatoes, sweet tea, butter, rolls, chicken, roast beef, ham or red velvet cake. Everything with calories in it, that you can buy at Ingles, Walmart, Bilo, Publix, or wherever you shop, started out as green plant material. Calories have a bad name, because some of us take in more of them than we should, but we need calories. Without green plants, there’d be no calories available in food.

The process that uses light energy to make food is photosynthesis, which is carried out by the chlorophylls in green plants. Remember the Greek word for light green? Chloros.

What makes plants green? Chlorophyll, which is a green pigment, named for chloros. What's a pigment? A pigment is a chemical that absorbs some colors, and reflects others, or just lets them go through. Why are leaves green? Because they absorb some of the sun’s light, and reflect, or transmit, green. Blue and red light, are mostly absorbed by chlorophyll**. The plants use the energy in that blue and red light to make food. Lesson 2: We need to be like pigments. We need to absorb the light that God makes available to us, through the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and through other godly people. We also need to reflect that light, so that others can profit from it.

This amazing system of capturing sunlight, and getting food from it, is one of the many things that we don’t thank God enough for.

Grass

Now, I’d like to change my subject a little, from green to grass. If I did a good job, and you were paying attention, you noticed that green and grass are closely related words, and no wonder. Grass is green, usually. A lot of what’s green is grass. There are about 60 references to grass in the Bible, beginning in Genesis 1, where grass is described as part of God’s good creation.

Based on other scripture, such as Psalm 104, God didn’t describe His creation as good just because it was and is good for humans. We’re far from discovering all of the galaxies, stars, and even planets in the universe. The ones yet discovered, and even most of those we know about, don’t seem to do us much good. But they can still be for God’s glory, even though we have never seen them. Has Pluto or Neptune ever helped you? Has a galaxy hundreds of light-years away ever helped you? Yet they are part of God’s good creation. We think that there are many types of living things that we haven’t discovered yet. If most of them disappeared today, it wouldn’t affect our lives. But they are still for God’s glory, too. What God has allowed to exist in the universe is good primarily because of God, not because it is good for humans.

What about grass?

In Matthew 6:30, Jesus said that grass exists today, but is just thrown into the oven tomorrow, apparently as cheap fuel. Lesson 3: We aren’t special, either. We attendees at this Green reunion are no better than people named Black, or Smith, or whatever.

We aren’t special even if we are rich, or well educated, or talented, or popular, we aren’t anything special:

James 1:11 For the sun arises with the scorching wind, and withers the grass, and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in his pursuits.

Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of the most powerful kingdom of his day, that he wasn’t anything special: Daniel 4:25b you shall be driven from men, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass as oxen, and shall be wet with the dew of the sky, and seven times shall pass over you; until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he will.

Lesson 4: even though we aren’t any more special than anyone else, God cares for us! Matthew 6:30: But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith? The God who clothes the grass in its beautiful green can clothe, and feed, and shelter, and heal us. We should never forget that.

Lesson 5: we are here for a purpose: 1 Kings 18:5 Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go through the land, to all the springs of water, and to all the brooks. Perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, that we not lose all the animals.”

Grass does many things. One thing it does is provide food for grazing animals, and us. (You and I can’t really digest grass very well.) Plants of this type have always been important to humans. They have been grown as food for domesticated animals, and for other uses, for about 6,000 years. The most important food crops are the grains of grasses such as wheat, rice and barley. Remember the village green that the Green name may have come from? That was a place for the animals to graze.

We have a purpose, too. It’s not to provide food for animals. It’s a higher purpose. We are to be part of a new creation, begun as Christ’s kingdom. That means that we who believe on Christ as savior are not just given an escape route from hell. We are part of a kingdom that is working worldwide, to bring men and women, boys and girls, to abundant, infectious life in Christ. How well am I carrying out God’s purpose in me? How well are you?

Lesson 6: we need to stay connected. Grass that’s not connected to water dies. Grass that’s not connect to soil can’t get enough minerals. Grass that’s not connected to light stops making food for itself. We must continue to be connected to God, to a good church, to godly people.

Lesson 7: we shouldn’t let being clipped get us down. When Ahab and Obadiah were looking for grass to feed their animals, or when David was lying down in green pastures, they weren’t expecting the animals to eat the grass down to the roots. They expected it to be grazed, or clipped, and grow back.

My wife thinks I’m too old, or too feeble, or not competent enough to mow our grass. So we hire someone to do it. But guess what? He comes every two weeks, and Faye just asked him to come more often. Why? Because grass grows back when cut or clipped. So should we. There are going to be troubles and trials. Perhaps some of you had some just getting here. It’s not God’s plan that we won’t have troubles. But it is God’s plan that we can remain cheerful and obedient and loving when they come. We got an e-mail, last week, from a man whose wife has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Most of the letter was things he was thankful for, concerning this experience.

