Lilacs

My friend Compassionate Nurse told me I could tell you this story. She lives out in the country, surrounded by farm fields, and recently, she was going on a walk. The lilacs were out for a few weeks (I’m always so surprised at how short the seasons are for things here in Canada. Robert says the strawberries are going to be done in a few weeks, and I haven’t even had one local one.  In Mexico the mango season just keeps going: with the yellow squatty “casket” mangos first, and then the plump green “candy” mangoes, and finally the large red “manila” or “hayden” mangoes. Ok, I have to stop thinking about them because my mouth is watering, and I’m missing it all).  And my friend loves lilacs, those round tufts of soft, tiny, purple and white flowers that smell so sweet.  She hasn’t been able to get them to grow in her yard yet, so she’s always on the lookout. And as she walked, she noticed lilacs in a field. Next to the field was a manicured lawn, with more lilacs, but in the field, the lilacs were (surely) growing wild. And they were in full bloom. She thought about this. My friend Compassionate Nurse has the most tender conscience on the planet and would never take anything that wasn’t hers, or fudge on the rules. She’s the most law-abiding person ever invented. Policemen dream of such people, and her not-so conscientious family members tease her about it.

So she steps into the field, where (surely) no one owns the lilacs, cuts a few sprigs of purple and white to make a bouquet, and walks on down the road with the bouquet in her hand, enjoying her fragrant flowers. The afternoon is full of cheer, and she knows exactly where the flowers will go when she gets home. She has a smile on her face.

A car drives by. It passes her, slows down farther down the road, and stops. Then it turns around. Slowly it makes its way back to where she is and stops again, right beside her. Great. The window comes down, slowly. The face of an old man appears.  “Where did you get those lilacs?” 

I mean, what are the chances?

He scolds her, my Compassionate Nurse friend, who is 50 something and the mother of three, holding his (stolen? surely not!) wild lilacs in her hand: “Those don’t belong to you, you know. You should think before you take things that aren’t yours. Just think how I feel when people come on my property and take what doesn’t belong to them. You should remember this next time. No, I don’t want the lilacs. You keep them and enjoy them now (Right. As if.) Just remember to ask next time before you take things.”

This is what is called the law of unintended consequences. It haunts us. The Greeks and Shakespeare built an entire genre of it called Tragedy. This law says that you can make really small, apparently unimportant decisions, and the next thing you know, these choices are changing your entire life. They keep having unintended consequences you didn’t expect, and the consequences just get bigger and bigger, like circles in a stream, and you can’t stop them. Eventually in Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, everyone involved dies, good and bad, because the one good person who made the one bad choice, just can’t stop the train.

I’m glad to say that as far as I know, my friend is still alive, though the lilacs have indeed died, and there are no further consequences to her story other than a good laugh and a determination to stick by the rules even more.  But next time you see lilacs, let them remind you that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction in the form of the face of an ungracious old man, looking out a car window, reminding you of the unintended, and tragic consequences of your actions. They are inescapable. We are all trapped in this scenario.

Except for this. When Jesus died, he broke the back of Tragedy. He broke the inescapable consequences of our actions. He broke the inexorable trap of death and created the possibility of  “happily ever after.” Although in this fallen world we are still tied to all the consequences of our actions, so that cancer still comes and kills, ultimately the little old finger-pointing man is banished. We are utterly free. We, and our neighbor, with whatever stolen thing we hold shame-faced in our hand. We are free. What we do with this open door is another matter altogether.