The beauty of messiness

The Swiss are known to be orderly, to have an obsession with keeping things tidy. You can see that when you cross small towns and villages in some areas. Messiness tends to be seen here as a heresy, as a sign of poor personality or bad morale. Some pastor once told a young member of his church that the mess in his car pointed to a screwed relationship with Jesus. I guess some people feel that way about this guy to this day - he is an artist and an extraordinarily creative person, and, in his way, a messy one.

Of course there are those in Swiss counter culture - and elsewhere - who seem to think that for things to be alive, creative or healthy they had to be messy in an unpleasant way. It may be that for some people ugliness is synonymous with wholeness, but I feel the other way around. Except that messiness and ugliness are two entirely different things altogether.

That's what the surroundings of my house are compellingly reminding me of these days. What a beautiful mess! I'm not talking about objects left asunder by people who don't care about them or forgot to put them away. That's ugly and I can see it in my neighborhood, too. I'm talking about the stuff that seems to appear from almost bare brownish, rocky and rather uninspiring mud. The only thing after snow are some half rotten leafs and stems, as if the wind had forgotten to blow them away, or they were not good enough for the snails or the worms. Behold, before the snow was all gone, the first flowers appeared, white and strong yellow, and before you know it the entire surface is green of all imaginable sorts. The only thing I don't tolerate are nettles, not here. And yes, I will pull some greens that seem to overrule the wild strawberries which taste so exquisit. Of course, there are the parts and patches where things are planted, raspberries, potatoes, beans, zucchini and other vegetables. As much as these are enjoyable and bring satisfaction - even if the cost of seed and the time of tending are in no reasonable correlation to the harvest - the greatest beauty by far is in the messy parts around the house where nature has free reign. The regenerating power and forgiving mercy of nature is truly amazing. Nature is not obsessed with unceasing growth and non-stop accumulation. Nature is cyclic: birth and unfolding, growth, abundance, even wastefulness, decline and death to rest and to leave time for a fresh beginning, as amazing and joyful as before, never exactly the same twice and yet in continuity and honoring what was before, producing the seed of what will come thereafter. In all of this colors and consistence keep changing, as do flavors and tastes. All of it is in ongoing interaction with other plants, insects, bees, and other living things.

Peace is not tidy and orderly. Nor is it fully in our control. It is messy and confusing as nature. I love my messy, beautiful and peaceful patches. They warm my heart and cool my head. Inspire the body and energize the spirit. Organic disorder and so alive...