Most of you don’t know [Jane Green's] father. He lost his wife to a heart attack, over 25 years ago. He hasn’t been able to hear anything less than a loud yell for years. He has trouble walking. I can’t imagine what any of these problems would be like. No wife, not able to carry on a normal conversation, or listen to the TV or the radio, not able to get around. I suppose his family has seen him grumpy, or even angry or depressed. But I never have. He’s always shown a remarkably good attitude, in spite of his circumstances. He’s stood up to clipping!

Lesson 8: There’s hope, even if we aren’t anything special, even if we have been clipped. There’s God!

Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers,

the flower fades;

but the word of our God stands forever.” And, thank God, we can stand forever, too!

*This post is modified slightly from a devotional talk given to the Green family, which my wife is related to, on April 27, 2013. Thanks for reading!

**(Added May 23, 2013) National Public Radio has posted a story, with photo, on "pinkhouses," a high-tech way to grow plants efficiently indoors. The pink is because these structures use only red and blue light, and the result looks pink. The red and blue light are the only colors necessary for photosynthesis.

Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper

Sheri S. Tepper is a prolific writer, and at least one of her novels (Grass, which was published by Doubleday in 1989, and is the subject of this post -- I read the paperback version.) was nominated for the Hugo award. I was surprised that the Wikipedia article on Tepper was so sketchy, and that there is no article on Grass.

I wouldn't say that Tepper is one of my favorite authors -- this is my first post on her, in over 1,000 such -- but she is certainly readable, and I found that there was a lot more to Grass than I remembered from my earlier reading. Let me qualify that previous sentence. No one has ever called me a male chauvinist pig, but some of Tepper's later work got so strongly feminist that I quit reading. One of my daughters recalls a similar experience with her work. Grass, on the other hand, isn't mostly a feminist work. It's science fiction -- speculating about what would happen if . . . The relationships and roles of males and females do enter the story.

Tepper has published two other books that are loosely connected, and this series is called either the Arbai series (after an extinct race of intelligent beings, found on many planets) or the Marjorie Westriding series (after the main character).

I have found a few reviews of the book. This blog post calls the book ". . . a rabbit-hole entry into rich moral questions . . .," and sees it as relevant to the US entry into wars in the Persian Gulf. This review calls it ". . . one of the most significant works of 1980s SF . . ." The review traces various significant literary influences on the book, mostly non-fantastic. Steven Wu's review states, I think correctly, that Tepper has loaded her novel with too much philosophical freight, but nonetheless commends her work. This review says much the same.

As I need to, I am going to give away various parts of the plot. This post will not be long enough to give all of it away.

Literary features.
I make no claim to be a literary critic, but even I can see that Grass starts and ends with, er, grass. Tepper begins, even before page 1, by quoting Isaiah 40:6, which she renders: "A voice says, 'Cry!' And I said, 'What shall I cry?' All flesh is grass . . ."

This marvelous passage opens the book proper:
Grass!
Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses -- some high, some low, some feathered, some straight -- making their own geography as they grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet, where maidens pillow their heads thinking of their lovers, where husbands lie down and think of their mistresses; grass groves where old men and women sit quiet at the end of the day, dreaming of things that might have been, perhaps once were. Commoners all, of course. No aristocrat would sit in the wild grass to dream. Aristocrats have gardens for that, if they dream at all.
Grass. Ruby ridges, blood-colored highlands, wine-shaded glades. Sapphire seas of grass with dark islands of grass bearing great plumy green trees which are grass again. Interminable meadows of silver hay where the great grazing beasts move in slanting lines like mowing machines, leaving the stubble behind them to spring up again in trackless wildernesses of rippling argent.
Orange highlands burning against the sunsets. Apricot ranges glowing in the dawns. Seed plumes sparkling like sequin stars. Blossom heads like the fragile lace old women take out of trunks to show their granddaughters.
(p. 1-2, Grass -- New York: Bantam, 1990)

It ends thus:
Marjorie,
by the grace of God, grass.
Amen (p. 449. The end of her letter to her husband, who is going back to earth, while Marjorie remains.)

The biology of Grass
Or, I should say, the zoology of Grass, the planet, or Grass, the book. In spite of the title, there isn't much about the botany of the planet.

This review suggests similarities between the book and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. There is some connection. In Card's Speaker, an animal species is really another phase of the life of a type of tree, or vice versa. (I seem to recall some bizarre biology in the diggers of Card's Homecoming series, but I don't remember all of the details.)

