No one ever taught me about the value of seemingly useless activity. It is something that I have had to find out for myself. Human living is replete with such activity. Whereas I know that not everything one does can be meaningful, useful, significant or whatever, I was compelled to dwell upon such important things everyday one summer. I watered plants each day for just over four months for four hours a day. I worried so about keeping my mind active as I watched gallon after of water splash over the plants. I sang songs to myself, mused over my past, thought about plans for the future, tried hard to take it all one day at a time and not think too far down the road. I was trying to think my way into relevancy, into meaningfulness. I thought about different places I had been, and thought about people all over the world who were doing more relevant things, and obviously more successful things. Many a time, I felt that I was wasting time, that there were surely more important things that I could be doing with my life. I felt like a human syphon. Water was passing through me and not much else. People looked at me and did not even wave. Something about that particular job smears oneself onto the canvas of oblivion.

I never got angry at the plants. It was not their fault. As a matter of fact, I soon began to take to heart the fact that they somehow needed me. I soon found myself talking to them, worrying about them, checking each of them for signs of illness. I wondered if they possessed any sort of consciousness, like, if they ever grew jealous when their green leafy neighbors received more water, of a better place in the sun. I wondered if sadness was felt by them, as they lost their leaves or even their lives. All these things wandered through my mind as I carefully aimed the hose, and allowed the clear and cool water to gush, splash, squirt and spray. You see, each plant required a different method of water allocation and delivery. I learned this as time went on. I also watched for soil levels, and whether fertilizer was needed. I looked out for harmful bugs and worms. I soon knew about good bugs and not so good bugs. There were many little tricks of the trade that I picked up as the days grew into weeks and then months. I fancied myself something of an expert by summer's end.

But.

The plants lived through the summer. There were few, if any, fatalities. For those few months, they absorbed the water I gave them, along with a good part of my life. So, because of that, there was simply life, life that had to be attended to, cared for, fretted over. That's how things stay fresh and green.

I hope that I remember something that I learned during those months. Something about the need to keep a low profile and engage in some seemingly useless activity, and to do so on purpose, something like keeping things neat and fresh, and doing such without a hope of getting something "back." I think that such activity is how life indeed thrives and blooms all over the place. But you have to keep an eye open for where such activity take place, for it is almost invisible. It kind of blends in with the scenery of being as it goes about tending to things. Maybe that is why people did not wave to me? No matter there. Maybe they did not even see me. And maybe I am just beginning to "see" the importance of the seemingly irrelevant. Just as the plants would have died without the water, we, too, would die without all that gushes continuously around us: goodness, patience, kindness, hope, human warmth, the warmth of all things. Given so freely by so many, without much recognition.

No matter. It is how living things seem to thrive, without getting all that noticed.

Fr. Behrens books can be purchased from The Abbey Store. (also soon from Bonsaimonk's e-store!)