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I stood at the window of a busy urban medical center the other day after a round of tests, waiting to see a specialist. The facility had landscaped the grounds with a pond and walking path, likely so that staff and patients could enjoy the well-researched benefits of nature. The pond was, like so many, mowed right to the edge and treated with chemicals to eliminate weeds/algae. A grounds crew was weed whacking around the few nearby plantings. (What’s whacked, in my experience, is more likely to belong than the non-native plants considered beautiful.)

I watched a family of Canada geese wandering the edge, pecking at the minimal nourishment of turf grass. I noticed an unusual gull flying in. It had a much wider wingspan and different coloration than those typically seen around Lake Erie. (Looking it up later, I see it might have been a Glaucous gull.)  It swooped low around the pond a few times, flapped over two trees near the building, then flew off across the busy highway toward further commerce-clogged miles.

That pond, put there for a serene view of “nature” is of little more value than a parking lot to that bird and those geese. No native plants at the edge full of seeds and blooms. No duckweed or fish in the water. Likely few if any insects. No real nourishment, just a pond for show, largely devoid of nature’s context.

Everything in us is designed to flourish. Yet we’re pressured to be some version of that pond in our culture—accepted within tight margins, meant to perform as expected, confined by limited variables. I want to embrace the messy complexity that doesn’t neatly fit into a barren pond or a narrow theology, isn’t defined by political rigidity or status or possessions. I want my waters awake with invisible and visible lives. I want my edges lush with everything blooming and going to seed and dying –trusting what needs to flourish will come back to life. I want community, cross-pollination, diversity, beauty. Sometimes, in today’s world, I wonder if we are all the tightly mowed lawn as well as the gull seeking more.

What ways have you found to let the wild living waters of your being and your world flourish?