So what's strange about Grass? There are, besides the grazing beasts, which are scarcely mentioned, after the opening passage, four apparent species of animals, the peepers, who show no evidence of intelligence; the "hounds," which are not much like hounds, which are as large as horses, and predatory; the hippae, which are even larger, also predatory, and definitely intelligent; and the foxen, which are also definitely intelligent. The hippae and the foxen have telepathic powers. The foxen are apparently able to control the thoughts of those around them, so that they can be nearly invisible to observers. The hippae can control humans. The reader discovers that these four types are actually all stages of a single species, going through something like the caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly progression found on earth. But there's a twist. At some time in the past, paedogenesis has occurred, and the final stage became unnecessary. Some hippae produced peepers without going to the final foxen stage. Later, some hippae did not make the final metamorphosis. Then the hippae came to hunt and kill the foxen, not needing them anymore.

There's another important aspect of the organisms of Grass. That is that they are immune to a gruesome viral plague that's destroying the inhabitants of other worlds, and threatens to wipe out mankind. (I didn't find Tepper's microbiology and biochemistry completely convincing, by the way, but this didn't really affect my reading.)

Mind control
The opening passage refers to aristocrats. On Grass, there are a few families of aristocrats (at least in their own eyes) living in estancias throughout the vast prairies of the planet. Somehow, the hippae have controlled their thinking, apparently using the aristocrat's knowledge of fox hunting, to bring about a complicated system of hunting that plays a large part in the lives of the aristocrats. They ride on the hippae (which is dangerous, because the hippae have sharp spines on their backs) accompanied by the "hounds," and are instrumental in killing the foxen. But they think that they are hunting foxes as humans used to do on earth. The hippae control all aspects of this.

There is also a population of non-aristocrats, living near the spaceport. They actually control almost everything on the planet, but the aristocrats don't realize that.

Marjorie and her husband have heard of fox hunting on Grass, and, reasonably enough, believe that it would make sense to bring their own horses with them.

Religious and moral aspects
It should be no surprise that a book that begins by quoting the Bible, and ends in a prayer, has some religious or moral themes and issues.

What are some of these?

One, whether Tepper intended it or not, is the question of earning salvation. Marjorie, who is a loyal Old Catholic (remember that the book is set in the future, when humans have reached several other planets) is trying to earn it by helping people who have violated Earth's strict birth control laws, and thus put themselves beyond the help of the state. This does not satisfy Marjorie. Does she ever find any sort of salvation? I'm not sure. Perhaps in her contact and even communion with a being of another race, a race so different that its members cannot even be clearly seen, she has found it, by the end.

Another one is the question of marital fidelity, and what makes a marriage work. Marjorie's does not. At the beginning of the book, she has never had an adulterous affair, but her husband has a mistress. When he is appointed ambassador to Grass, the mistress, and the wife, go along. By the end, Marjorie has given up on her marriage, which hasn't improved. On page 205, Father Sandoval, who has traveled to Grass with Marjorie, Rigo, their children and the mistress, tells her that he thinks the problem is, simply, that Rigo has been selfish -- he has wanted what he wants, when he wants it, not full-orbed marital intimacy.

Toward the end, Marjorie develops some sort of relationship with First, one of the foxen -- mostly telepathic, but partly physical -- and decides that she will not go back to earth with her husband.

There are religions in the book. One is Old Catholicism. Another is Sanctity, which is the dominant human religion. This review says that Sanctity is modeled on Mormonism. That may or may not be true. In any case, Sanctity is presented as more like an urban gang than a selfless religion. The leaders seek power, and impress children into years of service to the cult. On Grass, at least, the religion tolerates its monks (?) killing each other. When Sanctity learns that there may be a cure for the plague, they try to prevent its implementation, to maintain their own power. Another religion is the Moldies. They operate secretly, because of fear of Sanctity. Their aim is to destroy all humans.

The question of original sin, and the concept of sin, are discussed. Father Sandoval believes that the foxen were redeemed by Christ's death. Although the Arbai are extinct, enough of their artifacts remain to understand that they had no concept of evil, and, as a result, did not think the hippae capable of evil. The hippae destroyed them, by sending the plague through their inter-planetary transportation system.

The foxen know of the evil that the hippae do, and plan to do to humans, but do not act, but prefer to argue about whether or not to act, until Marjorie persuades them to do so. Her concern for her own horses is the trigger that causes this change. The foxen see that she is concerned, not just for herself, but for other creatures, so they follow her moral compass, and act to stop the hippae.

Finally, back to the last part of Marjorie's letter. She has come to believe that individual humans are no more important, in the eyes of God, than a virus, and that God is not concerned with individuals, but with large-scale events. Thus, she believes that, to God, she is like a blade of grass.

This was an ambitious novel. There are a number of aspects of it that I haven't mentioned, and the ones that I have mentioned aren't covered as thoroughly as they might be.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

On April 2, 2009, E Stephen Burnett wrote an essay, asking questions about how far a Christian author could go in writing fiction which has a God who is significantly different from the Christian God, and whether a Christian could legitimately create a fictional character who is in defiance of God. I posted tentative answers to these questions, which are related to the subject of the post above, on April 12, 2009.